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• COLOMBIA: Farc guerrillas transfer to camps

  LatinNews 02 February 2017 Hits: 1671

  One of the most complicated logistical exercises in Colombia’s recent history is concluding as we go to press. The final few groups of guerrillas from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) are entering the 26 camps that have been set aside for them (known as Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización [ZVTN]) for the purpose of disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) over the course of the next five months.

  General Javier Flórez, the commander of the strategic transition command and until recently head of the armed forces, shook hands with the Farc’s second-in-command, ‘Iván Márquez’ (Luciano Marín Arango), as he arrived at the head of the 59^th Front at one of the 26 camps around the country, ‘Pondores’, located in the rural municipality of Fonseca in the northern department of La Guajira, on 31 January. Also present at Pondores was Colombia’s high commissioner for peace, Sergio Jaramillo, who said that 450 4x4s, 200 jeeps, 200 trucks, 100 buses, 60 microbuses, 80 large river canoes, 30 dump trucks, 35 pack mules, and even 10 tractors had been used to meet the logistical challenge of transferring all of the Farc’s estimated 6,500 guerrillas (excluding militias) into the camps, which are located in 25 different municipalities in 14 departments nationwide.

  Jaramillo noted “for sceptics of the peace process” that the elite ‘Teófilo Forero’ mobile column had arrived in the ‘Miravalle’ camp in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá department, and that the last few hundred guerrillas should all be in place by 2 February. Some 4,500 guerrillas had already gathered in or near the 26 camps by the end of 31 January.

  There have been some complaints about the state of the camps. ‘Pablo Catatumbo’ (Jorge Torres Victoria), the commander of the Bloque Occidental, complained upon entering the ‘La Elvira’ camp in Buenos Aires, Cauca department, at the head of 500 guerrillas, that the conditions were poor with “nothing constructed” (see sidebar).

  The government’s immediate concern, stressed by Jaramillo, is that the minors within the Farc’s ranks are promptly identified and handed over to the authorities. The Farc secretariat claims there are only a score of minors; the government reckons there could be closer to 200.

  One of the reasons why the authorities are so keen to ensure minors are released by the Farc as soon as possible is to prevent them from being tempted into enlisting in the ranks of neo-paramilitary groups in Colombia. On 25 January the attorney general, Néstor Humberto Martínez, claimed that the largest of these groups, Clan del Golfo (formerly known as Los Urabeños and Clan Úsuga), was offering young guerrillas and dissidents a hefty sum of cash to join up, particularly in the north of the northern department of Antioquia.

  On 31 January The Wall Street Journal made some explosive claims, reporting that defence and foreign ministry officials from Colombia and Brazil were meeting to discuss tightening security along the 1,600-km shared border, and how the Brazilian criminal organisation Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) is hiring dissident members of the Farc in a bid to acquire hardened fighters, and heavy weaponry, to expand its control over the drug trade in Latin America. “The PCC has been offering jobs to the Farc,” Colombia’s defence minister Luis Carlos Villegas told the WSJ ahead of the meeting in Manaus, the Brazilian Amazonian city where there was a prison massacre involving the PCC last month [WR-17-02].

  Villegas assured his Brazilian counterpart Raul Jungmann that Colombia’s security forces would come down hard on any Farc dissidents. The authorities estimate that between 5% and 10% of Farc guerrillas will not demobilise under the peace accord. Colombian authorities accused the Farc’s Frente Primero, a 200-strong group of dissidents from the Bloque Oriental, of killing a member of the police on 30 January carrying out manual eradication of coca crops in the municipality of Calama, in the south-central department of Guaviare, not too far from the border with Brazil. Police intelligence suggests that the Clan del Golfo has united with Farc dissidents in the department.

  Pablo Catatumbo has stressed that the Farc is completely committed to peace and disowned dissidents from the guerrilla group who he said would face the consequences of their actions. The Farc leadership has blamed dissidents for an attack on the Teófilo Forero unit in San Vicente del Caguán on 10 January. An armed group of 30 Farc dissidents from the 14^th front mounted the attack, the Farc claimed a week later, reporting that one of the dissidents had been killed during the ensuing gunfight. The Farc tried to track down the rogue unit, commanded by ‘Alexander Mojoso’ (Wilson Peña Maje), prompting the mayor of San Vicente del Caguán, Humberto Sánchez, to call upon the government to ensure that the guerrillas, who have been threatening the local population, are dealt with promptly.

