Irish Examiner view: Public vote names Mexican president as the world's worst tyrant

Obrador had plenty of competition in the poll from the leaders of Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and Iran among others

Mexico's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was voted as the world's top tyrant in an Index on Censorship poll. File picture: Marco Ugarte/AP

Unfortunately for humankind, the list of tyrants who exercise power does not show any sign of diminishing. 

Ivan the Terrible, Pol Pot, Vlad the Impaler, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Leopold II, and countless others of their ilk; there is no sign of falling short of future candidates for enlistment.

There’s even an annual competition, run by the campaigning organisation, Index on Censorship, to find the most egregious candidate. The final selection is judged on a vote, something which is denied to people in many of the countries it covers. But not always. 

Nominees can also emerge from nations that espouse democracy. And so it was this year when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, saw off formidable competition from the likes of Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Xi Jinping, leader of China.

Obrador surpassed the claims of both the man who invaded Ukraine and the suppressor of the Uyghurs because he controls a country in which more journalists were killed last year outside of war zones than any other.

One of the defining characteristics of the leaders on this list — they are all men — is that the regimes they control share a medieval taste for cruelty. Ali Khamenei, the 83-year-old supreme leader of Iran, another 2022 candidate for top tyrant, oversees a country which has just executed one of its citizens, former deputy defence minister Alireza Akbari.  

Akbari was accused of spying for the British government, something he and his family denied. His wife said he had been put in solitary confinement for 10 months. A smuggled audio recording reveals a story of torture including the application of mind-altering drugs.

Relationships with Iran are worsening with the EU and are already parlous with the US and Britain. They will decline further this year with all the potential danger that involves.