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Mexico’s lower chamber of congress approved a reform to the Ley de Amnistía or Amnesty Law on 24 April. The reform gives the president power to grant amnesty to convicts who can provide information in cases of special interest to the Mexican State. Opposition politicians warn the reform is dangerous and concentrates too much power in the hands of the executive. However, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has argued the reform could help the government to solve one of the country’s most notorious cases: the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural teacher training college in Guerrero state.

Under the amended law, the president can directly grant amnesty to any imprisoned or prosecuted individuals who can shed light on cases relevant to the State. To do so, the president would not have to obtain the approval of any commissions or judges. There is also no regulation on granting amnesty to those accused of serious human rights violations. Up until now, the possibility of amnesty was limited to women imprisoned for abortion or vulnerable people convicted of lesser crimes such as sedition. Before conceding the amnesty, a commission formed of representatives from various entities needed to grant approval.

The reform therefore vastly widens the scope of those who can benefit from an amnesty while reducing the checks and balances involved in granting one. Federal deputy Rubén Moreira, coordinator of the centrist opposition Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) parliamentary group, called the reform “Stalinist”, warning it could allow the government to declare the innocence of “the worst of killers, the worst of criminals”. The PRI and other opposition parties are preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the reform.

Human rights groups have also raised concerns about the reform. The human rights commission of Mexico City (CDHCM), an autonomous public body, warned that the reform deprived victims of their right to reparation. Local human rights organisation Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez (Prodh) said the reform created a “presidential pardon” system like those seen in other countries, which it said was often used in a discretional manner.

However, López Obrador has extolled the potential of the amended amnesty law in helping to solve the Ayotzinapa case, which saw 43 trainee students abducted from the city of Iguala in September 2014. Almost ten years on, the motives for and circumstances around the crime remain unknown and the students’ bodies have not been found. In a press conference on 24 April, López Obrador said there was a “pact of silence” around the disappearance of the students, which is believed to have taken place in collusion with authorities. He suggested that the new law could encourage people to come forward with new information.

There is scepticism as to how helpful the reform will be. Prodh, which is accompanying the legal case of the students’ families, stated that all attempts to find more information were welcome. However, it noted that the pact of silence around the case extended to the armed forces, which it said continued to refuse to fully open its archive to investigators. Prodh claimed the amnesty law was being used to distract from this.

Tensions

The armed forces have been at the heart of tensions between President López Obrador’s government and the students’ families in recent months. The families, supported by the findings of an investigation by independent experts [SSR-23-09], claim that the armed forces are deliberately withholding information that would shed light on the case. López Obrador has denied this, repeatedly stating that the armed forces are fully cooperating with the investigation and have handed over all relevant information.

On 6 March a group of protesters knocked down the door to the presidential palace in Mexico City (CDMX), demanding López Obrador meet with the students’ families. The president has since said he will meet with the families after the 2 June presidential elections to avoid the meeting being politicised. On 14 April, the Asamblea Nacional Popular (ANP), a grouping of social justice organisations including the students’ families and current Ayotzinapa students, agreed to boycott the electoral process due to the lack of progress in the Ayotzinapa case. Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, a lawyer representing the families, accused López Obrador of wanting to delay the meeting to gain time and avoid facing the political costs of his failed campaign pledge to solve the case.

An incident that took place the day after the protests in CDMX further fuelled tensions around the case. On 7 March Guerrero state police officers shot and killed Yanqui Kothan Gómez Peralta, an Ayotzinapa student, on the outskirts of state capital Chilpancingo. Initially, Guerrero’s public security ministry (SSP) claimed the police officers were responding to gunfire that Gómez and his two companions had initiated. This version of events was later debunked, with López Obrador stating that there had been “an abuse of authority” and Gómez had not fired a weapon.

The fallout from the case continued. On 14 March, Guerrero state governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda announced that she had accepted the resignations of the secretary general of Guerrero’s government, Ludwig Marcial Reynoso Núñez, and the state public security minister, Rolando Solano Rivera. She also announced the dismissal of state attorney general Sandra Luz Valdovinos, who refused to leave until the state congress approved her removal, which it did on 19 March.

Three state police officers have now been arrested over Gómez’s murder. The first two officers were arrested on 13 March while the third officer – the one suspected of pulling the trigger – fled. This officer, identified only as David ‘N’, remained on the run until 10 April, when authorities arrested him at a ranch near the city of Acapulco on Guerrero’s Pacific coast. The arrest took place after protesters, believed to be Ayotzinapa students, set alight a state government building in Chilpancingo by throwing firecrackers and incendiary objects through the windows on 8 April, the one-month anniversary of Gómez’s death.

Protests

Another protest took place in Mexico City (CDMX) on 26 April to demand justice and progress in the Ayotzinapa case. In a press conference on the morning of the protest, President López Obrador defended the installation of fences outside the national palace in anticipation of the demonstrations. While saying people were free to protest, López Obrador said it was also important to protect the palace as there were “a lot of troublemakers”.

Amparo response

In a column for Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper on 24 April, journalist Yuriria Sierra wrote that the reform to the Ley de Amparo “represents a critical turning point in the relationship between the powers of the State and the right of citizens to protect themselves against governmental outrages or abuses”. Sierra warned that the reform consolidates power further in the hands of President López Obrador and carries “profound and possibly dangerous implications for Mexican democracy”.

Ley de Amparo

On the same day as it approved the amendments to the Ley de Amnistía, the lower chamber also reformed the Ley de Amparo. This is the law governing the use of the ‘amparo’, a legal mechanism that enables citizens to appeal unconstitutional statutes or actions of the State before the courts.

If an amparo is accepted, courts can grant a suspension to prevent the application of the measure in question. The reform reduces the scope of these suspensions, meaning they only affect those who filed the amparo, rendering them largely useless.

Amparo lawsuits filed by environmental, indigenous, and business groups have enabled judges to suspend work on some of the president’s flagship infrastructure projects, such as the Tren Maya railway, as well as reforms to the electricity sector and electoral system. Opposition politicians and business and legal groups argue the mechanism is crucial to providing checks and balances to the government and ensuring access to justice. However, the government claims the mechanism allows biased judges to suspend laws that benefit the public.

Developing passenger rail services has emerged as an early focus of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s time in office, with the announcement of various new lines and the passing of a constitutional amendment declaring it a strategic priority.

Sheinbaum has revealed plans for three new lines, the first of which will connect Mexico City (CDMX), Querétaro (capital of Querétaro state), and Guadalajara (capital of Jalisco state) over a distance of 581km. The second will run from the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) in Estado de México (Edomex) to Pachuca, the capital of Hidalgo state, and will form a continuation of the Tren Suburbano 1 route that connects the airport to Lechería, a commuter railway station linking Edomex to CDMX. The new line will cover a distance of 150km. The third and longest line will connect CDMX, San Luis Potosi (capital of the eponymous state), Monterrey (capital of Nuevo León state), and Nuevo Laredo (Tamaulipas state) on the border with the US, covering a distance of 1,143km.

Each of the new lines is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2029. Some will follow the route of existing freight railway lines, but with new tracks. Sheinbaum has also raised the possibility of further lines in the south of the country, connecting with the Tren Interoceánico, which links Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz state on the Caribbean coast with Salina Cruz in Oaxaca state on the Pacific coast, as well as the Tren Maya tourist railway in the Yucatán peninsula.

The plan has been enabled by a constitutional amendment, approved by both congress and the senate in October, which stipulates that the government can grant assignments to public companies or concessions to private firms. It also declares both passenger and cargo rail transportation priority areas for national development and allows companies that have concessions to provide freight rail transportation services to also obtain concessions to provide passenger services, with preference given to passenger rail transportation over freight. At present, passenger services only run on 7.55% of Mexico’s operational lines, according to Andrés Lajous Loaeza, director of the Agencia Reguladora de Transporte Ferroviario (ARTF), Mexico’s rail transport regulatory agency, but the amendment will allow passenger services to use existing railway lines.