  • Camps not ready

  The head of the Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización (ZVTN), Carlos Córdoba, insisted that there was guaranteed drinking water and sanitary services in all of the camps to which the Farc guerrillas have been transferred. But Córdoba admitted that some tents would need to be used in many of the camps while the Farc helped to finish construction of their living quarters.

  • Drug smuggling

  Brazil is the second biggest market for cocaine after the US. The Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) is struggling to secure control of smuggling routes into the country from Colombia.

• VENEZUELA: Borges calls on splintering MUD to maintain pressure for regional elections

  LatinNews 02 February 2017 Hits: 1719

  The president of the opposition-controlled national assembly, Julio Borges, called on the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) coalition on 31 January to pull together behind its demand that Venezuela’s delayed regional elections be timetabled.

  Venezuela’s government-controlled national electoral council (CNE) last year delayed the scheduled regional elections, which were due in December 2016, on the grounds that because of the MUD’s efforts to stage a presidential recall referendum last year, it had not had time to prepare for the regional ballot. Typically, the CNE says, it needs five months to prepare for regional elections. With the recall referendum effort now shelved, the MUD argues that the CNE has no valid reason not to hold the regional polls, and has demanded since the start of the year that it set a date – to no reply from the CNE. The MUD is concerned that the administration led by President Nicolás Maduro wants to scupper the elections altogether – potentially using the rolling state of emergency in the country as both pretext and justification.

  “Never has a vote been denied. Before, they delayed the elections on us, now they don’t hold them at all,” Borges declared at a local forum on the outlook for 2017, calling on the MUD to keep up the pressure. “Many will think that an election for governors or mayors is not the solution [to the quest for the removal of Maduro], but imagine what it would mean for a fragile government to face the defeat of 15 or 20 governors,” he reasoned. Deputy Luis Florido of the radical opposition party Voluntad Popular (VP), who is head of the national assembly’s foreign affairs commission, added, “What is in play here is the recovery of the right to vote”. Florido likewise called for sustained internal and external pressure, making the point that the CNE is legally obliged to hold the regional elections.

  The opposition is on firm ground in its demand. Unlike the instrument of the recall referendum, the regional elections are constitutionally mandated. On 20 December, Súmate, the volunteer civil organisation led by the high-profile opposition figure María Corina Machado, asked the supreme court’s constitutional chamber to order the elections, on the basis that the CNE was in breach of the constitution, including the rights of citizens to vote and to seek public office – but again this petition received no reply.

  The CNE’s sole independent rector, Luis Emilio Rondón, says that the matter is under discussion in the body. Previous experience suggests that the CNE will eventually call the elections, but only after it has tilted the playing field in favour of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) and its allies in the Gran Polo Patriótico (GPP), the left-wing electoral coalition stitched together by former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013). This has consisted of electoral district changes (or gerrymandering) to reflect things like population shifts and changes to list rules. Arguably, such reforms are all perfectly legitimate, with opposition parties unable to object.

  This time around, however, the CNE may have to become very inventive indeed to tilt the field the PSUV’s way. The ruling party won 20 of the 23 states in the last regional elections in 2012; opinion polls suggest that PSUV governors and mayors across the country would be unceremoniously turfed out of office in any election held now.

  Notably, the MUD’s executive secretary, Jesús Torrealba, has expressed concern that the CNE is seeking to strip the MUD of its political status (for alleged fraud in compiling signatures for the recall referendum petition last year). Leading the campaign to strip the MUD of its status is the PSUV’s number two, Diosdado Cabello, who again this week declared that the MUD, by virtue of its alleged signature fraud last year, had ruled itself out of any future electoral process. On 30 January, Torrealba warned that the Maduro government could be aiming for a ‘Nicaraguan solution’, whereby ‘democratic elections’ are held, albeit absent any opposition force.

