As expected, ex-Argentine President Nestor Kirchner was selected, by consensus, as the first permanent secretary general of the 12-member UNASUR bloc at a summit the organization held outside Buenos Aires Tuesday. As the AP is quick to point out, the selection was a few years in the making. “Unasur was formed years ago, in part as a counterpoint to the Organization of American States and other regional organizations dominated by Washington,” the AP says, “but the nations had failed to agree on a leader until now.” While the group has set up its permanent headquarters in Ecuador, the idea of building a parliament legislative building in Cochabamba, Bolivia remains “on the drawing table.”
For his part, Mr. Kirchner will have to step down from his post as a national deputy (or take a “leave of absence”) in order to lead UNASUR. His two-year term with the organization would seem to preclude him from considering another run for president in Argentina’s presidential elections scheduled for next year. [For more on what some in Argentina are saying about Mr. Kirchner’s new job, an opinion by Joaquin Morales Solá in La Nación is worth a look].
IPS has a good look at what UNASUR must do to become a more proactive regional organization. According to Professor Federico Merke of the Univ. del Salvador in Buenos Aires, “So far, UNASUR has been fairly effective -- within the limits of its own design -- at containing public evils, but not at boosting the public good.” That weakness comes in part from the fact that just 5 of the 12 member states have ratified UNASUR’s treaty in their national parliaments. A total of 9 countries must approve the treaty before it “goes into force,” reports IPS.
Meanwhile, among the actual topics on yesterday’s agenda in Buenos Aires, were discussions about providing aid to Chile and Haiti after their respective earthquakes and a debate over the situation in Honduras. That latter point has drawn significant coverage in the Central American country after UNASUR members said they would not attend a European Union-Latin America summit scheduled for Madrid later this month if Honduran President Pepe Lobo was in attendance. That proclamation was heartily supported by members of the National Popular Resistance Front Tuesday but according to Honduras’s foreign minister, his country plans to be present in Madrid – setting up the potential for confrontation.
In other stories this morning:
· In Honduras, yesterday marked the installation of the OAS/US-backed truth commission, to be coordinated by former Guatemalan VP, Eduardo Stein. Speaking yesterday, Stein was quick to acknowledge the challenge before the commission (which also includes two Hondurans, a Canadian diplomat, and the former Peruvian justice minister). “The commission is not getting started in calm waters since the situation that has produced it has still not disappeared,” said Stein. “It is beginning amidst prejudices and conflicting opinions directed at its work and its members.” The most vocal opposition to the commission has come from some human rights activists, including, says the AP, most Honduran rights groups and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). Both criticized the official commission for not widening its inclusion to the victims of state repression and their families. Here’s CEJIL’s regional coordinator Alejandra Nuno on the matter:
None of the commissioners have a background in human rights nor were theyKir elected in a participatory process. Rather, it was a unilateral selection. We ask: Why is there nobody [on the commission] with connections to the social movements?
· That sentiment is echoed in an opinion by Bertha Oliva, director of the Honduran rights group COFADEH, who had a piece up at the Huffington Post yesterday. COFADEH has documented 47 assassinations of anti-coup activists since June, says Oliva, including 14 since the inauguration of Pepe Lobo in January. Oliva writes:
The experience of truth commissions in Central America and elsewhere has demonstrated that they can only achieve some measure of success if the victims of repression as well as actors from both sides of the political divide are closely involved in the design of the commission and the selection of the commissioners. The Lobo Commission was created behind closed doors, without even a public discussion, and its commissioners were handpicked by the Lobo government.
Oliva and other activists participated in the creation of an “alternative commission” earlier this week to which members will apparently be appointed on June 28, the one-year anniversary of the coup. Also, speaking to his critics Tuesday, President Pepe Lobo interestingly hinted at the idea that he’d be open to some sort of constitutional assembly in the future– another demand which continues to be made by anti-coup activists.
· Two more Honduras notes this morning. First Just the Facts reports on/translates an El Heraldo piece from earlier in the week about 25 Honduran police officers being trained in prison management techniques in the US. And the LA Times has more on the issue of violence against journalists in Honduras which has taken the lives of six individuals in just eight weeks.
· A provocative AP report about citizen militias in Venezuela has gotten the attention of some. Conservative Jaime Daremblum of the Hudson Institute calls the militia’s Chavez’s attempt to create “his own version of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.” The Caracas Chronicles takes a more nuanced position. “I think having armed civilians passionate about Hugo Chávez is not something to sneeze at,” blogger Juan Cristobal writes. “But until we are proven the contrary, let's not make them what they are not. These folks are not like Iran's Basij nor like the Revolutionary Guard. They are not like Lybia's Revolutionary Guards, and they are not Saddam's Republican Guard.” Rather, says the blog, they are “fearless” (not “fearsome”) Venezuelans passionate about defending Chavez, rather than training to head of a foreign invasion, as the AP report would lead one to believe.
· Two pieces, one from AQ and one at Global Post, look at Brazil-Iran issues ahead of Lula’s visit to Tehran next week. AQ, specifically, says Lula could prove his foreign policy of negotiation and neutrality has a payoff if he’s able to secure the release of three American hikers imprisoned by the Iranian government. Also, the Guardian has the full text of Brazil’s speech to the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
· BBC Mundo reports on a new round of significant protests led by indigenous groups in Ecuador, who oppose a Water Law being discussed in the National Assembly. The law would create a national secretariat designated by the president to coordinate public water policy. However, indigenous activists argue the move is an attempt to privatize water and have called for the creation of a decentralized council that would include indigenous and other local communities in the decision making process.
· The LA Times has a piece today on the handling of two cases involving Mexican soldiers accused of killing two sets of Mexican young persons in recent months. The LAT writes that the cases “cast a spotlight on what human rights activists say is one of the most troubling aspects of the military's conduct of the drug war: that the army is allowed to investigate itself in cases involving questionable tactics.”
· Human Rights Watch has a new statement out, calling on the Bolivian government to modify its legal framework for prosecuting former heads of state. According to HRW, “The Bolivian Legislative Assembly has recently approved two laws, and is debating a third, establishing norms that do not meet the basic right to a fair trial.” The laws in question, says HRW, “undermine the prohibitions in international law on the retroactive application of the criminal law, the right to be present during trial, and the right to appeal a conviction.”
· NACLA has awarded its annual Samuel Chavkin Prize for Integrity in Latin American Journalism to Colombian investigative journalist, Hollman Morris. Morris is the editorial director of Contravía, which, as NACLA points out, has been supported by the European Union and more recently the Open Society Institute.
· And finally, in Foreign Policy, a new piece by Michael Shifter on Antanas Mockus and the upcoming Colombian elections. Explaining the emergence of what some have called Mockus-mania, Shifter writes:
The key was tapping into a broad fatigue with political infighting and polarization, something Colombians might not have realized they were feeling until Mockus came along. Colombians, it turned out, were eager for a more relaxed, calmer style of leadership than Uribe's frequently confrontational approach.
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