COLOMBIA| Considering further rate cuts. On 24 September Colombia’s recently appointed finance minister, Mauricio Cárdenas, said ahead of his first monetary policy meeting on 28 September that the central bank should consider further cuts to the benchmark interest rate in order to curb the high levels of capital inflows entering Colombia that are appreciating the peso. Cárdenas explained that he was concerned that the recent announcement made by the US Federal Reserve that it was preparing to launch a third round of quantitative easing would simulate capital inflows into Colombia as foreign capital looked for profit opportunities. The Colombian peso…
A triumph for human rights or a setback for Peru’s national sovereignty? Those were the two most polarised reactions to a resolution issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH) this week ordering the annulment of a ruling by Peru’s penal chamber of the supreme court to reduce the length of the sentences for members of the Colina death squad who were involved in massacres in the 1990s during the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). The CorteIDH ordered Peru back in 2001 to investigate massacres perpetrated by Colina on the grounds that they constituted crimes against humanity by…
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, grabbed all the headlines this week as he delivered a video link message to a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly attended by Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patiño. It suits the government of President Rafael Correa that global media coverage of Ecuador is focused on Assange and his London embassy home because some unsettling developments at home have left the Correa administration open to charges of double standards. Patiño told assembled diplomats, officials and journalists that his government was ready to protect Assange for 10 years if…
President Juan Manuel Santos has been true to his promise, revealing details about the upcoming peace talks with the Fuerzas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) little by little. This week, during various public appearances in the US as part of a short visit to attend the 67th UN General Assembly debate, he made two particularly interesting ones: a) ‘Alfonso Cano’ (Guillermo León Sáenz) contacted his administration as soon as he took office in August 2010 to begin discussing the possibility of an agreement; and b) he is certain the peace process will be completed within the next calendar year. In a…
As presidential elections approach on 7 October, the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski is showing off his colours as a political chameleon. Capriles appealed to moderate right-wingers by meeting Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos on 19 September and publicly distancing himself from Santos’ predecessor Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). He then reached out to moderate leftists by stressing that he would model himself on Brazil’s former president Lula da Silva (2003-2010). He then made a gesture to more radical leftists by promising to maintain Venezuela’s membership of President Hugo Chávez’s bloc Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba). Capriles appears…