  El Aissami – VP on steroids

  In yet another eyebrow-raising move, President Maduro has assigned his vice-president, Tareck El Aissami, sweeping new decree powers. This follows the delegation of broad security policy authority to El Aissami upon his appointment in the New Year. In a matter of weeks, El Aissami has been vested with powers that practically rival those of the president, which is unprecedented. Indeed, the new powers given to El Aissami exceed anything previously assigned to the office of the vice-president, with the notable exception of the period (in 2012-2013) when Hugo Chávez was forced to take an extended leave of absence for his cancer treatment.

  As per the 25 January edition of the official gazette, Maduro has delegated over a dozen of his powers to El Aissami, notably including control over ministerial budgets and access to hard currency. Henceforth, El Aissami can appoint deputy ministers and board leaders of state companies. He can also issue economic orders, including tax exemptions for strategic sectors or ‘special development projects’, and implement decrees previously authorised by the president and approved in the council of ministers.

  The text of the latest decree says that the vice-president’s new faculties seek “to achieve the greatest political efficiency in the re-founding of the Venezuelan nation”. The vice president is already second-in-line, and so would step up were Maduro to step aside or resign, or otherwise vacate office before his term officially ends in January 2019. Inevitably, the move has prompted speculation over possible succession plans. If the regional elections go ahead this year, for instance, and the PSUV loses big, Maduro’s position could be fatally weakened. The question is whether this latest decree potentially seeks to anticipate that scenario.

  • Venezuela – ‘Not Free’

  In the ‘Freedom in the World 2017’ report, released this week by the London-based Freedom House, which monitors global democracy and freedom, Venezuela’s country status declined from ‘Partly Free’ to ‘Not Free’, and its political rights rating declined from 5 to 6. According to Freedom House, this downgrade owed to “efforts by the executive branch and the politicized judiciary to curtail the power of the opposition-controlled legislature, including a series of court rulings that invalidated new laws, usurped legislative authority to review the national budget, and blocked legislative efforts to address the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis”. Venezuela thus joins Cuba as the only countries in the Western Hemisphere considered ‘not free’.

• PERU: Kuczynski’s popularity takes a battering

  LatinNews 02 February 2017 Hits: 1722

  Peru’s President Pablo Kuczynski’s approval rating plummeted by 11 percentage points over the course of the last month. On the plus side, Kuczynski is not alone. The entire political class has suffered a decline in popularity by association with the bribery scheme conducted by the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht [WR-17-03], including Keiko Fujimori, the leader of the main opposition Fuerza Popular (FP) Kuczynski narrowly defeated in last year’s presidential elections. On the negative side, the last 15 years have demonstrated that once Peruvian heads of state start to slide in opinion polls, they tend to keep going with a concomitant erosion of their credibility when they flirt with single figure approval ratings.

  President Kuczynski now enjoys an approval rating of 36%, according to a nationwide opinion survey published by the national daily La República, with his disapproval rating edging up to 52%. This despite the majority of the 1,216 respondents expressing support for his government’s decrees in the economic sphere and to combat organised crime. Failure to fight corruption was one of Kuczynski’s principal perceived failings. Fujimori’s approval rating fell from 43% to 37%, while that of the presidential candidate for the left-wing coalition Frente Amplio (FA), Verónika Mendoza, fell from 29% to 26% (see box below).

  Kuczynski’s cause was certainly not helped by one of the legislators from his own party, Peruanos por el Kambio (PPK), calling for his resignation on 31 January. The ruling party opened disciplinary proceedings into Deputy Moisés Guía after he called for the presidential office to be “declared vacant and a popular insurgency [to take place] on 4 March” unless the government confirmed that it has no intention of “introducing gender ideology [and] promoting homosexuality” in this year’s school curriculum. Religious organisations are leading a high-profile campaign entitled ‘Don’t mess with our kids’ denouncing such an intention, which the education ministry expressly denies.

  PPK emphatically rejected Guía’s comments and reaffirmed its “loyalty” to Kuczynski. Guía later issued a statement saying he had been “carried away by the moment” and expressing his “loyalty, support and respect for the presidential office, as well as the fight against corruption which at this time requires the unity of all democratic forces”.