Sheinbaum says that the services will boost the economy by providing jobs and improving connectivity, as well as reducing carbon emissions and cutting congestion on the roads. The new president has faced questions on how the government will fund the projects given her stated aim of reducing the fiscal deficit from around 6% of GDP this year to 3.5% in 2025 but has stated that there will be no issue in doing so. She noted that there would be “very little left to pay” next year on the flagship public works of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), such as the Tren Maya and the Dos Bocas oil refinery in Tabasco state, but she also has ambitious plans to expand social housing.  

López Obrador legacy

Sheinbaum’s plans continue her predecessor’s efforts to improve rail connectivity in the country. During his time in office, the former president oversaw the introduction of passenger services on the newly built Tren Maya, as well as the resumption of services on the Tren Interoceánico and the Tren El Insurgente, from Mexico City to Toluca, the capital of Edomex. This recent experience should improve the chances of success, although the Tren Maya has been criticised for its environmental and social impacts. The use of existing lines should reduce these impacts, as well as facilitating construction by removing the need to buy land. However, building new tracks and other infrastructure will bring increased corruption risks. 

After 24 years as a member of the centre-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), the governor of Rio Grande do Sul state, Eduardo Leite, has left the party and joined the Partido Social Democrático (PSD), a big tent party which has grown in influence since it was founded in 2011. It is no secret that Leite is considering running in the 2026 presidential race, and it is likely that he sees the PSD as a better vehicle for his ambitions than the PSDB. However, the founder and party president of the PSD, Gilberto Kassab, has not revealed who the party will back in the next year’s election. Aside from Leite, the PSD’s Carlos Massa Ratinho Júnior, the centre-right governor of Paraná state, has also been floated as an option to run as the PSD’s presidential candidate.

As a member of the PSDB, Leite entered the local political scene of his hometown, Pelotas, in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul. He served on the Pelotas city council from 2008-2013 and then as the mayor of Pelotas from 2013-2017. At the age of just 33, Leite won the governorship of Rio Grande do Sul in October 2018.

In 2021, he came out as gay, making him the first openly gay state governor in Brazilian history. His personal brand is that of a moderate conservative who is aligned with the right in his support for economic liberalisation and privatisation. But, on some issues, he leans towards views opposed by social conservatives, such as support for same-sex marriage.

The second-round run-off in the 2022 gubernatorial election pitted the centre-right Leite against the supporters of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023). His rival was Onyx Lorenzoni, a member of Bolsonaro’s right-wing Partido Liberal (PL). Under Bolsonaro, Lorenzoni held several cabinet posts from 2019-2022. Given his previous clashes with the ‘Bolsonarismo’ movement, this raises the question of whether Leite could win over far-right voters if he were to run for president in 2026.

The Rio Grande do Sul governor won re-election in 2022 with the support of centrist and left-wing voters, but if he runs for president next year against a potential re-election bid by the leftist incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Leite is unlikely to have the support of left-of-centre parties and would need to make overtures to the right – especially to Bolsonarismo. Given the polarisation of Brazil’s political climate, the odds would be against a moderate conservative presidential hopeful such as Leite or Ratinho Júnior, unless they can win over the far right.

The right without Bolsonaro

On 9 May when Leite officially joined the PSD, he said that Brazil needed to overcome political polarisation and elect a president with centrist inclinations. He said he felt he had what it would take to lead this political project, but he also admitted that if there were another centre-right presidential hopeful who could do a better job, he would not rule out the possibility of backing another candidate.

Leite is not the only right-of-centre figure who has been cited in the press as calling for the return of centrism to counter rising polarisation. In recent weeks, centre-right former president Michel Temer (2016-2019) has reportedly been holding meetings with the five governors who have been pegged in the media as potential presidential hopefuls next year: the PSD’s Leite and Ratinho Júnior; the governor of Goiás, Ronaldo Caiado (União Brasil); the governor of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema (Novo); and the governor of São Paulo state, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos).

Temer’s recent meetings with governors were praised by national daily O Estado de São Paulo. In an editorial published on 11 May, the newspaper welcomed Temer’s efforts to convince the five right-of-centre governors to align their political projects and rally behind one presidential candidate who can offer a “third way” between the polarisation of ‘Lulismo’ against ‘Bolsonarismo’. The column argued that the Brazilian right needs to be a “right without Bolsonaro”.

Of these five governors floated as potential candidates to challenge Lula next year, the one who has received the highest voter intention in opinion polls is São Paulo’s De Freitas. However, when the governor was questioned on 12 May by journalists about Temer’s efforts to reinvigorate traditional, moderate conservatism in Brazil, De Freitas affirmed that there is “no right without Bolsonaro”.

On 13 May national daily Folha de São Paulo published an article which cited Temer as downplaying the perceptions that he is working against Bolsonarismo. Temer affirmed that uniting the right-of-centre governors does not mean diminishing the influence of Bolsonarismo. He highlighted how De Freitas “has been very wise” in maintaining his loyalty to Bolsonaro, taking every public opportunity to make nods to the far right, but at the end of the day De Freitas has created “his own identity, without opposing Bolsonaro”. The PSD’s Kassab, who currently serves as the institutional relations secretary in the São Paulo state government, has not ruled out the possibility of endorsing De Freitas as the candidate to unite the Brazilian right next year, although the São Paulo governor has not yet announced intentions of running for president.

Decline of the PSDB

The PSDB, the party of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), was once known as the torchbearer of Brazil’s right-of-centre space. The party challenged Lula in the 2002 presidential race, with its candidate José Serra, and reached the second round of the 2006 election, with Geraldo Alckmin as its candidate. Serra ran for president again in 2010 but was defeated by Dilma Rousseff (PT) in the second round, and the party lost to Rousseff again in 2014, with the PSDB’s Aécio Neves losing out in the run-off vote. Since 2014, the party has not returned to its previous level of influence.

Institutional tensions

Federal deputy Alexandre Ramagem, of Bolsonaro’s right-wing Partido Liberal (PL), is one of the alleged participants of a plot to launch a military coup in 2022 to overturn Jair Bolsonaro’s election defeat that year. On 7 May the lower chamber of congress approved a motion to suspend the criminal proceedings against Ramagem, but on 10 May a five-judge panel of the supreme court (STF) ruled that only some of the charges against Ramagem may be suspended. On 13 May the lower chamber appealed the STF decision, further inflaming tensions between the legislature and judiciary.

El Presidente Sebastián Piñera estaba empezando a retomar la iniciativa. Su gobierno había logrado la aprobación de una significativa reforma política –convertir el voto en voluntario e introducir el registro automático de nuevos votantes– y el presidente estaba sosteniendo serias conversaciones con sus predecesores sobre posibles cambios al sistema político binominal, una de las reliquias de la era Pinochet (1974-1990). Y en esas circunstancias su gobierno anunció que la palabra “dictadura” sería reemplazada por “régimen militar” en los libros de texto en las escuelas para describir esa era. Esto puso al nuevo ministro de educación de Piñera, Harald Beyer, a la defensiva, y dio nuevo impulso a las protestas estudiantiles. Para complicar aún más las cosas, el gobierno también anunció una tibia agenda de reforma para 2012 y 2013, sugiriendo que las pláticas presidenciales de Piñera fueron más show que sustancia.

La distinción semántica entre “dictadura” y “régimen militar” podría no ser grande, pero la  apariencia es lo que cuenta –y el cambio en los libros de texto permitió a la Concertación afirmar que la administración Piñera estaba tratando de reescribir la historia y rehabilitar al General Augusto Pinochet.

Inicialmente parecía que el cambio podría constituir un gesto hacia la Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), el ultra-conservador socio principal en la coalición gobernante de Piñera, para tratar de ganar el apoyo para la reforma de uno de los más significativos vestigios del Pinochetismo –el sistema electoral binominal. La UDI se opone a tal reforma.

Piñera se reunió con el ex presidente Eduardo Frei el 5 de enero, en la última de las reuniones frente a frente con sus cuatro predecesores post-Pinochet y escuchó un ahora familiar estribillo: reforma del sistema binacional. Frei, quien perdió las últimas elecciones ante Piñera, advirtió que la paz social en Chile podría estar en riesgo sin “una visión de largo plazo”, que incluya la reforma política, fiscal y energética.

