Anti-Preval Protests

A fresh wave of protests against the government of Rene Preval erupted in Haiti Monday with some 2000 demonstrators taking to the streets and calling for the Haitian president’s resignation. According to Reuters, protestors representing around 40 political parties and opposition groups – some wielding firearms – gathered near the national palace and in other Port-au-Prince neighborhoods to “denounce what they see as Preval’s plan to “sell the country to foreign powers” and extend his presidential mandate beyond its legal term. They were met by tear gas and security forces. [Simultaneous demonstrations also took place in the city of Jacmel, says Infolatam.]

Government officials denied the allegations made by demonstrators Monday, although parliament has approved a measure which allows Mr. Preval to stay in office until May 14, 2011, if no election can be held in time to swear in a new leader by February 7 of next year. And a commission headed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive is still expected to direct the disbursement of the $9.9 billion in foreign reconstruction money pledged at last March’s UN donor’s conference.

According to the AP, the protests were the largest since the Jan. 12 earthquake that destroyed much of the Haitian capital. The wire service also notes that many involved in the demonstrations identified themselves as supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s former leader who was forced into exile in 2004.

Also this morning:

· There’s a handful of interesting articles at America’s Quarterly. On the struggle against crime in the region, former NYC police commissioner, William Bratton, and law enforcement expert, William Andrews, discuss some ideas for comprehensive police reform, using strategies utilized in the US as a model. Some of their recommendations: establish manageable enforcing units; assign quality managers to units to ensure accountability; reform/standardize crime reporting and analysis; professionalize police forces by providing a career path for rank-and-file officers; and reform the criminal justice system. For the full article and recommendations, click here.

· Also from AQ, the magazine asks Sergio Cabral (governor of Rio de Janeiro), Genaro Garcia Luna (Mexico’s secretary of public security), and Douglas Fraser (commander of US Southcom) how communities and policymakers can best ensure citizen security and take back local communities from crime and drug syndicates. You can begin reading the piece here, but need an AQ subscription, it seems, to view the whole article.

· And finally at AQ, a debate over whether or not Brazil can be successful in containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Marcel Biato says, yes, Brazil can. In fact, “Brazil’s own history of nuclear ambitions,” says Biato, “provides a constructive argument to those who argue that Iran is simply buying time to complete its secret military program. As with Brazil’s nuclear ambitions during military rule, Iran is spurred by the perverse logic of mistrust and suspicion typical of a highly-strung security environment.” A counter is offered by Alex Vatanka who says “Brasilia’s actions are chiefly driven by a desire to promote Brazil’s economic and geopolitical interests.” The idea that Brazil really seeks stability in the Middle East, argues Vatanka “has to be considered a distant second priority.” Further, the writer argues, Brazil may even be doing more harm than good. “If anything, Brazilian positions toward the Ahmadinejad government appear to provide fodder for Iranian stalling,” Vatanka maintains.

· Meanwhile, Brazilian President Lula da Silva collected his latest set of international honors Monday – one from the World Food Program and another from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Both recognized the president’s successful hunger and poverty reduction policies.

· Fears of high-level corruption have anti-drug officials in Mexico on the hot seat. As the AP reports, police documents – some including highly sensitive US-Mexico intelligence – were discovered in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel in a May 2009 bust. The documents included a payroll sheet, indicating top police commanders working for the cartel. Mexico’s Reforma broke the story yesterday and says the latest revelations raise serious questions about whether Mexican law enforcement has been reformed since a widespread corruption case took down Mexico’s top anti-drug czar, Noe Ramirez, just under two years ago.

· At the Open Society Institute’s new blog, Robert Varenik of OSI’s Justice Initiative has more on criminal justice reform Mexico. “Because reform does away with some of the mainstays of Mexico’s patently inefficient and abusive law enforcement machinery,” he writes, “some politicians are beginning to blame it for a worrisome but decade-old rise in crime and insecurity.” On shortcomings of the reform process thus far – and the obstinacy of counter-reformers, in particular -- the statistics on criminal reporting tell a “depressing—but not new—story,” says Varenik:

"Less than a quarter of Mexican crime victims even bother to report [criminal] incidents to the police, and of that slender fraction, an anemic one percent get to court. Nearly a decade ago, that figure was 1.6 percent."

· Also from OSI, Mary Miller Flowers and Victoria Wigodzky have a new post on human rights reforms in the Brazilian prison system being pushed by two Brazilian rights organizations, Conectas and Justicia Global.

· In Costa Rica over the weekend, Laura Chinchilla was sworn-in as that country’s first female president. She’s just the third female head of state in any Central American country. And, says the BBC, she has pledged to “tackle violent crime and drug-trafficking” as president while continuing the economic policies of her predecessor, Oscar Arias. For more on the Arias presidency, Global Post has a piece, recapping the now former president’s international work on disarmament, the environment, and more.

· EFE reports on increasing violence and human rights violations along the Venezuela-Colombia border. The story comes from the human rights group, Fundación Progresar, which has warned of “serious” increases in forced disappearances and murder in recent years. Also, according to Progresar’s director, Wilfredo Canizalez, the frequent spats between Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez have “created a blanket of obscurity to cover and hide the reality of the border.”

· More on the Venezuelan economy from the AP which discussing rising fears of inflation. New numbers from the Central Bank and National Statistics Institute last week show a 5.2% rise in consumer prices last month, pushing the country’s inflation rate just over 30%.

· Also, via his new Twitter account, President Chavez said the country is on the verge of finishing up a $40 billion oil deal with foreign companies from Spain, the US, Japan, and India. The deal is set to be finished tomorrow, Chavez tweeted, but “government officials weren't immediately available to explain precisely what investments Chavez was referring to,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

· The Miami Herald has a bit more on the case of Gilberto Jordán, the South Florida resident and former member of the Guatemalan special forces being accused of participating in the notorious massacre of Dos Erres in December 1982.

· The UN Development Program has named Chilean diplomat, Heraldo Munoz, the new head of its Latin American division.

· Finally some opinions and lists. In the Miami Herald, Carlos Alberto Montaner calls Antanas Mockus a “show-off” and practices some sort of psychoanalysis to see what that might mean should he be elected president. In short, the conservative Montaner is not so enthused. And in Foreign Policy, a list of “the world’s top dissidents” highlights four Latin Americans. Three seem relatively uncontroversial to me – Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez; Francisco Soberón, founder of the Peruvian rights group, Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos; and Guatemalan human rights advocate and founder of the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), Frank La Rue. The fourth, Venezuelan media mogul, Guillermo Zuloaga, may seem a bit more polemical to some.