  Power struggle on the Left

  Peru’s Left faces the risk of rupture. Verónika Mendoza, who finished third in last year’s presidential elections, recently launched her own party, Nuevo Perú, in the southern city of Cusco. The event was attended by some deputies from Frente Amplio (FA), the coalition which she represented in the elections, and some dissidents from Tierra y Libertad, the rival party within FA led by Marco Arana, with which Mendoza has competed for influence on the Left. Mendoza says Nuevo Perú will seek registration (a fraught process in Peru if the last elections are anything to go on) to compete in the municipal and regional elections in 2018 and afterwards the presidential elections in 2021.

  Mendoza needs to collect some 740,000 signatures to register her party (4% of those who voted in the last general elections). She aims to get over 500,000 in the regions of Cusco and Puno alone (where she enjoys strong support) and to collect 2m in total by October this year at the latest as an emphatic statement of intent.

  Mendoza pointedly did not seek to distance herself from FA, insisting that Nuevo Perú would form part of the coalition. But there is considerable internal tension with Tierra y Libertad, the only party in FA that enjoys official registration (which allowed Mendoza and FA to compete in the last elections). Registering her own party would allow Mendoza to go her own way.

  • Santos meeting

  President Kuczynski made a point of emphasising his government’s commitment to root out corruption during the third binational cabinet meeting with his Colombian peer Juan Manuel Santos on 27 January in Peru’s southern city of Arequipa. Kuczynski condemned corruption and its “serious impact” on political institutions and national economic development. Kuczynski and Santos, whose government has led the way in the region in moving to arraign former public officials accused of corrupt links to Odebrecht, signed a joint statement promising to “coordinate binational actions to combat corruption and impunity swiftly and resolutely”.

• ECUADOR: Moreno ducks presidential debate

  LatinNews 02 February 2017 Hits: 1565

  Lenín Moreno, the presidential candidate for the ruling Alianza País (AP), took a calculated risk last week by refusing to attend a televised debate with his seven rivals ahead of general elections on 19 February. President Rafael Correa never participated in debates with candidates from the political opposition which he routinely denigrated as the partidocracia throughout his 10-year term. Correa, who enjoyed a high level of popularity for much of that time, argued that through his ‘Citizens’ Revolution’ he could govern for, and relate to, the people directly. But, with a new face at the helm, there is an argument that the “citizens” in the revolution might need reacquainting with what it stands for. Opinion polls suggest that Moreno’s support remains short of 50% of the vote, or 40% plus a 10-percentage point lead over his nearest rival, required to win in the first round.

  Moreno pulled out of the presidential debate organised by the Guayaquil chamber of commerce, and broadcast on radio and television on 25 January, condemning “debates based on confrontation and conduct that devalues political truth as an instrument of ethical service to the country”. The seven presidential candidates who did attend presented their proposals on the labour market, macroeconomic and tax policy, corruption, freedom of expression, public security and drug consumption, governance, and social security.

  There were some barbed exchanges between Guillermo Lasso, the candidate for the centre-right opposition Movimiento Creo (Creando Oportunidades) and Cynthia Viteri, of the traditional Partido Social Cristiana (PSC), who are separated by little in the race for second place and a berth in a likely run-off against Moreno, but most of the candidates took aim at the Correa administration.

  Lasso promised to create a truth commission to investigate past and present corruption. On the economy, Lasso said he would provide tax breaks for the private sector to offer employment to more vulnerable sectors of society. Lasso, who has been slipping slightly in the polls and is in danger of being overtaken by Viteri, had previously focused on a proposal to abolish a dozen taxes to boost the private sector and drive GDP growth, with little in the way of social welfare policy, but has modified his approach, concerned that it could be seen as cold and clinical, while failing to reach out to the average Ecuadorean citizen.

  Viteri promised a popular referendum to “free the justice system”, something which Correa promised and delivered during his term, although detractors argue that the courts are less independent than ever, and subservient to the executive. She also promised to annul the controversial communications law. For his part, Paco Moncayo, of the left-wing coalition Acuerdo por el Cambio, the only other candidate who appears to have a chance of sneaking into the second round, proposed the creation of a civic anti-corruption commission and citizen oversight of the public sector. He also advocated a policy of public works construction to generate 285,000 jobs, and promised to change the country’s productive matrix by industrialising the agricultural sector.

