Brazilians head to the polls Sunday in the first round of voting to elect a replacement for outgoing president Lula da Silva. Polls show the PT’s Dilma Rouseff still the clear favorite, although, as AFP reports this morning, Rouseff’s numbers appear to have fallen slightly in recent days, making the possibility of a first-round victory less assured than just one week ago. According to new numbers from Datafolha released Tuesday, Dilma lost three points this week, down to 46% expected votes. [An Ibope poll from last Friday still has Lula’s delfina at 50%]. Nevertheless, Dilma’s slight drop has not been her nearest competitor’s gain. While José Serra did pick up the endorsement of one of the country’s two principal dailies, O Estado de Sao Paulo, on Sunday, the numbers show only Green Party candidate Marina Silva, not Serra, picking up any new and significant support, says AFP.
Candidates will face off in a final televised debate Thursday. On Sunday, one of the contenders must win over 50% of “valid votes” in order to avoid a second-round runoff. Again, according to AFP, if Dilma were to hold on to the 46% of total votes she is predicted to take, that would translate into approx. 51% of valid votes and thus a first round win.
For more on Dilma Rouseff’s personal biography, two stories are worth a look this morning. First a very sympathetic piece from the Independent looks at Dilma’s rise from a leader in the resistance during Brazil’s military dictatorship to the cusp of becoming arguably “the world’s most powerful woman.” “Like President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, Brazil's neighbour, Ms. Rousseff is unashamed of a past as an urban guerrilla which included battling the generals and spending time in jail as a political prisoner,” the Independent writes. [Although, of notable historical difference, Mujica’s guerilla years began before outright military dictatorship in Uruguay; Rouseff’s commenced during]. In a piece at the New York Times, meanwhile, comparisons are made with some of the world and region’s most notable female leaders – among them Chile’s former president Michelle Bachelet and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. “But more than any other factor (including the female one),” the paper maintains, “Ms. Rousseff owes her success to Mr. da Silva…”
To other stories:
· Major General Paul Eaton had an opinion in The Hill on Monday calling for an end to the Cuba travel ban. “I believe Americans have quite a lot to offer Cuba — from a robust display of American values, to our media and just plain old human contact. We would all benefit from lifting the travel ban to Cuba,” the now senior adviser for the National Security Network argues. The opinion came as Congressman Howard Berman’s (D-CA) House Foreign Affairs Committee was expected to mark up legislation (HR 4645) this week that, if passed, would end the travel ban. However, those plans were changed Tuesday, with Mr. Berman’s office delaying the mark up until after November midterm elections. Reacting to the decision, Sarah Stephens at the Center for Democracy in the Americas says “Chairman Berman has exhibited great leadership on issues relating to Cuba for three decades, and we appreciate his willingness to fight to repeal the travel ban later this year.” But “it’s a shame that when real economic and political changes are taking place right now in Cuba that neither the President nor the Congress is able to acknowledge them until after the November elections.”
· In Haiti, campaigning for November elections got underway this week with relatively little fanfare. According to EFE, 19 individuals are running to replace the embattled René Preval as president while a total of 891 candidates vie for just 11 spots in the 30-person Senate and 99 spots in the Chamber of Deputies. Meanwhile, this shocking report from the AP:
“Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.”
While the US has spent $1.1 billion on post-earthquake relief, none of the monies pledged by Hillary Clinton last March have been disbursed because of three [shameful] factors in the US: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency. However, the US is hardly alone. Again the AP: “Some 50 other nations and organizations pledged a total of $8.75 billion for reconstruction, but just $686 million of that has reached Haiti so far — less than 15 percent of the total promised for 2010-11.”
· IPS looks at the issue of transparency in Mexico. According to transparency experts Tom Blanton and Kate Doyle at the National Security Archive in Washington DC, “while Mexico's system of access to information is institutionally strong, and even serves as a model worldwide, government officials routinely ignore Federal Institute for Access to Public Information (IFAI) decisions, with no consequences.” Thus, the problem lies squarely in implementation, the two argue. Here’s Kate Doyle on the difficulties and hopes:
“The instruments of access to information are slow-moving and frustrating, but they will only be improved through use, and the public must demand that governments live up to their obligations.”
Blanton and Doyle are both in Mexico for a conference organized by México Infórmate, a civil society initiative that, in IPS’s words, “promotes the application of laws safeguarding access to information, to enable citizens to keep the government under scrutiny and monitor the use of public resources and the way the authorities make decisions that affect society as a whole.”
· In Michoacan, another mayor has been killed. Gustavo Sanchez, the 27-year-old mayor of Tancitaro, was found beaten to death by rocks Monday – the fifth Mexican mayor murdered in just six weeks, according to the LA Times. Also on Mexico, from the LA Times, a report on a Southern California prosecutor’s efforts to take down the leadership of the Tijuana cartel. The paper says “the U.S. prosecution of the Arellano Felix cartel (aka Tijuana cartel, has been a rare, albeit qualified, success story, leading to the imprisonment of most of its leaders and leaving the once powerful organized crime group severely weakened, if not dismantled.”
· A new report from the Center for a New American Security looks at the growth and evolution of transnational organized crime across the Western Hemisphere.
· Human Rights Watch is calling on Chile to reform its Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law “so that it can no longer be used to prosecute actions that do not constitute grave crimes of political violence.” Two proposals are currently under debate in the Chilean legislature, says HRW – one to modify the existing law and one to limit military jurisdiction. “The debate on long overdue changes to the anti-terrorism legislation and the military justice system is a step in the right direction,” says José Miguel Vivanco, HRW’s Americas director, but the government must make sure the “opportunity [for Chile] to meet its human rights obligations doesn't go to waste.”
· The UN is strongly backing Ecuador’s innovative Yasuni initiative which, if implemented, would see the world’s richest governments provide some $3.6 billion to the Ecuador so it does not open up new oil exploration in the Yasuni National Park -- a million-hectare tropical rainforest. “We are totally convinced in UNDP that the sustainable development, environment and climate change are totally interlinked with the objectives of poverty eradication and human development,” says the UNDP’s associate administrator, Rebeca Grynspan.
· And finally, tying up loose ends on Venezuela. The Miami Herald says Sunday’s results could lead to the release of two political figures in Venezuela, presented as controversially imprisoned by the Venezuelan justice system. José Sánchez, the former security chief for the state of Zulia, Biagio Pilieri, a former mayor who was elected to represent the state of Yaracuy, were both drafted by the opposition as parliamentary candidates and appear to have won. Venezuela’s constitution grants immunity to members of parliament, so, in theory, both should be released, the paper reports. Pro-opposition bloggers at the Caracas Chronicles seem to confirm what President Hugo Chavez maintained Monday – that the PSUV did in fact defeat the opposition MUD coalition [excluding votes for the PPT and other minor opposition groups] in terms of total national popular vote (5,400,132 to 5,311,552). With exercises in comparison El Universal notes a decline of about 890,000 votes for the chavista side when compared to the referendum on re-election in February 2009. The Chavez-leaning Venezuelanalysis, meanwhile, points out that even with Sunday’s successful showing, the opposition will hold about 20 fewer seats in the 2011 Congress than during the 2000-2005 legislative term.
· Lastly, two differing takes on Venezuela’s vote. CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian. And the Caracas Chronicles’ Francisco Toro at TNR.
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