Amidst still unmoved rubble, cholera, and waves of anti-MINUSTAH protests, the New York Times writes that this Sunday does not look like “the best time to choose a president” in Haiti. Nevertheless, the vote will go on, despite requests from some candidates that the elections be delayed:
“[T]he election on Sunday may be Haiti’s most important in decades. Not only are competing crises demanding attention, but with the country poised to receive billions of dollars in international reconstruction money, the new president will have a historic ability to reshape the country, from its economy to its justice system to deciding where and how to house more than a million earthquake refugees.”
And yet the question for which few have an answer is who will even turn out for this week’s apparently historic elections. OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza called voter turnout the “big problem” last week. And the reasons seem quite obvious. Insulza:
“There are a lot of people who left town because of the earthquake. There are people afraid of the cholera. There are people angry at the government. There are so many obstacles to getting people to vote.”
Others no have lost their national identification cards, a requirement to vote in the country – although the government body that issues the ID cards has said it registered “30,000 more than the 400,000 it anticipated in the last quarter.” [It’s likely, according to the Times, that this was largely due to new banking rules]. And yet, according to El País, both an OAS electoral mission and a Caricom observer mission insisted late last week that Haiti continues on a “good path” toward elections. The head of the UN MINUSTAH mission, Edmond Mulet, echoed those statements telling Al-Jazeera that “Cholera is not a reason not to have elections.” Mulet: “I think that elections are important for the political stability, for the social stability of the country, for the reconstruction of the country.”
For its part, the US will provide some $14 million in election-aid while “several dozens of international observers will be monitoring the balloting,” the Times says. The report, like a piece in the Miami Herald this morning, adds that, while poll numbers are far from reliable, local media has selected three candidates as the frontrunners: former first lady Marlinde Manigat; Jude Celestin, Mr. Préval’s endorsed successor; and Michel Martelly, “a kompa singer formerly known as Sweet Micky who draws large crowds and is banking on votes that might have gone to Wyclef Jean.”
Meanwhile, on the cholera epidemic, the New York Times also ran a piece this weekend criticizing those who have blamed Nepalese MINUSTAH forces for likely bringing cholera to the country. Those who care about accountability will probably disagree – an issue the AP’s Jonathan Katz looks at in a long report on cholera in Haiti from last Friday.
Editor’s Note: Tomorrow will be my last post here for the next week. No posting at Hemispheric Brief from Wednesday, Nov. 24 until Tuesday Nov. 30 as I will be in Port-au-Prince for the aforementioned Haitian elections. Updates to follow. JFS
To other stories:
· In Colombia, at least seven former high-ranking intelligence officers, currently under investigation for their roles in the country’s domestic spying scandal, are seeking asylum outside of Colombia (or have already done so). That information came from Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras after Panama granted asylum to DAS’s former director, Maria del Pilar Hurtado on Friday. Vargas Lleras criticized the Panamanian government saying the charges Ms. Hurtado would have faced – for illegal communications intercepts and criminal conspiracy – are “not political crimes” and thus should not have been grounds for an asylum request. For its part, the Panamanian Foreign Ministry said the decision was an attempt to “contribute to political and social stability in the region.” As the BBC reports, Ms. Hurtado has already left the country and was not challenged by DAS-controlled immigration officers as she left. On what this means for investigations into illegal spying, the BBC adds:
“As head of the DAS from 2007-2008, Ms Hurtado was one of the few people who could possibly directly implicate former president, Alvaro Uribe, in the illegal wiretapping of his political opponents and the judges who were seeking to block his actions and re-election prospects.”
· Also on Colombia, the Latin American Herald Tribune and Colombia Reports both report on further developments in anti-drug cooperation between Colombia and Venezuela. After a six hour meeting in Cartagena this weekend, Colombian Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera and Venezuelan Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami “signed a preliminary agreement that will now be studied by the respective presidents of the two countries,” says the LAHT.
“The agreement outlines several lines of action in the anti-drug battle, including coordinated and simultaneous operations, creation of a comprehensive intelligence platform, intelligence-sharing on drug-trafficking routes and exchange of experiences in that area. It also calls for training programs and greater control over the trafficking of chemical precursors used to manufacture illegal drugs.”
In Jamaica, meanwhile, President Juan Manuel Santos also signed a new bilateral anti-drug accord with Jamaican PM Bruce Golding this weekend. And in Colombia, senior officials believe they killed another senior FARC commander in a military strike Saturday. Fabian Ramirez, second in command of the southern block of FARC, was targeted in the attack.
· In Mexico, the AP says former governor of Colima, Silverio Cavazos Ceballos, was shot and killed as he left his office Sunday. CNN on the beginning of extradition proceedings for US-born trafficker Edgar Valdez Villarreal, aka La Barbie. The Washington Post, from last Friday, on the precarious position of Mexican medical workers in the country’s drug wars. More on the abandonment of Ciudad Mier in a long report from the Wall Street Journal. And, from Reuters, a report suggesting that a divided Mexican Congress is unlikely to pass President Felipe Calderon’s recently proposed measures to reform the country’s police forces and create a “unified police command.” [The proposals would also fight money laundering.] PAN Senator Alejandro Gonzalez, who heads the Senate's justice committee, tells Reuters, “There is no consensus among lawmakers, not even within the PAN. There is a lot of opposition to the proposal for a unified police command.” The unified police command would bring municipal police forces under the control of state governors, effectively ending what Reuters calls a “dysfunctional system of 2,200 different jurisdictions across the country.”
· ABC News foreign correspondent Jim Sciutto writes at the New Republic about disappointing half-steps taken by the Obama administration on Cuba. And now, Sciutto contends, with “Republican control of Congress [in particular, the ascension of pro-embargo, Cuban-American Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee], any Congressional effort to ease trade or travel restrictions will “effectively be killed.” Sciutto also highlights on-going reforms in Cuba – embodied, perhaps, in ongoing releases of political prisoners, the most recent of whom, Adrian Alvarez, Arencibia, spoke to BBC Mundo in Spain this weekend.
· New demands from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that legal actions against Globovisión magnate Guillermo Zuloaga go forward. Chavez also accused Zuloaga of being behind “$100 million plot” to assassinate him.
· A fascinating piece from IPS on Brazil-Venezuela economic relations – specifically how Brazilian-based construction and engineering companies are building much of Venezuela’s new infrastructure, and without fears of expropriation. “The Brazilian construction companies work comfortably with the Venezuelan government, because behind them is the Brazilian government with its integration policy, with the understanding between both countries and Brazil's BNDES (National Development Bank),” says the director of the Venezuelan-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Fernando Portela.
· Richard Javad Heydarian at Foreign Policy in Focus on Iran’s diplomatic and economic push into Latin America, with a focus on Venezuela and Brazil.
· Finally, opinions. In the Miami Herald, Janet Redman of the Institute for Policy Studies on upcoming Cancun climate talks. Andres Oppenheimer on the fears of some that the line between civilian and military affairs is fraying in Latin America. And in the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady on Haiti and what she sees as ongoing problems of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency in the country.
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