Sin embargo, si Piñera había estado adulando a la UDI, al parecer esto no ha dado resultado. Piñera celebró una reunión y cena con ministros y líderes de la coalición el 9 de enero después de la cual el vocero del gobierno, Andrés Chadwick, reveló que las prioridades entre ahora y marzo de 2014, cuando Piñera deje el poder, serían la reforma fiscal seguida de reformas a la educación, salud, trabajo, y seguridad pública.

Una reforma del sistema binominal, dijo Chadwick, solamente seguiría adelante si hubiese consenso entre los partidos políticos. Esto es verdad, pero Chadwick, un miembro de la UDI, sabrá mejor que muchos que es su propio partido es el menos probable en proveer ese consenso.

Inmediatamente, la oposición interpretó sus palabras como un signo que el gobierno no estaba preparado para ejercer presión sobre la UDI sobre la cuestión. El líder del Partido Socialista (PS), Osvaldo Andrade, dijo que la UDI es la que manda y que “Renovación Nacional (RN, el socio menor en la coalición gobernante) no existe y el presidente es un rehén de la UDI.” Ridiculizó la iniciativa de reforma fiscal como un complot para volver a los ricos aún más ricos. La presidenta del Partido por la Democracia (PPD), Carolina Tohá, coincidió. Ella dijo que Piñera claramente prefiere seguir cayendo en las encuestas y ha “optado por mantener feliz a la UDI”.

Irritado con las críticas acerca de su falta de compromiso para reformar el sistema binominal, Piñera insistió que “ninguna de las grandes coaliciones tiene la fuerza para hacer los cambios solos: ellos deben llegar a un consenso o no habrá cambio.” Sin embargo, la desilusión con su fracaso en confrontar a la UDI no estuvo confinada a la Concertación: el vicepresidente de RN, Manuel Ossandón, el alcalde de la municipalidad de Puente Alto, en Santiago, dijo: “al parecer no hemos aprendido nada del año de protestas [estudiantiles].” La RN también fue crítica de cualquier intento de ‘maquillar’ a la dictadura de Pinochet.

• Tensión Mapuche

Siete bomberos murieron el 5 de enero tratando de apagar los incendios en las regiones sureñas del Biobío y la Araucanía. El ministro del interior, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, insinuó durante una conferencia de prensa que el grupo radical Mapuche, la Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) podría estar detrás de los incendios. La CAM emitió una vehemente negativa, alegando que los Mapuche nunca incendiarían  sus tierras ancestrales. La oposición se unió a las comunidades Mapuche en acusar al gobierno de insinuaciones “racistas”. El ministro de desarrollo social, Joaquín Lavín, fue enviado apresuradamente a la Araucanía el 9 de enero para celebrar reuniones y aplacar a los Mapuche moderados.

Cuba | Yzqueirdo promoted. On 20 February the daily Granma officially reported the promotion of Abel Yzqueirdo, the economy minister, to become one of the eight vice-presidents on the council of ministers, which is the highest ranking executive body in the Cuban system. According to Granma, Yzqueirdo, 66, was promoted at the suggestion of President Raúl Castro with the approval of the council of state. Yzqueirdo was appointed economy minister in March 2011, replacing Marino Murillo, who was made overall economic reform czar. Murillo also sits on the council of ministers. Yzqueirdo is also a member of the politbureau.

Last month the international human rights NGO, Amnesty International (AI) reminded the government of President Leonel Fernández of the need to address some of the atrocious practices still being committed by the National Police (PN) which was created during the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961). Instead of taking AI’s recommendations on board however, the Fernández government no doubt with one eye on the looming May presidential election, accused the NGO of seeking to “discredit” it by launching an international campaign aimed at damaging its image.

Back in October 2011, AI published a report entitled: “Shut up if you don’t want to get killed!: Human rights violations by police in the Dominican Republic”. The 59-page report highlighted that, despite substantial progress to demilitarise the force, the PN has continued to maintain its military ethos which dates back to its creation by Trujillo in 1936.  An estimated 50,000 people were killed and countless others were tortured and disappeared under the Trujillo dictatorship, with the PN and the military accused of being responsible for serious human rights violations during this period. AI’s report found that the widespread perception of the PN within the country continues to be that of an “authoritarian, repressive, corrupt and ineffective body responsible for many human rights violations”.

According to the report, which cites data from the prosecutor general’s office, between 2005 and 2010, the PN was responsible on average for 15% of all violent deaths in the Dominican Republic, an “alarming proportion which raises significant concerns that police frequently employ disproportionate force with deadly consequences”. AI identified the PN’s abusive policing as the main contributing factor in the sharp rise in the country’s homicide rate, which went from 13 per 100,000 in 1995 to 25 per 100,000 in 2010, after peaking at 26 per 100,000 in 2005. Yet, the international NGO claims that, despite the fact that members of the PN are known to be responsible for many deaths; and suspected of being responsible for serious abuses such as physical torture and extrajudicial executions, they are rarely brought to justice. As a result, AI concluded that at the heart of the problem lay the authorities’ failure to implement effective reforms due to a lack of “political will”.

With the DR’s recent ratification of the United Nations Convention against Torture going into effect on 23 February, the previous day, AI special advisor in the DR, Javier Zuñiga, called on the government to “put an end once and for all the abusive [police] practices that have been in place for decades”. Zuñiga also pointed out that 289 people had been killed by the PN in the country in 2011, more than 10% of all homicides registered in the country, and more than the 260 people killed by the police in 2010.  The government’s response came a week later, on 2 March, the ‘national day of the police’, marking the anniversary of the PN’s creation.  Minister of Justice & the Police José Ramón Fadul, and PN chief, Mayor General José Armando Polanco Gómez, issued a joint statement complaining that the PN had been targeted by a negative campaign conducted by a “renowned international institution” devoted to the defence of human rights. Maintaining that the international organisation, which was never named, “resorted to false accusations and prefabricated testimonies in an attempt to damage the image of the country’s security forces”, the statement accused the campaign of attempting to “discredit the country’s image”. While recognising that the PN has its “weaknesses”, the statement insisted that the authorities had the political will to deal with these problems, recalling that efforts to modernise, and strengthen the institution has resulted in the removal of 10,000 police officers in the past four years. This response by the government – of going on the defensive rather than recognising the existence of what is an historic problem - suggests it could also be wary of the issue becoming a campaigning point ahead of the May election.

• Polanco seeks AI’s help

Bizarrely, following the latest criticism from the AI’s Javier Zuñiga and prior to the joint statement denouncing the “campaign” against the PN, police chief José Armando Polanco Gómez himself on 25 February requested AI’s help in finding a well known gang leader, Gervasio Nolasco ‘Rey’. Polanco Gómez called for assistance from AI and other human rights organisations operating in the DR to help with Rey’s capture after admitting suspicions that Rey had contacts within the PN.  According to Polanco Gómez, the PN is planning to investigate which police officials may be working for Rey. This follows the confirmation that two former members of the PN were involved in the recent hold-up attributed to Rey’s gang in which a truck driver was shot dead. 

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa responded to the electoral victory of his Venezuelan peer Hugo Chávez by revealing for the first time his determination to seek re-election on 17 February next year. Correa, who took office in January 2007, will eclipse his icon Eloy Alfaro as the longest (consecutive) serving head of state in Ecuador’s history if he is returned to office as expected.

Correa wrote on Twitter: “Chávez wins by 10 points. Long live Venezuela! Long live the Bolivarian Revolution! Let’s get ready for an even better victory in February. Long live the citizens’ revolution!”

Correa said he had the support of his family to stand again. This is all that really matters because while Correa said that his candidacy would have to be confirmed by his party Alianza País (AP) this is a mere formality: much like Chávez, Correa has not groomed any potential successors to lead the revolution after him. Several of the principal co-founders of the AP have gone into opposition, foremost among them Alberto Acosta, the former head of the constituent assembly who is running for president for a coalition which claims to represent the true left ‘neglected’ by Correa.

