With 98 percent of votes tallied, Chilean billionaire Sebastian Pinera, no. 701 on Forbes list of the world’s richest men, has been declared the winner of first round voting in Chile. The candidate of the Chilean center-right “Alianza” coalition appears to have captured 44 percent of the vote, writes the New York Times this morning. That’s 14 percentage points ahead of the governing Concertación’s candidate, former president Eduardo Frei. In a distant third was independent upstart candidate, Marco Enriquez-Ominami, with 20%. However, since Mr. Pinera was unable to capture an outright majority in round one, voters will head back to the polls on Jan. 17 to decide between Pinera and Frei. Pinera’s most emphasized campaign promises have been to spend more on public security and crackdown on drug trafficking within the country while Mr. Frei has said he seeks to continue the popular social programs that the outgoing government of the very popular Michelle Bachelet has implemented.
With a bit of analysis on the elections, the Times also adds that Sunday’s results may signal the “beginning of the end of the two-party electoral system left by the dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in the late 1980s,” a system that has made it extremely difficult for independent candidates.” According to political analysis Marta Lagos, “There is a demand for diversity in Chilean politics. Polls show that 60 percent of the people in Chile say that none of the candidates represent their ideas well. There is a real questioning here of what is democracy.” As an earlier weekend report by the Times’ Alexi Barrionuevo pointed out, Chile’s youth, in particular, have grown increasingly apathetic regarding politics. Only 9% of voting age youth were even registered for Sunday’s vote. “Chile’s youth today see political discourse as the language of their parents, not as their language,” said Juan Eduardo Faúndez, the director of the National Youth Institute. “These are the children of democracy, and they have other options and other demands of Chilean society, and of the political class.”
For other pieces analyzing Chile, see Time’s Tim Padgett who examines the Chilean Right. “This election,” says political analyst Guillermo Holzmann, “is an opportunity to see that a center-right exists in Chile,” while Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue notes that Pinera has not said he will cut social programs if elected, perhaps showing the evolution of a Chilean Right once characterized by its neoliberal tendencies. And Time’s Jonathan Franklin who looks at the struggle of Mapuche Indians, locked in a struggle with the Chilean government over centuries-old claim to land they say was taken from them by the Spaniards and then the Chilean state.
With the latest from Honduras…
Pepe Lobo and Mel Zelaya agreed to meet over the weekend, in the Dominican Republic for what would have been the first face-to-face dialogue (BBC reported the meeting was to occur Monday, with Zelaya arriving in Santo Domingo on Sunday and Lobo Monday morning) between the two men since Lobo was elected in the disputed elections of Nov. 29. Dominican President, Leonel Fernandez, the apparent broker of the deal, told EFE Saturday that, “We hope that with this decision there won’t be any difficulty in allowing President Zelaya to leave Honduras and that no “condition” nor “obstacle” will be set up by the de facto regime for his trip.” Fernandez went on to add that he hoped the conversation between Lobo and Zelaya would help “overcome the crisis” that lingers on in Honduras.
But (once again), not so fast. By Sunday the meeting was off. RNS/RAJ post this communiqué from the Dominican government, indicate the de facto regime still wants conditions on any sort of exit that Mr. Zelaya makes out of the Brazilian Embassy:
"The willingness to begin dialogue this week was reiterated by President Fernandez, as much as by Zelaya and the candidate elect, but the de facto government insists on conditioning Zelaya's leaving the Brazilian Embassy as political asylum."
Further, the de facto regime, via its foreign ministry spokesperson, went on Sunday to say that it would grant Zelaya safe passage out of the country in the form of “territorial political asylum” but that exit could only be to a non-Central American country. Again RNS/RAJ note that, “under the Caracas Convention of 1954, someone seeking territorial asylum cannot involve themselves in confrontations with the government in their home country. This would remove Zelaya as a ‘threat’ to the de facto government and let them get their propaganda out.” Peru’s Alan Garcia, meanwhile, has said (and La Tribuna reports) it’s time for Lobo to enter the Brazilian Embassy itself to talk with Mr. Zelaya, to at least “give the impression that they both know how to have a dialogue.” Garcia also condemned “conditionality” on Zelaya’s exit.
Frances Robles in the Miami Herald writes this weekend on human rights abuses in Honduras in one of the most thorough accounts of such abuses I’ve seen in mainstream press in some time.
“As Zelaya approaches his sixth month of banishment, human-rights organizations here and abroad say Honduras has experienced a serious deterioration of civil rights in a country where death squads and extrajudicial killings already were commonplace.
Resistance members say they have been subjected to a campaign by police, the military and paramilitaries to execute their leaders and members. Human-rights activists have documented the deaths of 26 members who have been stabbed or shot across the country.
Activists say more than 3,000 people have been illegally detained, 450 beaten, and 114 now are political prisoners since the June coup.”
The paper quotes respected rights activist Berta Oliva of COFADEH:
“I don't know what people think can be done when there is a state policy to do nothing.”
And Paolo Carroza, a professor at Notre Dame and member of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission’s summer delegation to Honduras on whether or not deaths are “politically motivated”:
“We have been dealing for years with violence against defenders of human rights. My presumption is, yeah, some are politically motivated, because that has been a pattern in Honduras for a long time, not just since the coup.”
Finally, the blog Mercury Rising picks up an interesting piece in Honduras’s El Tiempo which recently reported that 248 officials in the military have been promoted under Micheletti’s watch.
In other news,
· During the State Dept’s Latin America briefing on Friday, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows when she addressed Latin America’s growing relations with Iran, with notable aggressiveness.
“If people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them. And we hope that they will think twice.”
As Greg Weeks notes, threatening Latin American countries who deviate from U.S. MidEast policy never worked out so well for President Obama’s predecessor.
· The Washington Post has a piece on how Mexican drug traffickers have siphoned off some $1 billion in Mexican oil and then resold the liquid gold in the U.S. The paper writes:
“Drug traffickers employing high-tech drills, miles of rubber hose and a fleet of stolen tanker trucks have siphoned more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico's pipelines over the past two years, in a vast and audacious conspiracy that is bleeding the national treasury, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.”
The new information shows the continuing evolution of Mexican cartels, says the WP, which points out that much of the oil theft can be traced to the powerful Zetas group in Veracruz and Tamaulipas, working with former PEMEX officials. Also, an interesting NYT piece on the extravagant, retrofitted cars that drug lords drive in Mexico
· The BBC reports on proposed media regulations in Ecuador that are coming under heat from opponents of President Rafael Correa. Debate over the proposed legislation has been delayed because of the intense criticism being leveled by journalists and some civil society groups who call the proposal a “Gag Law.” According to the BBC, “One of the key and most contentious provisions of the bill would mean only people who have a journalism degree would be able to work in the media. The legislation also seeks to create a watchdog that would supervise the media and their content and would be able to sanction and even shut down an outlet in case of repeat offences.”
· The NYT reports on the detention of a U.S. contractor in Cuba for distributing computers and cell phones, apparently “on behalf of the Obama administration.” “[T]he contractor’s covert conduct — which included entering Cuba on a tourist visa without proper documents — raised questions about whether Mr. Obama would fulfill his promise to break with the confrontational tactics that Washington has employed toward Havana for five decades.” According to the Lexington Institute’s Phil Peters “President Obama’s been different in some areas. But most of his policy remains the Bush policy, and this is just another example of that.”
· Lastly, an opinion on Hugo Chavez and his foreign aid by Oppenheimer in the Herald and Mary Anastasia O’Grady on the FARC and “peace communities.”
No comments:
Post a Comment