Elections Must be a Priority for Haitian Government, Says Sec. Clinton

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed Rene Preval to Washington, meeting with the Haitian president privately and holding a public news conference. Clinton told reporters after the public event that holding legislative elections “as soon as appropriate” must be a top priority of the Haitian government so as to ensure its “stability and legitimacy.” Preval concurred, assuring those present that Haiti would be able to schedule such elections in a timely fashion so as to create an “orderly” transition. Having to resort to any sort of “provisional government,” Preval added, would be a “catastrophe” as it would lack legitimacy. The current president’s own term as president will come to an end next February.

Tuesday’s comments followed similar one’s by MINUSTAH’s chief, Edmond Mulet last week. But as CEPR’s Haiti Watch blog points out, in both statements there was little discussion of the serious flaws in the electoral system prior to the Jan. 12 quake. In particular, the Provisional Electoral Council had excluded the Fanmi Lavalas party from participating in scheduled Feb. elections, raising questions about that body’s independence.

Also on Haiti this morning, the UN honored the 101 fallen members of its Haiti staff yesterday in New York. The NY Times points out that those who were killed during the January quake included individuals from 30 countries, marking the largest single-day death toll for UN workers anywhere in the world. And from the Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles reports from Haiti on the “politics of aid.” She writes, “The behind-the-scenes jockeying -- even as hundreds of thousands remain without adequate shelter -- is likely to intensify as President René Préval pleads for more aid from Washington this week and the international community prepares to meet in New York later this month to discuss Haiti's reconstruction plans.” The battle, Charles says, includes NGOs and UN agencies, all of whom want to take a leading role in helping to rebuild Haiti—and grab significant chunks of aid money that has and will continue to flow in from abroad. According to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive the problem is that everyone from international financial institutions to countries themselves want to prove their relevancy in the midst of Haiti's despair.

In other stories today:

• In an exclusive interview with the AP, Brazilian President Lula da Silva talks about last week’s meetings with Hillary Clinton, again stating his country’s strong opposition to a new round of sanctions against Iran. Such a move, Lula insists, could lead to war and would certainly push Iran further away from any sort of negotiations process. “We don't want to repeat in Iran what happened in Iraq. It's not prudent for the world, it's not prudent for Iran," Silva tells the news agency. The charismatic Brazilian president said the Iran standoff and the struggling Mideast peace process are “proof that the world's traditional powers aren't able to solve problems on their own.” “Who decided that the United States, France, England, China and Russia represent the collective aspirations of our planet, the new geopolitics, the new world order - with nations that were poor yesterday but today are in the midst of extraordinary economic growth?" he asks. On that point, Lula da Silva heads to the Middle East this week for visits to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian-governed West Bank. Lula also tells the AP that after 50 years as a smoker, he quit cold turkey some 40 days ago.
• AFP reports on rising crime and impunity in Venezuela with a piece citing recently released OVV statistics. Those numbers indicate that 16,047 persons were murdered in 2009, up from 14,800 in 2008 and 4500 one decade ago. In the capital of Caracas there are some 140 homicides per 100,000. For a point of comparison, Bogota registers just 18 per 100,000. “At the present, the people do not have a reason to not rob and commit violent crimes and the government believes that hiding the figures can create an illusory sense of security,” says Roberto Leon Briceno Leon, director of the Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia. Sources close to the government insist that they are concerned about the rising threat of crime and violence. However, Briceno Leon continues, the government’s treatment of the issue too often politicizes crime in an unhelpful way.
• Violent crime is also on the rise in Central America, an EFE report notes. Specifically, crimes against women and femicide in the subregion continue to rise. A new report carried out by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) and the Consejo de Ministras de la Mujer de Centroamérica (COMMCA) says cases of femicide have doubled in the last 6 years, with the number of incidents in three countries alone (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) having risen from 1000 to just over 2000 in that period.
• Human Rights Watch presented its 5^th annual report on Mexico to the UN this week and said its is “disappointing” that the government of Felipe Calderon has not recognized nor confronted ongoing impunity for violations committed by the Mexican military.
• As Chilean President Michelle Bachelet prepares to leave office, she reflected on her term and her government’s recent response to the Chilean quake on national TV. Interestingly, a poll conducted both before and after the quake shows Ms. Bachelet’s overall popularity remains incredibly high, at around 84% approval.
• El Salvador’s Mauricio Funes, a visitor to Washington D.C. this week, challenges Bachelet as the region’s most popular head of state—despite seeing his approval ratings drop slightly from 88 to 83% in recent months. On his meeting with President Obama and other lawmakers, the Center for Democracy in the Americas and its El Salvador consultant, Linda Garrett write at the Huffington Post that the US should care about El Salvador because, unlike Salvadoran government’s past, the Funes administration is showing how to be an ally of the US while charting its own, independent foreign policy. “Whereas the Bush Administration could count on former Salvadoran governments to send troops to Iraq and in essence, as one analyst said, ‘to act as the lapdog of the State Department,’ President Funes is attempting to build a balanced, independent foreign policy,” Garrett writes. She continues: “From immigration to security to economics, the two presidents clearly share great interests and opportunities, but at a higher level, what is most remarkable is that they are meeting at all” given the recent history of US-El Salvador relations.”
• Finally today, two other opinions. In the Miami Herald, an opinion on why the Cuba travel ban should be ended by Elena Freyre of the Foundation for the Normalization of US-Cuba Relations. And at The New Republic, Chavez critic and blogger Francisco Toro on Spain, Venezuela, and the recent allegations that the Venezuelan military has provided training to the FARC and ETA. Toro writes: “By exposing a possible link between the Chávez government and an international terror conspiracy, the indictment is a particularly hot potato in the lap of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose warm relations with Venezuela's strong man have yielded invaluable commercial advantages for Spanish multinationals.” For Toro, this puts the Spanish in a bind. “Protect Spanish investment in Venezuela, and you’re soft on ETA, but make a principled stand, and you put hundreds of Spanish jobs at risk. Signs so far indicate the government will swallow hard and continue to placate Venezuela.”