While the support of the AP is a given, and will likely be confirmed at a national convention later this month, Correa has previously given the impression that the backing of his family was far from certain. Indeed, he has intimated that he might step aside because “my family has suffered a lot”. Speaking on a radio station in the coastal city of Guayaquil this week, however, he stressed that “The bad news for (the opposition) is that my family supports me and they know that I’ve got a responsibility toward the country”.

*** Kurdish party not to support Erdogan’s push for presidency.  Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to change the constitution so that he can become the country’s first directly elected executive president after his current term as prime minister.  In this quest, Erdogan has been hoping to gain the support of the Kurdish-based Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), and cynics have suggested that this need is behind Erdogan’s push for peace with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).  Erdogan is prevented from running again as prime minister by the internal rules of his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

To achieve his aim, Erdogan needs to push constitutional changes through parliament, which is why he needs the support of the BDP.  However, on 23 September the co-chairman of the BDP, Selahattin Demirtas, ruled out supporting Erdogan on this point. 

Asked in an interview with Cumhuriyet newspaper if “the BDP and the Kurds will back Erdogan”, Demirtas replied:

“No, there will be no support from the BDP either for the presidential system that Erdogan wants or for him as candidate for President of the Republic.  I do not think he is going to get any serious amount of votes from the Kurds as a whole because I know the mood among our party’s rank and file.  They know that Erdogan will not make a good president.”

One of the problems for the Kurds appears to be Erdogan’s Syria policy.  The Syrian Kurds have gained autonomy by backing the regime against the Turkish-backed Sunni Arab rebels.  Demirtas said in his interview: “The prime minister and the foreign minister are warmongering in Syria, both for the country as a whole and the Kurd region in particular.”

*** Al-Shabab threatens more attacks in Kenya and beyond.  Following the attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi that began on 21 September and in which at least 72 people were killed, the Somali Al-Shabab group warned on 24 September that there would be more attacks unless Kenya withdrew its forces from Somalia “as soon as possible”. 

Al-Shabab spokesman Shaykh Ali Dhere described the attack as a “test” which was successful and said that the next attack would be “more successful”.  He also said that attacks would be carried out on other countries with troops in Somalia.  In addition to Kenya, Djibouti, Burundi, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia have troops in Somalia.

El alto comando de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) difundió una declaración el 5 de enero planteando “serias dudas” acerca del compromiso del “Estado colombiano y su amo imperial” con el proceso de paz en La Habana, Cuba. El secretariado de las Farc respondía directamente a la publicación del 21 de diciembre de un extenso y detallado artículo de periodismo investigativo en The Washington Post que delineaba la extensión del rol de EU en la campaña militar colombiana que tenía como blanco a líderes de las Farc en años recientes.

Citando 30 fuentes de la comunidad de inteligencia de EU, militares, cuerpos diplomáticos, y funcionarios colombianos, el artículo de The Washington Post afirma que “un programa de acción encubierta de la [Central Intelligence Agency] CIA” para proveer “inteligencia en tiempo real que permita a las fuerzas colombianas dar caza a líderes individuales de las Farc” estaba respaldado por “un presupuesto multimillonario en negro […] que no era parte del paquete de US$9mm principalmente en ayuda militar de EU llamado Plan Colombia, que comenzó en el 2000”. Este programa comenzó a tomar forma después de que el ex presidente, George W. Bush (2001-2009), autorizó la acción de la CIA poco después de que las Farc mataron a un contratista y secuestraron a otros tres contratistas de EU involucrados en la erradicación de cultivos de coca en el 2003; aún permanece “clasificado y en curso”, de acuerdo con The Washington Post.

El artículo del Post dice que la célula de fusión de inteligencia de la embajada de EU, llamada ‘el Bunker’, fue montada en la embajada de EU en Bogotá; ocho personas monitorean mapas satelitales de la jungla, buscando los escondites de las Farc, mientras que las intercepciones de voces eran descifradas por la agencia nacional de seguridad (NSA, siglas en inglés) de EU. La CIA también ayudó a entrenar a interrogadores colombianos para interrogar con más efectividad a desertores de las Farc, pero “sin el uso de técnicas ‘mejoradas de interrogación’ aprobadas para ser usadas sobre al-Qaeda”, y ayudaron a desarrollar un banco de datos catalogando los resultados.

EU proveyó a los colombianos con un equipo guía GPS para transformar bombas comunes pesadas en “bombas inteligentes altamente precisas”, una de las cuales fue utilizada en el ataque de marzo del 2008 sobre un campamento de las Farc localizado a través de la frontera con Ecuador que causó la muerte del número dos de las Farc ‘Raúl Reyes’ (Luis Edgar Devia Silva).

Además de plantear dudas acerca del compromiso del gobierno con el proceso de paz como resultado de la publicación del artículo, las Farc dijo que demostró “la suma de intereses que conducen a la profundización del conflicto armado”. Las Farc dijeron que aunque ciertamente no ignoraban mucho de lo que había sido informado, el artículo “aclara algunas cosas”. El Presidente de Ecuador, Rafael Correa, quien cortó las relaciones diplomáticas con Colombia debido al bombardeo donde murió Reyes, especuló que detrás de las “muy serias” revelaciones podrían estar intereses opuestos al proceso de paz. El ex presidente de Colombia, Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), tuiteó su respuesta. Dijo que EU había ayudado a Colombia a localizar a los líderes de las Farc, para que las fuerzas de seguridad colombianas, “bajo mi responsabilidad”, puedan montar operaciones relevantes.

En cierta forma es irónico que el artículo haya sostenido que “el ritmo de las operaciones contra las Farc” se habían “incrementado grandemente” bajo el Presidente Juan Manuel Santos con “casi tres veces más líderes de las Farc –47 vs. 16– resultando muertos bajo Santos, que bajo Uribe”. La principal crítica de Uribe hacia Santos es que ha permitido que se deteriore la situación de la seguridad en Colombia. Esta semana, Uribe se quejó de que no había garantías para que su partido, Centro Democrático (CD), conduzca una campaña nacional antes de las elecciones legislativas y presidenciales de marzo y mayo respectivamente. Santos respondió con una serie de estadísticas diseñadas para refutar las afirmaciones de Uribe (ver abajo), aunque no fue lo suficientemente audaz como para citar esta última estadística en particular.

• Avances en la seguridad

El Presidente Santos afirmó esta semana que los mayores avances en la seguridad se registraron en el 2013. Dijo que hubo una caída del 8% en la tasa de homicidios con relación al 2012, a 14.782 casos; que 2.757 miembros de los ‘grupos criminales emergentes’ (Bacrims), fueron capturados junto con 1.658 miembros del grupo neo-paramilitar Los Urabeños en el 2013;  que los secuestros cayeron un 4%, y no se reportaron casos en 981 de las 1.123 municipalidades; la “actividad terrorista” cayó un 24%; y fueron incautadas 347 toneladas de marihuana, la mayor cantidad desde 1993.

Inmediatamente después de que el primer ministro de Perú, René Cornejo, presentara el nuevo equipamiento que las fuerzas armadas estarán utilizando para acabar con el tráfico de drogas en el Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene, y Mantaro (Vraem) [IL-14-21], toda la estrategia antidrogas del gobierno quedó bajo fuego con la súbita partida de la ya ex directora de la Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo y Vida sin Drogas (Devida), Carmen Masías Claux.

El 27 de mayo, Masías dejó el camino libre para que Alberto Otárola asuma como titular de Devida, la agencia antidrogas. Otárola, hermano del presidente del congreso Fredy Otárola, es parte del círculo íntimo del Presidente Ollanta Humala, y asesor presidencial. Anteriormente él sirvió como ministro de defensa pero fue forzado a renunciar en mayo del 2012 ante una inminente censura del congreso por una mal dirigida operación para liberar a rehenes en poder de la facción de Sendero Luminoso (SL) que opera en el Vraem.

Los informes iniciales de los medios de comunicación sugerían que Masías, quien había sido la titular de Devida desde enero del 2012, había decidido renunciar debido a que ella se sentía incómoda acerca de la decisión del gobierno de cambiar el énfasis de la política antidrogas, de la “erradicación compulsiva” de las plantaciones de coca, donde ella obtuvo un considerable éxito, hacia una “reconversión productiva”, un concepto que parece que abarca la provisión de educación, asesoramiento, y quizá incluso subsidios para los productores de coca quienes acuerden dedicarse a cultivos alternativos.

