INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

THE YEAR OF ELECTIONS

1. Putin returns to the presidency on March 04, 2012. 2. Mohammed Morsi emerges as the President of the Post-Arab Spring Egypt on June 16, 2012. 3. Venezuela's Comandante Hugo Chavez maintains the revolution winning for the fourth term as president of Venezuela on October 07, 2012. 4. Xi Jinping is elevated to general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012, he is expected to become the country’s president in 2013. 5. Obama wins another four years on November 06, 2012. PHOTO: AFP

“I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right”- Malala Yousafzai , who may finally turn the tide on extremism in Pakistan. On October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus. Photo: AFP
Amid ongoing crisis in Syria, a new opposition umbrella group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, was formed in November 2012 and this has gained recognition as the "legitimate representative of the Syrian people." Photo: AFP
		A heavily armed gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children from 5 to 10 years old, in a rampage at a Connecticut Elementary School on December 14, 2012, one of the worst mass shootings in US history. Photo: AFP

Myanmar's quasi-civilian government allows democracy leader Suu Kyi to participate in parliamentary by-elections. Suu Kyi and her party NLD win forty of forty-five contested parliamentary seats in a landmark vote on April01, 2012. Photo: AFP		UN General Assembly approved a resolution to grant Palestine observer status on November 29, 2012, implicitly recognising a Palestinian state. Photo: AFP