Current Mexican President Felipe Calderon was elected in a disputed election over three years ago but as the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, the man he defeated, the PRD’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has continued to fight on, gathering his “Legitimate Government” every 15 days in a former garage in Mexico City. Complete with a group of “shadow ministers,” AMLO, as the former Mexico City mayor is known, presides over the group which continues to “propose new laws, issue statements, hold elections, officiate during Mexican Independence Day, and even circulate its own form of identification card for Mexicans.” He also continues to tour the country, still claiming Calderon is a “presidential usurper” and, in fact, AMLO will soon have visited every one of the country’s 2,438 municipalities—making him the first Mexican politician (not to mention presidents) to ever complete such a feat. Those close to AMLO say he, of course, knows that he has no official power but sees the shadow government as a way of “raising his political profile.” However, as the paper writes, it doesn’t seem to be working yet as the once-popular politician finds his support at just 16% (half of its 2006 level). Only time will tell if AMLO can carry his never-ended campaign into the next actual presidential election cycle, set for 2012.
Meanwhile, there can be little doubt that the focus of most Mexicans has turned away from Lopez Obrador to the country’s many other challenges—among them an increasingly violent war with drug gangs. The AP reports this morning that business leaders in Ciudad Juarez have requested the United Nations send peacekeepers to the border to help quell violence. “This is a proposal ... for international forces to come here to help out the domestic (security) forces,'” said Daniel Murguia, president of the Ciudad Juarez chapter of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, citing extortion, robberies, and the closing of businesses as due to on-going drug violence. Another business leader says the joint police-military operations which have brought some 5,000 Mexican troops to the city have yielded no improved security results. And this week, Forbes magazine placed Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman, perhaps Mexico’s most notorious drug baron, on its list of the 67 “Most Powerful People in the World.” At number 41 on the list, the AP says Guzman is ahead of some very notable names, including Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. [Mexican business tycoon, Carlos Slim, is #6 on the list, however, just five slots behind #1 Barack Obama].
Around the region this morning:
· From Honduras, Deputy Ass’t. Sec. of State, Craig Kelly’s two-day trip to Tegucigalpa lasted just under 24 hours [although reports are that he got in a good photo op with Roberto Micheletti!]. In short, the trip appears to have failed as neither Zelaya nor Micheletti seemed to take much interest in heading back to the table of (real) talks. Meanwhile, as Honduras Coup 2009 reports, the Honduran Supreme Court got together yesterday and formed a six person subcommittee to draft a non-binding opinion on the issue of Zelaya’s restitution. The committee is expected to deliver an opinion next Wednesday—or so the Supreme Court said yesterday. Also, La Tribuna reports on new threats being issued against pro-Zelaya media outlets by the de facto government who is none too happy about calls for election boycotts. The head of the Honduran police, in particular, is demanding the Attorney General launch a crackdown on those stations that are “inciting crimes.” The BBC reports on the issue of violence, specifically, saying the coup of June 28 is increasingly creating vacuums in Honduras’s public security. It’s unclear if a spike in violent crime in the last weeks is politically motivated, but, in any case, there is a perception that the coup has brought less security to the Honduran people, writes the BBC. Moreover, as reported yesterday, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky was in Honduras this week to look into human rights violations since the coup. She accompanied Bertha Oliva of the Honduran human rights grouo COFADEH and CDA’s Sarah Stephens. And finally, in the Guardian an opinion by Michael Lisman of the Inter-American Dialogue urges the U.S. to send its diplomats back to Honduras if it “wants its stamp on this quagmire to be any different from those of the other scorned negotiators.”
· On Venezuela-Colombia tensions, Reuters reports that Colombia brought “threats of war” by the Venezuelan government to the UN Sec. Council on Wednesday. At Foreign Policy, the Inter-American Dialogue’s Michael Shifter comments on the dispute, saying that while mistrust runs both ways between Colombia and Venezuela, “there are factors that militate against things getting out of hand” (among them strong public opposition to war in both countries). Adam Isacson provides a very useful chronology of events that led up to Chavez’s Sunday “war statements” but agrees that the chance of actual armed conflict breaking out between the two countries is very low. The dispute is largely one about domestic politics, neither country’s people has “war fever,” there could be no definition of “victory” if war ever did break out, and each is essentially in a defensive position, argues Isacson.
· In two other Venezuela news items, the AP says the country has destroyed over 30,000 guns as part of its ramped up anti-crime efforts. And Chavez opponent, Gov. Cesar Perez of Tachira state, has accused the president of turning a blind eye to Colombian rebels entering Venezuela with some ease.
· Finally, a story I’ve not seen reported in any of the major media outlets but seems significant nonetheless. A Miami district court judge ruled earlier in the week that there is sufficient evidence and legal standing to try former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada in a U.S. court for the 2003 deaths of protestors in La Paz. Some of the plaintiffs’ claims were thrown out by the Miami judge, but, says James Cavallero of Harvard Law School, “This [first] decision is a reminder that heads of state cannot act with impunity.” Sanchez de Losada currently resides outside Washington, D.C.
No comments:
Post a Comment