El ministro de agricultura, Juan Manuel Benites, pareció haberse comprometido con este cambio de rumbo durante una reunión con productores de coca en el Vraem la semana pasada, cuando él firmó un acuerdo para replantar 5.000 hectáreas de coca en el Vraem, con cultivos alternativos como café, cacao, o estevia (un edulcorante natural y sustituto del azúcar). Los asesores de contrainsurgencia dentro del gobierno han expresado preocupación de que la erradicación forzada podría enajenar a la población local en el Vraem, solidificando en vez de debilitar sus lazos con SL.

Masías insistió en que los informes iniciales de los medios acerca de que ella estaba incómoda en su puesto estaban lejos de la realidad, y que ella había sido forzada a retirarse para abrir el paso a una nueva fase en Devida. Cornejo negó que Masías haya sido sacada de su puesto, pero la oposición se abalanzó sobre los relatos contradictorios para acusar al gobierno de dar precedencia a las designaciones políticas por sobre las profesionales.

El presidente regional de Pasco arrestado por corrupción

El presidente regional de Pasco, Klever Meléndez Gamarra, y su asesor legal, Juan Boza Pulido, fueron arrestados en Lima el 3 de junio, a pedido del fiscal anticorrupción supra-provincial, Hamilton Castro, por haber recibido supuestamente un soborno de US$100.000 de representantes de un consorcio empresarial a cambio de contratos de obras públicas. Meléndez también está siendo investigado por permitir que una compañía con poca experiencia lleve adelante los trabajos de construcción de un hospital regional por NS$170m (US$62m).

Un video mostrando a los dos hombres recibiendo el soborno en dinero en efectivo evocaba memorias de los infames ‘vladivideos’ –videos comprometedores obtenidos por Vladimiro Montesinos, el jefe de inteligencia del ex presidente Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), en el que invariablemente se veía a funcionarios aceptando sobornos.

No está claro porqué el video ha tardado casi cuatro años para salir a la luz, pero llega en momentos en los la confianza en los gobiernos regionales de Perú, ya baja debido a la aguda sospecha de las autoridades desde Fujimori, está siendo erosionada aún más por las crecientes investigaciones por corrupción y las presentaciones de cargos formales que afectan a 19 de los 25 presidentes regionales del país, justo antes de las elecciones regionales de octubre.

Un detallado informe en La República, el 28 de mayo, muestra que el presidente de Ancash, César Álvarez Aguilar, es el sujeto de la mayor cantidad de investigaciones por corrupción (26) incluyendo cuatro cargos formales, seguido por el presidente de Tumbes, Gerardo Viñas Dioses (25), incluyendo cinco cargos formales. Meléndez Gamarra, quien aún debe ser acusado formalmente de cualquier ofensa, afronta 20 investigaciones separadas.

• Corrupción regional

En total, 19 presidentes regionales afrontan 158 investigaciones, mientras que funcionarios regionales en todo el país enfrentan 1.505 investigaciones por desfalco, colusión, y malversación de fondos, con muchos casos involucrando el otorgamiento de contratos de obras públicas.

GUATEMALA | Stamping out illiteracy. President Otto Pérez Molina boasted last week that Zacapa had become the country’s first department to be declared free of illiteracy. Speaking in a sports centre in Zacapa, Pérez Molina said illiteracy in the eastern department had fallen to 3.3%: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) states that any region with illiteracy below 4% can declare itself to be ‘free of illiteracy’.

Pérez Molina said that Zacapa, which has 11 municipalities and some 208,000 inhabitants, was “an example” for the other 21 departments in the country to follow. He said that Retalhuleu, Santa Rosa, Suchitepéquez, Sacatepéquez and El Progreso were “very close” to achieving this goal.

At a national level, Guatemala has cut illiteracy by more than half (from 31.67% to 15.58%) in recent years, Unesco’s representative in Guatemala, Dr Julio Carranza, said.

HONDURAS | Transparency International. President Juan Orlando Hernández signed an accord with Huguette Labelle, the president of the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International (TI), in Tegucigalpa last week aimed at institutionalising transparency, accountability and fighting corruption. TI and its Honduran chapter, Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ), will track and monitor the implementation of the commitments undertaken by the government in the accord. Hernández celebrated “a milestone” as Honduras becomes the first country in the world to sign such an accord. “We are going to work hand in hand with Transparency International,” he said. “We want to take a significant step in transparency and for the government to be an example, so that we can ask others to act like we do and change the culture”.

Last month Guatemala’s President Otto Pérez Molina delivered his penultimate state-of-the-nation address in which he flagged up progress vis-à-vis security – one of the three areas identified as priorities when his right-wing Partido Patriota (PP) administration assumed office in January 2012. Pérez Molina also claimed improvements in the other two areas – the economy and food security - although his claims regarding all three have been subject to question.

In his 14 January address to the nation, Pérez Molina put the national homicide rate at 31 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2014, below the 34 per 100,000 registered in both 2013 and 2012; and the 39 per 100,000 registered in 2011, the year before he took office. Pérez Molina attributed this progress in part to his ‘mano dura’ (repressive) response to crime, which has involved the use of the military for public security duties– a strategy also employed by his predecessor, Alvaro Colom (2008-2012). This is in line with a 2000 law permitting recourse to the military “when the normal capabilities of the police are overwhelmed”, which President Pérez Molina has invoked to establish two joint military-police task forces to fight organised crime in border areas: one created in 2013 and based in San Marcos, operating along the border with Mexico, the other set up in April 2014 in Zacapa, to operate along the border with Honduras. President Pérez Molina’s balance sheet also claimed progress on another key security objective – boosting the national police (PNC) - with 4,881 new PNC officials graduating in 2014, bringing the total size of the PNC to over 35,000 by February 2015, up from 22,000 when he took office.

Since his state-of-the-nation address, however, the homicide figures for January 2015 appear to have bucked the downwards trend. On 3 February the local press reported PNC figures, which put homicides for January at 488, four more than in the same month in 2013, an increase President Pérez Molina blamed on intra-gang rivalry.

The President also claimed progress as regards to boosting the economy and improving competitiveness. He cited preliminary figures which suggest that GDP grew by 4% in 2014 – well above the 1.1% average for Latin America (on figures from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean [Eclac]) and up from 3.7% in 2013 and 3% in 2012. Noting that foreign direct investment (FDI) totaled US$1.37bn in 2014, up 6.1% on 2013, the President also boasted that exports in the first 10 months of 2014 reached US$9bn, up 7.8% on the same period in 2013. In his speech, Pérez Molina also mentioned the latest (September 2014) World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report, in which Guatemala’s ranking improved from 86 (out of 144 countries) in 2013 to 78 in 2014. However, he was forced to admit deficiencies as regards another economy-related objective – boosting tax revenues. Pérez Molina said that the tax take reached Q$48.97bn (US$6.4bn) in 2014. While this is up 5.7% on 2013, it is still just 10.8% of GDP - less than the 12% minimum target established in the 1996 peace accords that ended Guatemala’s 36-year civil war (1960-1990) and one of the lowest in Central America. This again illustrates the failure of the fiscal reform that Pérez Molina pushed through the national congress in 2012, which, he notes in his annual report, remains paralysed, with 65 constitutional appeals filed against it.

Landmark conviction

While the delayed efforts to bring Guatemala’s former dictator, Efrain Ríos Montt (1982-1983), to justice [RC-15-01]continue to attract human rights concerns, last month civil society groups claimed a victory after a local court sentenced Pedro García Arredondo, a former chief of Guatemala’s national police, to 40 years in prison for ordering an attack by State security forces on the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on 31 January 1980. The attack left 37 people dead, including Vicente Menchú, the father of Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous leader, Rigoberta Menchú. The court also sentenced García Arredondo to another 50 years in prison for the murders of two students. García Arredondo previously received a 70-year prison sentence in 2012 for the 1981 disappearance of Edgar Sáenz Calito, an engineering student.

