President Barack Obama said the United States remained steadfastly committed to providing financial asssitanec for the rebuilding process in Haiti while meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval Wednesday at the White House. With spring rains beginning, Obama remarked, today's challenge is "preventing a second disaster," although the US president offered no specifics about how much aid the US was prepared to provide in the months to come. [An aid package working its way through Congress will likely be around $1 billion, say analysts]. The private meeting and public news conference in the Rose Garden took place as the US continues to drawn down its military presence Haiti. On Wednesday, the latest to leave was the hospital ship, the USN Comfort, although some 10,000 US troops remain in the country (down from 22,000 troops at its peak). Preval, the New York Times reports, "embraced the need for decentralization and shifting government and private facilities away from the battered capital, Port-au-Prince, and also urged the creation of a team at the United Nations that would be the disaster equivalent of peacekeepers."
The Washington Post adds to reporting on the Obama-Preval meeting Wednesday, saying Preval felt as if he had received a "cool" response from congressional leaders, wary that Haiti could handle a massive influx of direct aid effectively. "For years," the paper writes, "the United States and many other donors have preferred to channel funds through the United Nations and other nongovernmental organizations, citing concerns about corruption and bureaucratic dysfunction." And while Preval insisted to the Post that Haiti had come a long way in fighting fraud and waster, that of distrust feeling continues to hold among many lawmakers who seem hesitant about the president's calls for "spontaneous" infusions of much needed short-term aid for things like shelter and agricultural seeds. However, the Post continues, Preval did say he was "encouraging people to move from the overcrowded capital by providing education, health care and jobs in the provinces" and was in favor of "setting up a donors' trust fund to be overseen by an agency that would track the spending." For more on the matter of corruption and fraud, the Post also runs an editorial this morning, saying Preval looked "utterly unprepared" to answer questions about corruption and transparency while in Washington. "No one accuses Mr. Préval of the abuses associated with so many of his predecessors. But his insistence that Haiti's government has nothing to do with corruption since aid money is funneled from international donors to nongovernmental organizations rings hollow," the paper opines. The editorial continues: "If he expects Congress, international financial institutions and the world's other major donors to pony up billions to rebuild Haiti, he can help his cause by taking concerns about corruption seriously and spelling out ways the government can help the international community to contain it."
Despite all of this, the Miami Herald rounds out coverage of the Preval visit, saying the Haitian president remains "optimistic" that US lawmakers will pour in more direct aid to his country. Speaking with the Herald, Preval says "[lawmakers] understand very well the problem and they are ready to help. They understand the urgency to act. I know that they will act promptly.'' Nevertheless the paper also comments on growing hesitancy among some lawmakers about a massive Haiti aid build. According to conservative Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtenin, "the time for blank checks for foreign aid no longer exists. We are a caring and generous nation but not at the expense of our economic future.''
In other news:
The NYT also reports this morning on the exit of Michelle Bachelet from La Moneda in Chile and the inauguration of Sebastian Pinera, set to occur to today. The government of the right-leaning Pinera seeks to "entomb the ghosts" of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the paper writes, and after the quake of two weeks ago, Pinera is now calling himself the "reconstruction president." The report continues, saying, "Mr. Piñera, who campaigned on a platform of job creation and law and order, may now have a freer hand to crack down on delinquency and drug trafficking," given the circumstances of post-quake Chile. On the economic front, recovery efforts will be led by a cabinet of "technocrats"--many of whom are economists from the country's more conservative Catholic University. But Pinera--a business mogul must be careful not to give off the impression that he and his allies in the private sector are being enriched by recovery efforts, say many political analysts in the country. "All of this [i.e. the quake] has put the issue of Piñera’s business interests and possible conflict of interest on the back burner, but not for long,” said Robert Funk, academic vice director at the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile. More on Pinera's inauguration from Spain's El Pais which says the president tried to make friends with his various ideological counterparts in the region by hosting a solidarity soccer match with futbol star/Bolivian president, Evo Morales.
On Michellet Bachelet's exit, the AP writes that while some in Chile have been critical of the outgoing president's handling of disaster response efforts, disaster experts have only words of praise for Ms. Bachelet. "Despite complaints that aid was slow to reach the hungry and homeless, experts say Chile's response to one of history's most powerful earthquakes has been a model for disaster recovery," the news agency writes. "Smart moves -- like insisting that foreign help meet specific needs, quickly patching up roads and having the military handle logistics -- made it possible to deliver 12,000 tons of relief in just 10 days." "There is nothing more frustrating than getting aid somewhere and not seeing it delivered to the people who need it. Here, there is no aid that sits anywhere. It hasn't collected any dust. It's getting exactly to the people,'' says Col. Julio Lopez, commander of the the U.S. Air Force's 35th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, which has been helping deliver supplies from Chile's capital to Concepcion. In the Miami Herald, Tyler Bridges has more on the president-cum-"Comforter in Chief." Recent polls indicate the president's popularity has not suffered due to the quake and some supporters have even comparted Ms. Bachelet's compassion to that of Mother Teresa! According to one Concertacion consultant, "She [has been] the president of the people, not the elites.''
