The SDP hives off from Britain's Labour party – and seven years later merges with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats

Republican activist Gerry Adams is elected president of Sinn Fein

Civilian rule is restored in Brazil after Tancredo Neves and Jose Sarney are elected president and vice-president

Corazón Aquino, widow of the assassinated Benigno Aquino, stands against Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines presidential election

Mugabe and Nkomo merge their two parties as ZANU-PF, making Zimbabwe effectively a one-party state

The Liberals and the SDP merge in Britain to form a single political party, the Liberal Democrats

Aung San Suu Kyi returns to Burma from England, to look after her dying mother

Students, teachers and workers gather in large numbers in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to demand democratic reform

Uruguay enjoys the first entirely free election since the years of military dictatorship

Elections in Poland bring Solidarnośc nation-wide success, and the party is soon at the head of a coalition government

With the fall of Pinochet, Chile returns eagerly to democracy - electing a Christian Democrat, Patricio Aylwin, as president

Alexander Dubcek is Speaker of Parliament and Václav Havel is President in the new democratic government of Czechoslovakia

The Sandinistas lose the Nicaraguan presidential election, with Daniel Ortega beaten into second place by Violeta Chamorro

The aged president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, wins the Ivory Coast's first democratic elections

Aung San Suu Kyi's party wins an overwhelming victory in Burma's general election but the military refuse to hand over power

Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi transforms Inkatha into a political party, the Inkatha Freedom Party

Mary Robinson is elected president of the republic of Ireland, the first woman to hold the post

Solidarnośc leader Lech Walesa wins Poland's first free presidential election

The incumbent president, Mathieu Kérékou, loses in Benin's first democratic election

Former Communist Boris Yeltsin is elected leader of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic

Aung San Suu Kyi wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous fight for democracy in Burma

Multiparty elections in Zambia result in a massive defeat for the long-serving president, Kenneth Kaunda

A new party, the Islamic Salvation Front, seems certain to win the Algerian election – until the army intervenes

After a single term as president of the Philippines, Corazon Aquino returns to private life

Betty Boothroyd, a Labour MP, becomes the first woman Speaker of Britain's House of Commons