• Progress in food security?

In his state-of-the-nation address, President Otto Pérez Molina also claimed progress with regard to tackling food insecurity which, upon taking office, he pledged to reduce by 10% over his four-year term via government programmes like ‘Plan Hambre Cero’ (PHC). Pérez Molina said that between 2012 and 2013 - the latest figures he gave - chronic malnutrition dropped by 1.7% in 166 targeted municipalities (out of a total of 333). However, the most recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), published in December 2014 showed that Guatemala still registered the second worst rate of undernourishment in Central America (14.3% of the population between 2012 and 2014, just slightly less than the 14.7% registered between 2009 and 2011).

The Venezuelan economy is not doing well – some would call that a massive understatement. A key problem is the dearth of credible data on GDP, inflation, trade and external payments. Juan Cristóbal Nagel (editor of the Caracas Chronicles blog and economics professor at Universidad de los Andes in Chile) has said that trying to analyse the current state of economy is like “looking into a black box”.

Without credible and continuous data series, it is difficult to get a sense of the country’s macroeconomic dynamics. Writing for the US-based Foreign Policy, Nagel quotes the view of Asdrúbal Oliveros, of the Caracas consultancy Ecoanalítica, who calculated that 12-month inflation in May-June 2015 was running at 128%, with a public sector deficit of 20% of GDP and a balance of payments deficit of US$17bn. Oliveros says that a forecast by The Economist that Venezuelan GDP will drop by 4.2% this year is “conservative”. No official inflation data has been published since February, when the central bank reported inflation of 68.5% in 2014.

The view of Western multilateral financial institutions, many shunned by the Left-wing ‘Bolivarian’ government of President Nicolás Maduro, is also sombre. In its April World Economic Outlook, the IMF said that it expected the Venezuelan economy to contract by 7% in 2015, due to the collapse in oil prices, policy distortions and government controls that had intensified shortages of basic goods and driven inflation to over 60%. In July the IMF updated that view, putting potential inflation at 100% in 2015 and warning that the government’s macroeconomic policies were unsustainable.

One very graphic attempt to animate Venezuela’s economic dynamic has come from Francisco Toro, another blogger. Criticising a recent speech on the economy by opposition leader Henrique Capriles as “disjointed”, Toro attempted his own diagnosis. He compared the Venezuelan economy to a patient being brought into the emergency ward suffering from hypertension, diabetes, drug addiction and HIV. The challenge for the doctor is to come up with a list of treatment priorities. But first, he must focus on another more urgent issue: the two gaping gunshot wounds in the patient’s chest. Toro describes these two wounds in economic terms as the multiple exchange rate system and the country’s massive energy subsidies. The exchange rate system prices the US dollar at between VEB6.30 (the main official fixed rate) and VEB200-plus (the official Simadi free market rate). As Toro explains it, the government refuses to sell scarce dollars on the free market at a high price, but insists on selling them to state companies and others at the lowest price. The mechanism encourages corruption. A business selling its most valuable commodity exclusively to customers who will only pay the lowest price would quickly go bankrupt, but the government keeps things going by constantly printing more money through the central bank, fuelling inflation.

The second bullet hole is described as massive petrol and electricity subsidies, which lead to an equally massive misallocation of resources, also funded by printing money. Toro criticised Capriles for not talking of the need to eliminate these subsidies – in his view a necessary but politically unpopular measure. After these two “life threatening” gunshot wounds, Toro says the other afflictions lower down the treatment priority list include the fiscal deficit, expropriations of private companies, price controls, labour legislation that discourages productivity, a collapsed welfare system, and long term dependence on oil exports.

Whatever the diagnosis, the absence of hard data makes it difficult to forecast what will happen over the rest of 2015, in the period running up to congressional elections in early December. Analysts do not exclude some kind of a crunch point, such as a collapse into hyperinflation or a debt default or some combination of both; on the other hand Venezuela has shown a perhaps surprising degree of resilience. Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University has calculated the latest price increases as representing an annual 772% cost of living growth rate. “They’re very close to hyperinflation” he says. Regis Chatellier of Societé Generale says “It’s a collapsing economy with a massive shortage of dollars and these guys are printing as much money as they can to survive… The risk of a default is increasing substantially”. The pricing of Venezuela-linked derivatives in mid-July put the probability of a default within one year at 63%, up from 33% two months earlier.

Consultancy Capital Economics says that the Caracas government has taken some steps to try and stabilise the situation. In a recent report it notes a recent US$5bn loan from China “should help the economy to muddle through the next couple of months”. It too believes inflation is now in triple digits, and states that in a two-month period (May and June) the black market Bolívar plunged by 40% against the US dollars, while foreign currency reserves dropped by US$2bn. In June Venezuela withdrew US$1.5bn from its SDR deposits with the IMF, to use the money to boost its foreign currency reserves. According to the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) reserves dropped from US$22bn at the beginning of this year to US$16bn in June.

• The (illegal) ‘parallel’ (or black market) exchange rate continues to soar, trading at VEB683.3/US$ on 27 July, according to Miami-based websites that publish it daily based on trade at the Venezuela-Colombia border. The Maduro government says this published rate is “a lie” and part of the ‘economic war’ being waged against the country by international opponents of the Bolivarian Revolution.

President Michelle Bachelet last week unveiled her government’s proposed national budget for 2017. Indicative of ongoing economic pressures on the ruling left-wing Nueva Mayoría coalition government as a result of the fall in international prices of copper (Chile’s main export), the initiative proposes a 2.7% increase in overall spending compared with the previous year – the smallest increase since 2003. Bachelet maintains that the budget -which is currently being discussed by congress – will address her declared priorities of education, health and, now, security. However, it comes amid the renewed threat of protests from trade unions dissatisfied with the government’s proposed public-sector wage increase for the following year.

In an address to the nation on 29 September in which she presented the budget, President Bachelet said that over 80% of spending would go on education, health, and security – which has become a growing public concern (see sidebar). Based on projected GDP growth of 1.75% for 2016 and 2.25% in 2017, the budget proposal calls for a 6.2% increase in education spending, to reach C$9,489bn (US$14.3bn) and a 4.8% increase in health spending to reach C$7,179bn, while a 1.5% increase is earmarked for interior & public security (to reach C$3,185bn).

As regards education, Bachelet said that, among other things, the resources would provide for a new system of professional teacher development and enable a total of over 2m primary and secondary students and 140,000 higher education students to study for free.

The focus of health spending will be on primary care, with 43 community health centres; 46 emergency centres; and three new mental health community centres to begin operations over the year. Bachelet added that C$180bn would go on training healthcare specialists, meaning a further 1,087 new medical specialists would be added to the existing network.

As regards security, the budget proposal will allow for the hiring of 1,500 new militarised police, Carabineros, and the purchase of 250 new police patrol vehicles, among other things.

That the government continues to struggle in the face of slowing growth was indicated in the latest monthly economic activity index (Imacec) figures, a GDP proxy measure, released by the central bank (BCCh) on 5 September. The Imacec figures showed an increase of just 0.5% year-on-year in July, well below market expectations (1.2%).

Union unrest

On the same day that President Bachelet unveiled the budget, the Mesa del Sector Público (MDP), which groups 15 public-sector organisations, including Chile’s main umbrella union Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), staged a 24-hour national strike.

The MDP – which claimed 90% participation in the strike – staged the unrest over demands for a 7.5% public-sector wage increase. This is considerably more than the 2.9% offer made on 16 September by Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdés and Labour Minister Ximena Rincón, which was roundly rejected by union leaders, with CUT president Bárbara Figueroa, describing it as a “declaration of war on the public sector”.

The unions were quick to highlight the fact that the BCCh is projecting 3.5% inflation for 2016. According to the most recent figures from the national statistics institute (INE), published by the finance ministry on 8 September, there was no variation in the consumer price index (IPC) in August compared with the previous month, bringing the accumulated inflation rate for the year to 2.4% and the 12-month rate to 3.4%.

