LatinNews Daily - 31 March 2022

On 30 March, Costa Rican pollster Universidad de Costa Rica’s Centro de Investigación y Estudios Políticos (Ciep) published a survey which showed the gap narrowing between 3 April presidential run-off candidate Rodrigo Chaves of the opposition Partido Progreso Social Democrático (PPSD) and his rival, former president José María Figueres (1994-1998) of the main opposition Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN).

Analysis:

As with the previous week’s Ciep poll, both candidates appear within the 3.1% error margin although the latest survey showed support for Chaves dwindling. The run-off campaign has been overshadowed by doubts over campaign funding involving both candidates and mudslinging rather than any genuine debate over policies. This is unlikely to sit well with the electorate for whom corruption within the political establishment is already a major concern, costing the outgoing centre-left Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) government dearly in the February first round. Ciep coordinator, political scientist Ronald Alfaro, told reporters that Chaves, who has faced question marks over a trust which allegedly served as a parallel structure to finance his campaign (which is illegal), has been particularly damaged by these claims – a situation only likely to worsen amid new reports of a second such parallel financing structure.

• The latest Ciep poll showed Chaves on 41.4% of voting intentions, down from 43.3% on 22 March and 46.5% on 1 March, while Figueres is on 38.0%, down from 38.1% on 22 March but up from 35.9% on 1 March.
• According to the same poll, 18.1% of the 1,015 respondents said they were undecided, up from 16.5% on 22 March and 15.3% on 1 March.
• On 29 March, national daily Nación reported the existence of a second parallel financing fund for the PPSD, which is already being investigated by the electoral court (TSE) over its campaign finance sources. According to Nación this second fund was administered through a bank account by Sofía Agüero, a 24-year-old administrative assistant, who between October 2021 and February 2022 received over ¢127m (US$194,000) from businessman Jack Loeb Casanova which did not go through the party channels. She also told Nación that, before October, she received other transfers under this scheme although she did not remember the figure.
• In relation to the latest Nación report, Chaves, who has faced controversy over a sexual harassment scandal, has since acknowledged that an electoral crime took place but denies having committed it.
• Chaves, whose party was registered only in 2020 and will have just ten of the 57 seats in the unicameral legislature to 19 for PLN, had sought to position himself as the anti-establishment figure. This is in contrast to the former president, whose PLN had dominated Costa Rica’s traditional bi-party system, along with the also right-of-centre Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), before the PAC won a surprise victory in 2014 and was then re-elected in 2018.
• The TSE is also investigating Figures, who has previously faced allegations of receiving bribes from the French telecoms firm Alcatel between 2000 and 2003, over a trip he paid to the Dominican Republic.

Looking Ahead: As well as the questions over campaign finance, Jesús Guzmán Castillo, a CIEP researcher, told the Financial Times (FT) that during the second-round of campaigning, “negativity and the lack of policies has been very marked, we’ve seen very grotesque adverts”. The FT cited the example of a social media ad (which the PLN campaign denies having made or endorsed) likening voting for Chaves to people throwing themselves off a building. With abstention for the first round already high, Guzmán suggests that this negative campaigning could further affect turnout.

On 30 March, human rights organisations accused the Colombian military of covering up a massacre in the southern department of Putumayo.

Analysis:

Questions abound regarding the military operation in Putumayo’s Puerto Leguízamo municipality on 28 March, which the government says targeted members of the dissident 48^th Front of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group. Local human rights groups claim that at least seven of those killed were civilians, including two community leaders. The operation was compared by leftist presidential frontrunner Gustavo Petro (Pacto Histórico) with the ‘false positive’ practice of framing dead civilians as enemy combatants which gained prominence under former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

• President Iván Duque had tweeted on 29 March that the operation “saw the neutralisation of 11 Farc dissidents and the capture of four other criminals.”
• However, local human rights and indigenous groups in Putumayo claim that the majority of those killed in the village of El Remanso were civilians at an open-air market. José Homero, the president of the indigenous group Organización Zonal Indígena del Putumayo (OZIP), said that the operation was “an ambush…by the national army, which began shooting at the civilian population”.
• Two community leaders were killed – the local governor of the indigenous Kichwa community, Pablo Panduro Coquinche, and the president of the local community action board (JAC) Didier Hernández Rojas and his wife. A 16-year-old boy is also reported to have been killed.
• The office of the human rights ombudsman released a statement yesterday confirming that civilians were among the dead, and it said it would work to “clarify the circumstances surrounding the deaths and prosecute those responsible”.
• Petro described the killings as a “war crime” and a “false positive”. In response, Defence Minister Diego Molano Aponte tweeted a video showing men – supposedly those killed – carrying guns. “The operation was not against peasants, but Farc dissidents,” he wrote. “It wasn’t against innocent indigenous people, but drug producers. It wasn’t against a market, but criminals that attacked soldiers.”