From Mexico, telecom mogul Carlos Slim has become the richest man in the world--the first man ever from a "developing" country to hold that title. This year slim leap frogged past both Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett, says the AP via Forbes. However, the reaction in his home country was decidedly mixed with some accusing the tycoon of opportunism and in the face of continued poverty and inequality.
From Brazil, Lula da Silva is coming under attack from critics in his own country and in Cuba for recent statements about justice and dissidents on the island. In his exclusive with the AP, the Brazilian president said "we have to respect the decisions of the Cuban legal system and the government to arrest people depending on the laws of Cuba, like I want them to respect Brazil.'' Domestically, opponents of the president have interpreted the words as "comparing Cuba's dissidents with criminals in Brazil's largest city who run lucrative drug rings from behind bars and orchestrated a wave of killings on the streets in 2006," the AP writes. While Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas, himself in the 23rd day of a hunger strike, said in an interview with the Brazilian media yesterday that "With that statement, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva shows his commitment to the tyranny of Castro and his contempt for the political prisoners and their families...A majority of the Cuban people feel betrayed by a president who was once a political prisoner [himself]." Such comments lead Andres Oppenheimer to reject the notion of making Lula the next Sec. General of the UN. Citing the president's position on Iran in addition to his Cuba statements this week, Oppenheimer argues that Lula be given a job as the head of the Food and Agricultural Organization, not the head of the UN as a whole.
The political opposition in Spain is putting the heat on President Jose Luis Rodgriuez Zapatero to get tougher on Venezuela after last week's indictment alleging a link between that country, the FARC and ETA. The Wall Street Journal echoes others who point out Spain's deep economic ties with Venezuela--ties which could be threatened by too aggressive an investigation by the Spanish government.
In Honduras, news that military general who carried out the coup against Mel Zelaya in June, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, has a new gig. Vasquez will be taking over as the new manger of the state-run telecommmunications company, Empresa Hondurena de Telecomunicaciones (Hondutel). No word on what experience the military veteran has in telecommunications industry.
Finally, a few more opinions. Former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo in the Miami Herald writes on the still crucial importance of "inter-hemispheric relations," focusing on growing discontent with democracy in the region due to ongoing social exclusion; the increasing presence of China and Iran in the region's economic affairs; and the still growing Latino population in the US. He writes, "n the past 15 years, the dramatic economic, social, and political changes in Latin America have prompted many attempts to redefine the foreign relations between the region's countries, as well as their stance toward the world. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, launched in Cancun two weeks ago, is the latest manifestation of this trend." He continues: "The frequent creation of these new institutions suggests that the hemisphere's long-established multi-lateral political body, the Organization of American States (OAS), must work harder to avoid becoming redundant."
Marifeli Perez-Stable, also in the Herald, has an opinion on dissidents in Cuba and the on-going hunger strikes being launched in protest against the Castro government. And in the LA Times, writer Ariel Dorfman says the Chilean quake and the realignment of Chilean politics, to the Right. The quake "vealed fractures in Chile's social and moral fabric -- the slow tsunami of persistent poverty and the cosmetic quality of the vaunted modernization that the country has undergone over the last decades," says Dorfman. Dorfman goes on: "this disaster can be seen as a wake-up call to Chile: Hello, Latin America! Or perhaps a test staged by Mother Earth, a challenge to rediscover the deepest sources of our misplaced identity. If so, the new president might well look to Chile's history for models to imitate or avoid." Of the Chilean past Dorfman higlights President Pedro Aguirre Cerda's response to the 1939 seismic catastrophe that left 30,000 dead by "enacting groundbreaking laws that brought social security, a public health system and important expenditures in education to an exploited populace, establishing the welfare state that has been so instrumental in Chile's development." And the case of President Pedro Montt, who, "just inaugurated, had to deal with the ruinous Valparaíso earthquake of 1906. The youth of the country rushed to rescue victims and discovered the real Chile, the festering Chile that had been hidden under the mirage of gentility, the Chile that Montt and many others of the privileged elite preferred to repress."
Two Notes: First, apologies for the lack of embedded links. I'm fighting some technical problems that forced me to just list the various articles mentioned below, as links. Also, I'll be out on vacation for the next week. Many thanks to colleagues David Holiday, Abigail Poe, and Adam Isacson who will be filling in on my behalf for that time. See you all the 22nd!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/world/americas/11prexy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031001901.html?wprss=rss_world/centralamerica
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031003012.html
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/11/1523474/after-us-visit-preval-optimistic.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/world/americas/11chile.html?ref=americas
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/world/americas/11chile.html?pagewanted=2&ref=americas
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Pinera/Buscaremos/mejores/relaciones/vecinos/elpepuint/20100311elpepuint_3/Tes
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/10/world/AP-LT-Chile-Earthquake.html
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/10/1523464/bachelet-leaving-as-comforter.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/11/world/AP-LT-Mexico-Worlds-Richest.html?_r=1&ref=americas
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/10/world/AP-LT-Brazil-Cuba.html?ref=americas
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/11/1523462/brazilian-president-luiz-inacio.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791704575114141366419692.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews
http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20100310/jefe-del-golpe-honduras-nombrado-gerente-empresa-estatal-nuevo-gobierno/323135.shtml
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/11/1523477/conspiracy-against-democracy.html
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/11/1523481/business-as-usual.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dorfman11-2010mar11,0,6232967.story
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