• Chile growth

The most recent (26 July) figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America & the Caribbean (Eclac) forecast that Chile’s GDP will grow by 1.6% in 2016, down from 2.1% in 2015 although above the -2.1% contraction forecast for South America.

• Crime

According to a poll released on 19 August by the respected local think-tank Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), criminality is the overriding public concern, mentioned as such by 44% of respondents, ahead of economic development (32%), and healthcare (30%). Yet the Bachelet government recently hailed progress vis-à-vis efforts to improve public security. On 11 August deputy secretary for crime prevention Antonio Frey and the deputy interior minister, Mahmud Aleuy, presented their balance sheet for the first half of 2016 which showed a 5.1% fall (equivalent to 14,213 fewer victims) in serious crimes compared with the same period in 2015. Aleuy also cited figures from Chile’s investigations police (PDI) indicating that homicides were down 19.2% (from 402 to 325).

GUATEMALA | Military to withdraw from citizen security efforts. At the end of last year Interior Minister Francisco Rivas told the local press that the conservative Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN-Nación) government led by President Jimmy Morales planned to phase out the use of the military in citizen security efforts. Currently some 4,200 military officers assist the national police (PNC) in these efforts – a strategy rolled out by Morales’ predecessors, as part of efforts to tackle the country’s notorious crime rates. Rivas said the planned phase-out – which will take place in two stages, with 50% of officers to be withdrawn in April 2017 and the rest by year-end – was made possible due to the sustained increase in PNC officers. This reached 37,000 following the graduation of 2,128 additional PNC officers in December 2016, with plans for a further 4,000 to graduate this year.

The use of the military in citizen security efforts has long been controversial in Guatemala. Human-rights groups argue that it contravenes the spirit of the 1996 Peace Accords ending the 36-year-long civil war which were unequivocal that the role of the military was that of “defending Guatemala’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” with “no other functions assigned to them, and their participation in other fields…limited to cooperative activities”. A United Nations (UN) Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) found agents of the state, particularly the army, were responsible for 93% of all human-rights violations committed during the war, which resulted in the death or disappearance of some 250,000 civilians. The move by President Morales, who took office for a four-year term in January 2016, was particularly noteworthy given links between the military and FCN-Nación, which was set up in 2004 by members of the military veterans’ association (Avemilgua).

At the July Caribbean Community (Caricom) Heads of Government meeting in Jamaica, the assembled leaders considered the final report of the Regional Commission on Marijuana, which the community had mandated in March 2014. In the final communique, the leaders “agree that action should be taken at the national level by the relevant authorities to review marijuana’s current status with a view to reclassification taking into account all international obligations”. The report itself could hardly have been more forthright in its condemnation of the status quo and in its arguments in favour of decriminalisation.

The Commission – consisting of 10 members – was convened in 2016 and began national consultations in June 2016. It conducted consultations in nine countries – St Vincent & the Grenadines, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Suriname, Montserrat, St Kitts & Nevis, Belize, and The Bahamas. A consultation with Dominica was cancelled because of the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria; elections got in the way of the planned consultation with Grenada; Trinidad & Tobago said it could not arrange consultations in the time available; St Lucia never replied to the invitation; and the Commission didn’t think it was necessary to consult with Jamaica given that it had already moved to decriminalise marijuana.

In its report, the Commission made no bones about its views on the status quo. It said: “The consequences of a legal regime that is grounded in prohibition and enveloped by criminal sanction, but unaccompanied by a solid evidential basis, are far and wide. They encompass questions of social justice, the efficacy of law enforcement, human rights issues and the very legitimacy of the law itself.”

The Commission also reported strong public support for a change, although this was a recent phenomenon. In Barbados, for instance, support for a reform of the law grew from below 30% in 2014 to 63% in 2017. Similar levels of support were found throughout the region; and, in Jamaica, three years after the change in the law, the report said that support for the change had grown from 70% to 90%. The Commission concluded: “The majority of Caribbean peoples believe that cannabis/marijuana laws are ineffective, discriminatory, deeply unjust, unfit for purpose, violate rights and lack legitimacy.”

The Commission accepted, however, that public support for a change was “a necessary but not sufficient condition to invoke change”. What was additionally required was evidence that any change would not do harm, and this it claimed to have found. It said that the main concerns were mental health, youthful indulgence, and the risk of increased use, but it concluded that it was satisfied that these risks “can be appropriately addressed through a responsible framework for law reform”.

The Commission declared itself unanimous in its view that the current legal regime with regard to cannabis could not be maintained “and legal reform should be a priority for Member states”. It continued that “prohibition perpetuates the illicit market which has negative implications for citizen security and attempt to ensure quality and safety in products…. This market encourages unsafe products…. It also provides undeserved opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs.”

Looking at the way forward, the Commission said that Caricom members should be looking at “the dismantling of prohibition in its totality”. However, it is not advocating a complete laisser-faire regime. On the contrary, it argues for “a strictly regulated framework akin to that for alcohol and tobacco”, in particular with the protection of young persons in mind. On the other hand, it warns that a “too limited” approach to law reform, one that focuses only on medical marijuana, “would be counterproductive”. In short, “all criminal penalties for marijuana should be removed”.

Given the strength of the Commission’s recommendations, the only surprise perhaps is that the Heads of Government were not more effusive in their support. One area of possible disagreement appears to be international treaty commitments. In its report, the Commission said that international drug conventions had lost their authority, and it said: “Caricom should not consider itself bound by these obsolete, obstructive treaty obligations, but should work with allies such as Canada, Uruguay and other Latin American states to modify them”. It also said that Caricom should come up with “a formal, regional position on the need to amend the existing UN treaties that govern cannabis”.

There was little sign of support for that recommendation from the Heads of Government in July. Rather, they seemed to prefer to put the onus back on individual countries to look to their domestic positions while, as noted at the start of this report, “taking into account all international obligations”.

Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez adjudged that the army commander, Guido Manini Ríos, had gone too far last week and summarily dismissed him. Manini Ríos had tested Vázquez’s patience for the best part of two years, publicly criticising the government’s reform of the military pension system, Caja Militar, and accusing a cabinet minister of lying. But, it was the army commander’s broadside against the justice system, which he accused of selective impartiality and convicting former military officers for human rights abuses during the dictatorship (1973-1985) without firm proof or even with forged evidence, which finally cost him his position. Manini Ríos is now weighing up whether to throw his hat into the ring for this October’s presidential elections.

Manini Ríos was on borrowed time. The national daily El País, using a football metaphor befitting a country obsessed with the beautiful game, said that Manini Ríos had been given two yellow card warnings by President Vázquez, before his outburst about the judiciary, but remained on the pitch when he should already have received a red card. El País was referring to the public concerns raised by Manini Ríos in May 2017 about the reform of the Caja Militar, which earned him administrative and disciplinary sanctions, and his outspoken criticism in a radio interview in September 2018 of the labour minister, Ernesto Murro, who he accused of “knowingly lying” about the Caja Militar reform approved by the senate shortly beforehand. This resulted in Manini Ríos being placed under ‘arresto rigoroso’ for 30 days (confining him to his private residence outside of working hours) for contravening military discipline enshrined in the constitution by intervening in political issues.

The final straw came last week when Manini Ríos said that members of the military summoned to appear before the judiciary lacked guarantees of due process and were not receiving impartial verdicts but rather being convicted “based on conjecture without reliable evidence”. His criticism followed the conviction of three retired colonels – Jorge ‘Pajarito’ Silveira Quesada, José Nino Gavazzo, and Luis Alfredo Maurente Mata – to 28 years in prison for aggravated homicides committed during the military dictatorship.

The Vázquez administration responded by issuing a forthright resolution announcing that Manini Ríos had been dismissed for “censuring the judiciary as he has done, with comments that are absolutely incompatible with the position he was filling”. It added: “In a democratic, Republican, system of government, with separation of powers, respect for the decisions of the justice system…must be a fundamental premise”.

The big question is whether, relieved of his duties, Manini Ríos will now seek to take up a career in politics. Just hours before his dismissal he had mooted as much, intimating that he might fancy a tilt at the presidency in order to annul the Caja Militar. It was widely speculated that he might head the ticket of the Partido Cabildo Abierto-Movimiento Social Artiguista (PCA-MSA), a new party launched by retired military figures. The PCA-MSA was only formally registered as a political party by the electoral court on 10 March.