Looking Ahead: The special prosecutor for human rights, Javier Augusto Sarmiento, said yesterday that he had requested information on the operation from General Luis Fernando Navarro Jiménez, the commander of the Colombian armed forces. Sarmiento cited reports that bodies of those killed were missing from the scene, and that “this information strongly contradicts the official information presented by the army and the defence ministry”.

* Officials from Venezuela’s trade ministry have met with representatives from India’s embassy in Caracas in an effort to strengthen trade rations between the two countries. According to a Venezuelan trade ministry statement, “the meeting served as a platform to promote bilateral trade between both nations, especially in the textiles, pharmaceutical and small business sectors”. It cites Venezuela’s deputy trade minister Daniel Gómez as saying that India sees the Venezuelan market as an ideal destination for its exports, with around 85% of medicines dispensed in Venezuela coming from India. He said that the trade balance could increase from US$120m to US$200m a year annually in the pharmaceutical sector alone.

On 30 March, Brazil’s supreme court (STF) began hearing seven cases all relating to the environment, notably the government’s omissions or failures in the implementation of environmental and climate policy.

Analysis:

This is the first time that the STF’s agenda has focused solely on environmental cases. The situation has therefore been hailed as historic by environmental experts and activists, particularly given the wider context of the dismantling of environmental safeguards by the federal congress and government led by President Jair Bolsonaro. If the cases are admitted by the STF, the rulings could contribute to reversing the environmentally destructive policies pursued by the current government and help Brazil recover some credibility on the world stage regarding its efforts to combat climate change. 

• Yesterday’s ‘green agenda’, as it has been dubbed, comes just a few weeks after civil society and leading artists staged a protest in Brasília against a package of environmentally dangerous bills. On the occasion, protest organisers requested of the STF that two of the seven cases be added to the court’s judgement agenda. Last week STF president Luiz Fux met eight former environment ministers to discuss the cases on the ‘green agenda’.  
• The two cases added to the agenda following the request from the protest movement are the first climate litigation cases to be judged by the STF in Brazil. These are ADPF 760, which calls for the re-implementation of a plan to prevent and combat deforestation in the Amazon as part of efforts to meet Brazil’s internationally pledged deforestation targets; and ADO 59, which challenges the government’s failure to oversee and implement the currently inactive Amazon Fund. 
• The five other cases challenge the government’s use of the army to combat deforestation in the Amazon (ADPF 735); civil society’s exclusion from participating in the Fundo Nacional do Meio Ambiente, a deliberative council (ADPF 651); the omissions by President Bolsonaro and former environment minister Ricardo Salles (2019-2021) in fighting deforestation (ADO 54); the constitutionality of a resolution regarding air quality control (ADI 6148); and the constitutionality of changes to a law which seeks to allow the automatic awarding of environmental licences (ADI 6808). 

Looking Ahead: The STF began hearing arguments regarding cases ADPF 760 and ADO 59 yesterday. With no votes yet cast, the judgement is set to continue today (31 March). 

* Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Petróleo, Gás Natural, e Biocombustíveis (ANP), the federal oil & gas regulator, has released data which shows that the country’s oil production fell in February compared with January. Brazil produced 3.754m barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) in February, of which 2.917m barrels per day (bpd) was oil and 133m cubic metres per day was natural gas. Oil production was down 3.8% compared with January levels, a dip the ANP attributed to the maintenance of a number of platforms. However, February production levels were up 3.5% year-on-year. Natural gas production was 3.1% below January levels but 1.6% above February 2021 output. Oil production in the deep-water pre-salt basins accounted for 75.7% of national production. Brazil has spoken of increasing its oil production capacity as part of global efforts to stabilise global energy markets in the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

* The president of Nicaragua’s central bank (BCN), Ovidio Reyes, has presented new figures which show that net foreign direct investment (FDI) to the country totalled US$1.22bn in 2021, an increase of US$473.6m on the previous year. He said that energy & mining accounted for the biggest inflows, representing US$466.5m (38.2% of the total), followed by manufacturing industry (21.6%), communications (14.3%), and services (12.0%).

On 30 March, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador outlined major reforms including a reduction in congressional size and budget, together with the direct election of electoral authorities.