  Fringe candidates made some populist gestures in a bid to appeal to the 35% of undecided voters. Iván Espinel advocated a ‘Ley bisturí’ (‘scalpel law’) against corruption, including 40-year prison sentences for misappropriation of public funds. Patricio Zuquilanda, the candidate of Partido Sociedad Patriótica (PSP), which brought Lucio Gutiérrez to power in 2005, said he would not accept a salary if he was elected. He advocated tribunals of faceless judges in corruption cases, and promised to end exploitation of oil in the Yasuní biosphere reserve, and to discontinue open-pit mining.

  • Correa in Spain

  Speaking at an event in Valencia, Spain, this week President Correa said that Ecuador had “shown resilience we could never have imagined 10 years ago”, and would grow by more than the regional average in 2017. Correa said that “migrants [who had left Ecuador for Spain] sustained the country until the Citizens’ Revolution came”. He touched upon the corruption scandals that have “tarnished the country in recent months”, but he sought to place the blame on previous governments. “Secret accounts have been discovered belonging to officials who formed networks [of corruption] that were functioning before our government,” Correa said. Correa said his government was totally committed to expunging corruption, and mentioned an investigation into alleged corruption in contracts awarded for the construction of the Quito metro.

• BOLIVIA: Seeking to address a long-standing priority

  LatinNews 02 February 2017 Hits: 1495

  "The biggest challenge facing the 2017-2018 legislature" is how the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) president of the lower chamber of congress, Gabriela Montaño, recently described the need to transform Bolivia's justice system. The issue has long been a priority facing the MAS government led by President Evo Morales which, at the start of this year, sent a package of three bills down to congress aimed at stamping out the notorious inefficiencies in the judiciary. President Morales’ appointment of Héctor Arce, Bolivia’s former attorney general (2014-2017), as the new justice minister in his recent cabinet reshuffle [WR-17-03], is also widely considered indicative of these efforts.

  The three legislative bills, which were presented on 3 January, were drawn up in line with the conclusion of a national justice summit, which was held in June 2016 in Sucre, the capital of Chuquisaca department, aimed at addressing the delays and corruption in the justice system. In one sign of this backlog, also on 3 January, the supreme court (TSJ) president Pastor Mamani said that of the 1,232 cases dating back from 2012 to 2016, last year the TSJ plenary had resolved some 500.

  Among other things, the bills propose to establish a basic law of public and municipal conciliation; to carry out amendments to the criminal procedure code; and to modify the law of legal practice. The latter initiative in particular is aimed at easing the notorious backlog of cases, stipulating that trials must not be suspended under any circumstances and those responsible for holding up legal proceedings should face sanctions, such as fines or the suspension of professional credentials.

  As well as establishing a monitoring committee to oversee the implementation of the conclusions from the 2016 summit (to comprise the presidents of both legislative chambers, the attorney general, the justice and interior ministers, and the TSJ president, among others), the bills call for a re-categorisation of criminal offences. Alternatives to detention are also to be considered as part of efforts to address the problem of prison overcrowding (see box).

  In a further indication of efforts being undertaken by the government to improve the justice system, Arce announced “substantial changes” last week to the procedure and mechanisms of pre-selecting candidates for posts in the TSJ, the constitutional court (TCP), the council of magistrates and the environmental court (TA), which are up for election in October this year (and for which the supreme electoral court has earmarked some B$155m [US$22m]).

  The election follows the first of its kind held by popular vote in 2011, which the Morales government has since admitted was a failure. On 26 January Vice-President Alvaro García Linera conceded that that the criteria influencing previous pre-selection of candidates included "friendships and pressures or quotas from one or another...social organisation," but, he underlined, this practice had "ended".

  Approving more pardons

  Bolivia’s bicameral legislature has approved a resolution ratifying a presidential decree which grants pardons to up to 1,700 prisoners. This is the fourth time since 2012 that President Morales has issued the pardons which, on this occasion, apply to women who are 24 weeks or more pregnant, and to prisoners with serious or very serious disabilities, or with terminal illnesses. The amnesty will not apply, however, to those facing charges of homicide, aggravated robbery, contraband, kidnapping, and other serious crimes.

  • Prison overcrowding

  The head of the prison service, Jorge López, has warned that the prison system is in crisis due to overcrowding, with 16,038 prisoners for 5,013 places. He blamed the crisis on the delays in the justice system, noting that just 38% of prisoners had received sentences.