Kicking off his new radio talk show “De Repente, con Chávez” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared an “electricity emergency” Monday. “We are ready to decree the electricity emergency because it really is an emergency,” Reuters quotes Chavez saying. According to the BBC, designating the crisis as an “emergency” will allow the president to move increased resources into efforts that might halt the country’s current power shortage. The president has said drought and soaring demand are the reason for the crisis while the opposition has maintained that “poor management and underinvestment” are to blame. In any case, most analysts say the issue has led to a decline in approval ratings for the president, from 60 percent one year ago to around 50 percent today.
As for the medium through which Chavez announced the electricity emergency, “De Repente con Chavez” was described by the president’s new Vice President, Elias Jaua, as a new form of “guerrilla communication.” The president himself added that he’d be using the new, spontaneous radio program to make national announcements “at any moment and without prior notice.” “When you hear the sound of the harp, it’s possible that suddenly there will be Chavez,” the president told listeners Monday. Again, Chavez supporters maintain the program is the latest direct line of communication with supporters while critics argue the program is part of the president’s efforts to create a pro-government media monopoly.
Monday’s show came one day after Chavez’s Sunday television show, “Alo Presidente” in which the president walked the streets of downtown Caracas with supporters and expropriated various historic buildings currently under private ownership. Chavez said he plans to turn the area around Plaza Bolívar into a “a great historic center.” The Venezuelan president also highlighted the recent creation over 180 communes around Venezuela.
In other news this morning:
· With Haiti updates, the New York Times reports on the counterfeiting of food coupons. The World Food Program had implemented the coupon system last week as a more organized and effective way of distributing rice. But that program appears to be facing serious hurdles due to rising counterfeiting activity. To combat the problem, the UN has decided to change the color of food tickets daily and print them on official World Food Program paper. Contradicting their reporting of cooperation and relatively smooth aid delivery over the weekend, the Washington Post today writes that relief efforts are falling short. “From surgery to shelter to sanitation to schooling, the needs are vast and the international commitment unproven,” says the paper. The report has one of the most pessimistic outlooks I’ve seen in recent days, indicating Haiti’s struggle is far from over. Here’s Lorraine Mangones, of the Open Society Institute’s FOKAL cultural foundation in Haiti:
The business community was “already on its knees” before the earthquake…while the state was “already weak and kept getting weaker and weaker.” The future, says Mangones, will be “hell.”
Critical of the current government, Mangones goes on: "[the Haitian government] is not making small decisions. It's making occasional surreal decisions, like, ‘Let's open the schools in Port-au-Prince right away.’” However, few Haitians are listening. All of this while some experts are now saying that spring rains in Haiti loom on the horizon—a potential next disaster.
· With Haiti-related opinions today, Elaine Zuckerman, president of Gender Action and former Haiti program officer at the Inter-American Development Bank, says women are particularly vulnerable in Haiti right now. Before the quake, mass rape and other forms of violence against women was commonplace, says Zuckerman. She echoes the calls of many this week who say complete debt relief must be granted. Zuckerman also says aid must particularly be made available for Haitian women and women’s groups. CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot calls on the US to play a “watchdog role” as aid and relief efforts continue. In the Japan Times, Dr. Cesar Chelala says education must be a central component of reconstruction. And a quick mention of an amazing story about a man who was pulled from the rubble, alive after nearly four weeks.
· The Wall Street Journal says newly elected Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla will face difficult challenges implementing legislation in a gridlocked legislature. “While considered Latin America's most stable democracy, [Costa Rica] has also become one of the least governable,” says the paper. Because of legislative rules, small groups are able to overturn bills passed by majorities, presidents have relatively little executive power, and while the country once had a “streamlined” two-party system, “the political process has been swallowed into a multiparty free-for-all.” The CS Monitor adds an interesting report about the absence of the Left in Costa Rica’s Sunday election, while one of that article’s co-authors offers a biographical sketch of Ms. Chinchilla for the Miami Herald.
· In the Washington Post, an interview with Mexican President Felipe Calderon by Post-Newsweek reporter Lally Weymouth. Highlights include Calderon emphasizing again the “social” issues embedded in the country’s drug/crime problem and his desire to leave office with a “new, cleaner police corps.” Also, in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Jorge Castaneda is critical of the Mexican president writing that “Calderón has deployed everything from distorted statistics to bad history as weapons to convince the country, and the world, that the war must be joined.” The former Mexican foreign minister argues, that “until and unless it abandons the false narrative of the war as the necessary defense of a desperate land besieged by bad guys, it will be in serious danger of becoming one.”
· In Peru, the former mayor of the Amazon city of Coronel Portillo was acquitted of murder charges in the case of a journalist who was killed after accusing the politician of cocaine trafficking.
· In Colombia, police are calling the arrest this week of 21 drug traffickers, the “largest blow” to narcotrafficking in a decade. The operation that led to the arrests took place in six cities Colombian cities on Monday. The US is seeking extradition all of those apprehended.
· Also, from EFE, a new statement from Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who says the release of various FARC hostages will be coming shortly. Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s former defense minister, said Monday he will seek the presidency, if Alvaro Uribe is not allowed to run again. And two pieces in Colombia’s Semana (here and here) report on the end of Cambio as a weekly magazine. The periodical will now be released monthly, raising questions about a possible decline in high-quality investigative journalism coming out of the country. [Most recently, Cambio broke the story about new US military bases in the country.]
· UNASUR member states will be gathering in Quito today to work on an aid deal for Haiti. Not on the agenda, however, will be a Colombia-Ecuador bi-lateral discussion on restoring relations, although, says Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, “This may be a chance to begin to calm the waters.”
· On Brazil, new numbers indicate that the “middle class” has grown to 50% of the country’s total population. Meanwhile, the Financial Times offers an interesting report on how Brazil has entered the extractive industry business in Africa. Brazilian coal mining company Vale will soon start mining operations in Mozambique, the paper reports. On a related note, IPS recently reported on the growing Chinese presence in the extractive industries sector of Peru, and the lack of “social responsibility” that has come with it.
· And finally this morning, the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies says that in 2009 Russia officially passed the US as the largest supplier of arms to Latin America. Russia inked military deals with Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia last year while discussions are in progress with Bolivia, Uruguay and Ecuador.
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