Analysis:

López Obrador said the reforms would be presented to congress after the presidential recall referendum, which is due on 10 April and which he expects to win by a comfortable margin. A key proposal is to eliminate deputies and senators chosen by proportional representation, a move which would benefit the larger, established parties such as the ruling Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena), at the expense of smaller, more recently created ones. A smaller congress would have a reduced operating budget, and there would be a further cut-back in funding for the national electoral institute (INE), whose budget has already been reduced by 20% this year, and which López Obrador described without substantiation as “the most expensive electoral regulator in the world”.

• Eliminating congress members chosen by proportional representation would reduce the number of deputies from 500 down to 300, with senators down from 128 to 96.
• López Obrador is also proposing that INE councillors, together with the magistrates who sit on the electoral court (TEPJF), be directly elected.
• He envisages the executive, senate, and chamber of deputies forming a shortlist of 60 names from which voters will be asked to select councillors and magistrates.
• López Obrador has consistently clashed with INE, which he blames for the alleged electoral fraud he suffered in the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections (an opinion maintained despite Morena's subsequent victories in the 2018 presidential race and in the 2021 congressional mid-terms).
• López Obrador said “so that free, secret voting is ensured, so that there is no electoral fraud...the people are going to choose directly”.
• His critics consider the move against INE a power-grab. Francisco Burgoa, a law professor at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City (CDMX), said the proposed changes would affect “impartiality, objectivity, certainty, autonomy, independence and fairness”.

Looking Ahead: Major electoral reforms are unlikely to progress rapidly since the ruling coalition falls short of the required super majorities needed in congress. However, López Obrador is likely to use his expected victory in the presidential recall referendum to continue his populist campaign against INE.

* Mexico’s national statistics institute (Inegi) has released employment figures for February, recording an unemployment rate of 3.7% (2.2m people), down from 4.4% in the same month in 2021. In seasonally adjusted terms, unemployment in February was down 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous month. Inegi also revealed an informality rate of 54.6%, representing a year-on-year reduction of 0.7 percentage points.

On 30 March, a Chilean government delegation was forced to abandon a visit to Cañete municipality in the southern region of Bío Bío after being turned back at a roadblock manned by militants from the Mapuche indigenous group.

Analysis:

President Gabriel Boric took office earlier this month pledging a fundamental change of approach to the intractable Mapuche conflict, eschewing a militarised response for dialogue. However, yesterday’s roadblock, which came two weeks after a similar incident in the neighbouring La Araucanía region, demonstrates the difficulties that Boric will face in calming tensions that escalated under his conservative predecessor, Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014, 2014-2020).

• The delegation, which was headed by Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve and also included Bío Bío’s governor, Rodrigo Díaz, and the presidential delegate for Bío Bío, Daniela Dresdner, was due to meet with the mayors of Cañete, Tirúa, and Contulmo. It was turned back on the outskirts of Cañete after encountering a roadblock manned by protesters waving Mapuche flags, some of whom threw stones at the government convoy.
• This was the second such incident in a little over two weeks, coming after Interior Minister Izkia Siches had to be evacuated from Malleco province in La Araucanía on 14 March after her convoy encountered a roadblock and shots were heard nearby.
• A state of exception in Bío Bío and La Araucanía that was decreed by Piñera expired on 27 March after being extended into the first two weeks of Boric’s presidency by the previous congress. That state of exception, which saw troops deployed to both regions, had been re-ratified nine times by congress under Piñera.
• Following the aborted visit to Cañete yesterday, Monsalve said that he had intended to establish a dialogue with Mapuche activists in the region. He said that “dialogue will continue, we’re going to persevere…We have to accept that there is a historic debt to the Mapuche people, who have been denied their rights here. Political dialogue has to take into account [their] demands.”

Looking Ahead: The two high-profile ambushes of government ministers have posed an early challenge for President Boric and will expose him to criticism for allowing the state of exception in La Araucanía and Bío Bío to expire. However, there is no sign that Boric intends to change tack, and Monsalve’s comments following the aborted trip to Cañete demonstrate that the government remains committed to resolving the conflict through negotiations.

 * Chile’s national statistics institute (INE) has released the latest figures on unemployment, which reached 7.5% over the period of December 2021-February 2022, down 2.8 percentage points on the same quarter in annual terms but a 0.2 percentage point rise on the previous rolling quarter (November - January). Of those employed, 27.8% work in the informal sector, an increase of 1.3 percentage points in annual terms.