Andean countries

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• COLOMBIA: Congress rejects 2004 budget

  12 July 2010 Hits: 1357

  Colombia's congressional finance commission has rejected the government's proposed budget for next year. The committee said that it was unclear how the government was going to finance the Col$77.6tr (US$26.7bn) budget. It also called for greater investment, and said that it wanted a clearer idea of where any investment will be headed.
  
  This is the first time in ten years that the commission, which includes the financial comptroller Antonio Hernández Gamarra and central bank governor Miguel Urrutia, has rejected the budget. They did so largely because the budget was based on the government's austerity measures, which have to be approved in October's referendum, and on a tax-evasion law which is still yet to be completed, let alone passed. The commission said it felt that the tax revenues assumed by the budget could be far higher than the actual income, and called on the government to draw up a more realistic package.
  
  The finance minister, Alberto Carrasquilla, said that the commission's complaints were inconsistent. 'This decision doesn't make any sense,' he said, 'on the one hand the congressmen say they're worried about a fiscal imbalance and the sustainability of debt levels and on the other hand they are demanding more resources for investment.'
  
  The government will now have to take into account the commission's objections and present a new budget before 30 August. The proposals then have to receive congressional approval before 20 October.

• VENEZUELA: Chavez appoints brother chief of staff

  12 July 2010 Hits: 1671

  President Hugo Chávez appointed his elder brother, Adán, to run the President's office. The appointment carries ministerial rank. Adán, who likes to flaunt his academic qualification and to be addressed as Professor, has long been seen as the leftwing ideologue who provides the ideas his brother tries to put into practice. He is a neo-Marxist sociologist. 
  
  Until yesterday Adán ran the government's controversial land reform programme, the Instituto Nacional de Tierras (Inti). Before that, he had been Hugo's private secretary and electoral strategist for the ruling Movimieno Quinta República. At the Inti, he antagonised the opposition and democrats by insisting that the national assembly could pass new laws even though the supreme court had ruled that the changes advocated were unconstitutional. Adán argued that as the national assembly was an autonomous institution it had the right to override the supreme court. 
  
  This line of reasoning is significant, because there are rumours that the government is musing over making its first changes to its Bolivarian constitution, in particular making it easier to appoint and fire supreme court justices and to simplify the appointment of the Consejo Nacional Electoral. The CNE will run elections and the referendum on whether Chávez should remain in office, should one ever be called. The national assembly has been unable to appoint the 15 people needed for the CNE: if the assembly fails to appoint them by the end of this week the supreme court will make the choice, though this raises all sort of constitutional questions. 
  
  The government has downplayed the idea of appointing supreme court justices and CNE commissioners by a simple majority, saying that the idea exists only in the minds of some of its supporters in congress. The amendment, proposed by a close Chávez ally in congress, Iris Varela, would replace the two-thirds majority needed in both cases with a simple majority. The significance of this is that the government has a majority, just, in the national assembly. 
  
  The appointment of Adán is a clear sign that the government is digging itself in. Adán is a self-confessed opponent of representative democracy, arguing that in Venezuela, at least, all it has produced is neo-liberalism and the impoverishment of the country. He claims that the Bolivarian constitution, introduced by Chávez , is a participative democracy but avowedly hostile to neoliberalism and individualism and tending towards collectivism.