Manini Ríos said this week that he had no intention of leading a military party if he decided to seek election. He did not reveal if he has any particular party in mind but he is likely to favour presenting himself as an outsider challenging the country’s traditional parties, much like Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, if he opts to run. The country’s traditional right-of-centre parties, Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos) and Partido Colorado (PC), pointedly stood behind Vázquez, a rare occurrence, accusing Manini Ríos of having crossed the line.

• Military reform

President Vázquez named José González to replace Guido Manini Ríos as army commander. González served as an adviser to the former defence minister Azucena Berrutti during Vázquez’s first term in office (2005-2010). He takes over at a time of real tension between the government and the armed forces. The government is intent on advancing a reform of the role of the military, downsizing the armed forces, changing its system of training, and promoting greater female presence in its ranks.

Haitian authorities have announced the arrest of John Joël Joseph, a former senator for the opposition Inite and key suspect in the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse (2017-2021). Detained in Jamaica, Joseph is the third suspect arrested in recent weeks in relation to the multinational investigation which produced a breakthrough at the start of the year with the arrest of Colombian national Mario Antonio Palacios [WR-22-01].

On 14 January Jamaica’s police confirmed the arrest of Joseph, who an as-yet unreleased report by Haiti’s police (PNd’H), obtained by the Associated Press (AP), suggests had several links to Moïse’s murder. According to the report, cited by the Miami Herald, Joseph paid in cash for rental cars used by the attackers and met other suspects ahead of the killing. He also reportedly introduced other suspects to Joseph Félix Badio, a leading suspect, who is currently at large [WR-21-38]. Joseph was arrested one week after Rodolphe Jaar, alias ‘Whiskey’, a Haitian businessman convicted by a US court in 2013 on drug-related charges, was detained by Dominican authorities after six months on the run. On 19 January US authorities said he had been extradited to the US.

The arrests follow that of Palacios in the US city of Miami on 4 January. Palacios has since been charged by US authorities with conspiracy to murder or kidnap Moïse. The first person allegedly involved in the case to face charges [WR-22-01], Palacios is one of a group of some 20 other Colombians accused by Haitian authorities of acting as mercenaries and assassinating Moïse.

While well-received, the arrests come as Prime Minister Ariel Henry himself is facing renewed questions over his alleged links to Badio. In September, Port-au-Prince chief prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude (who was subsequently removed from his post) had called for Henry to be charged in relation to the case. This followed Henry’s failure to heed Claude’s request to attend a hearing to answer the question of why, on the night of the murder, Henry had twice communicated with Badio [WR-21-38]. On 12 January the New York Times (NYT) published an article citing new evidence - phone records as well as interviews with Haitian officials and a principal suspect in the crime (Jaar) - which reveal “potentially incriminating details about the two men’s relationship”. According to the NYT “Badio spoke to Henry before the killing and afterward, including in two calls for a total of seven minutes the morning after the assassination”. It also claims that three Haitian officials involved in the investigation “have confirmed that Henry was in touch with Badio on multiple occasions. The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, argued that Henry would be a formal suspect in the investigation if he were not leading the government”.

NYT report

The NYT cited an “extensive interview” which took place in an empty construction site while he was on the run from the authorities, in which Jaar admitted helping finance and plan the plot to kill Moïse. According to the NYT, shortly before the assassination, Jaar said, Badio told him that Henry would serve as a useful ally after the president was overthrown. “He is my good friend, I have full control of him”, Jaar recounted Badio telling him when Henry was named prime minister, according to the NYT. According to the same report, in the hours after the killing, when police officers trapped the Colombian mercenaries accused of carrying out the assault, Jaar said Badio had sought help from Henry to escape. According to Jaar, Henry responded that “he would make some calls,” though the NYT notes that his claims could not be independently verified.

Pressure in the US over investigation

Pressure to get to the bottom of who was behind Moïse’s assassination is coming from the US. On 14 January the US senate passed a bill which prioritises the protection of human rights and anti-corruption efforts in Haiti by “fostering strong relationships with independent civil society groups”. The legislation requires the US Department of State to report on human rights abuses in Haiti and the assassination of Moïse. It also supports the efforts of the Haitian government to identify persons involved in human rights violations and significant acts of corruption in Haiti and hold them accountable for their actions. The bill was first introduced in April 2021, passed by the House of Representatives in June, and advanced in October by the senate foreign relations committee. It now heads back to the House. It has been amended following Moïse’s assassination as well as the August earthquake and tropical storm, all of which exacerbated long-term challenges facing Haiti.

If you are a small Caribbean Island jurisdiction which is heavily reliant on tourism, the arrival of a multi-billion dollar crypto exchange, bringing in new revenues and firing up the local tech start-up community sounds like it has to be a good thing. But if that exchange is called FTX and it goes bankrupt in spectacular fashion, the calculation of costs and benefits begins to look rather different.

FTX moved its global headquarters to The Bahamas in 2021. After an initial and extended honeymoon period, during which the company invested heavily in local start-ups, things went suddenly sour. In 72 hours of panic in November, some US$6bn of investor funds were withdrawn. A rescue package by Binance, a rival crypto exchange, failed. Bahamas and US-based FTX companies and subsidiaries, including Alameda Research, filed for bankruptcy. Company founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in The Bahamas in December, accused of orchestrating an “epic” fraud and is now facing criminal charges in the US. The company’s overall finances remain opaque, but the latest estimates are that after being valued at US$32bn in 2021, a total of around US$8bn of customer funds remain “missing”. For comparison, the entire GDP of The Bahamas, which has a population of 410,000 people, is around US$11bn.

One immediate problem posed by the collapse is whether local companies and suppliers – everyone from hoteliers and real estate agents through to luxury car salespeople - have been left with massive unpaid bills. Resolving this has not been helped by mutual mistrust and animosity between US-based and Bahamian liquidators. At one stage the Bahamian authorities claimed seized assets on the islands totalled US$3.5bn, while US lawyers and liquidators said they were as little as US$170m. It also matters whether assets were held in trust (which means they must be returned to their rightful owners) or were beneficially owned by FTX (meaning they can be sold to help pay off creditors). Initial research by Bahamian journalists suggests the number of suppliers left out of pocket is in reality manageable, but there could still be unpleasant surprises.

For the Bahamian government there are at least three levels of reputational risk to consider. One is whether crypto exchanges like FTX are simply beyond the pale and should never have been welcomed into the country in the first place.  One exponent of that view is economist Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at Stern School of Business, New York University, in the US, whose searing opinion is: “Literally 99% of crypto is a scam. A criminal activity. A total real-bubble Ponzi scheme that is going bust”. If that is true, the Bahamian government made a major misjudgement. At a second level, however, FTX can be seen as “one bad apple” in a “new frontiers” industry which is going through growing pains but can still offer real world benefits. Indeed, in the current global “crypto winter” the sector may retrench around stablecoins and other less volatile assets. If that’s true, Bahamians can still claim to have positioned themselves to benefit from a high-growth, hi-tech sector. At a third level Bahamian regulators could be deemed essentially untainted by the crash – after all, a certain proportion of companies always fall into bankruptcy even in the best managed and regulated jurisdictions.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the authorities in Nassau believe their regulatory approach has been adequate.  Since 2020 the industry has been regulated by the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges (DARE) Act which sets the rules for dealing in crypto, including AML/CFT (Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism) measures. It has also experimented with a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) known as the Sand Dollar. Prime Minister Philip Davis said in November that DARE remained valid and that current rules empower regulators to take “immediate steps in order to protect the interests of clients, creditors, and other stakeholders globally.” He added he was confident Bahamas would emerge from the FTX affair “with an enhanced reputation as a solid digital assets jurisdiction”.

Opposition sceptical

Leader of the opposition Michael Pintard has nevertheless questioned whether sufficient due diligence was conducted on FTX, and whether the company developed an unhealthy relationship with local politicians.