Items13The creator’s order
  1. 1Gerald FordGerald FordBorn 14 Jul 1913The test case for separating popularity from accountability. Ford took over after Nixon resigned over Watergate, declared that 'our long national nightmare is over' and ran a noticeably more open White House. His pardon of Nixon a month later ended any prospect of holding the former president to…0i
  2. 2Jimmy CarterJimmy CarterBorn 1 Oct 1924Carter won the 1976 election promising 'I will never lie to you', and his administration turned post-Watergate distrust into law. He signed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which created financial disclosure for senior officials and the Office of Government Ethics, the Inspector General Act…0i
  3. 3Raúl AlfonsínRaúl AlfonsínBorn 12 Mar 1927Argentina's first president after the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship set up the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, whose report Nunca Más documented nearly 9,000 disappearances, and put the junta leaders on trial in 1985, the first such trial of a military regime by a civilian court in…0i
  4. 4Patricio AylwinPatricio AylwinBorn 26 Nov 1918Aylwin governed with Pinochet still commanding the army, so he aimed for 'justice in so far as possible'. His Rettig Commission identified more than 2,000 people killed or disappeared by the dictatorship, he apologised on behalf of the state in a televised address, and his government created…0i
  5. 5Itamar FrancoItamar FrancoBorn 28 Jun 1930Franco became Brazil's president when Fernando Collor resigned in December 1992 as the Senate tried him for corruption, the first time Brazil had removed a president through constitutional impeachment. Franco's reputation for personal honesty steadied the government, he formed a broad cabinet and…0i
  6. 6Carlo Azeglio CiampiCarlo Azeglio CiampiBorn 9 Dec 1920In 1993 the Tangentopoli bribery investigations had implicated much of Italy's governing class, and Ciampi, the Bank of Italy governor, became the first prime minister who was not a member of parliament. His year in office brought the July 1993 agreement with unions and employers that ended wage…0i
  7. 7Morihiro HosokawaMorihiro HosokawaBorn 14 Jan 1938Successive bribery scandals, Recruit and Sagawa Kyubin among them, ended 38 years of Liberal Democratic rule in 1993, and Hosokawa led the eight-party coalition that replaced it. His 1994 political reform laws replaced multi-member constituencies with a mix of single seats and proportional lists,…0i
  8. 8Kim Young-samKim Young-samBorn 20 Dec 1927South Korea's first civilian president in three decades took office in 1993 amid deep suspicion of the military-era elite. He introduced the real-name financial system that ended anonymous bank accounts used for slush funds, required senior officials to disclose their assets, purged the army's…0i
  9. 9John MajorJohn MajorBorn 29 Mar 1943The 'cash for questions' affair of 1994, in which two Conservative MPs were accused of taking money to ask parliamentary questions, led Major to set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life under Lord Nolan. Its seven principles of public life, selflessness, integrity, objectivity,…0i
  10. 10Valentín PaniaguaValentín PaniaguaBorn 23 Sept 1936When Alberto Fujimori fled to Japan in November 2000 after videos showed his spy chief bribing congressmen, Paniagua, the newly elected president of Congress, became interim president of Peru. In eight months he organised what observers judged a clean election, began the anti-corruption…0i