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• Morales concedes in Aymara clean water battle

  18 July 2006 Hits: 236

  Last week President Evo Morales witnessed how the protest method he had favoured during his rise in politics - blocking the highways - was used, successfully, against his government. Aymara peasants, led by the mayors of their municipalities, halted traffic between Bolivia and Peru for four days in a campaign to halt the pollution of Lake Titicaca. After a failed attempt to out-do them politically, the government gave in.

  Leading the campaign was Pedro Huanca, mayor of Laja and president of the commonwealth (mancomunidad) of 10 municipalities sited on the Titicaca basin. The problem they have been facing is undeniable: untreated effluents from El Alto, the city next to La Paz, flow down the Pallina and Karati rivers to Cohana bay on the Titicaca, polluting all along their path and threatening the livelihoods of 40 Aymara communities.

  El Alto has at least 800,000 inhabitants, four times as many as the Puchukollo water treatment plant was built to serve. Two months ago, people from the affected communities downstream briefly held hostage two deputy ministers to exact a promise that action would be taken. This time, three days into the blockade, the authorities sidestepped Huanca and his fellow mayors to negotiate a deal directly with leaders of pro-government peasant organisations which involved spending the equivalent of US$1m on solving the problem, leaving the details to the departmental prefecto (governor). The protest continued until, on 15 July, the government negotiated a more comprehensive solution, to be handled by several ministries. Rolando Zuleta, president of the independent binational (Bolivia-Peru) Lake Titicaca commission, has estimated that cleaning up Cohana bay alone would cost about US$4m. The government is talking about building two additional water treatment plants at El Alto.

• URUGUAY: Vázquez dismisses army chief

  24 July 2007 Hits: 280

  President Tabaré Vázquez stamped his authority on the armed forces last week by firing the commander-in-chief of the army for holding talks with former president Julio Marí­a Sanguinetti, a leader of the opposition Partido Colorado, and his former defence minister Yamandú Fau without seeking permission from the government. The dismissal will put more strain on relations between the government and the military.

  Vázquez said Lieutenant-General Carlos Dí­az had committed "a serious mistake_ and these mistakes, unfortunately, cannot be made." The two generals who accompanied Dí­az to the meeting on 19 October, Pedro Aguerre and Miguel Dalmao, were placed under arrest for five days. Dí­az, who was replaced by General Manuel Saavedra, accepted he had made a mistake but insisted he had been loyal to the executive.

  Vázquez explained that, as leader of the opposition, he appealed to the Sanguinetti government (1985-1990) for permission to speak to the army. Subsequent meetings were held in the defence ministry in the presence of the defence minister, he said, adding that when he appealed to President Jorge Batlle to meet the top brass in the midst of the economic crisis in 2002 he was snubbed. Sanguinetti said the meeting was no more than a friendly chat over an asado. He accused Vázquez of trying to "corral the opposition, preventing it from holding meetings with civilian or military authorities." 

  The timing of the unauthorised meeting inevitably fuelled controversy: eight former military and police officers were put on trial in September for the "disappearance" of Adalberto Soba in Buenos Aires in 1976; a ninth committed suicide. The opposition Colorados are opposed to the government's efforts to chip away at the Ley de Caducidad, the law that shields the military from prosecution over crimes committed during the dictatorship (1973-1984), which was approved during Sanguinetti's term in office.

  The opposition is becoming more strident in its criticism of the government. Sanguinetti also announced that the Colorados would join the Blancos in appealing against the appointment by presidential decree of Mirtha Guianze as public prosecutor (fiscal de corte) for a period of one year. The leader of the Blancos, Jorge Larrañaga, accused Vázquez of "putting the constitution in his pocket". He argues that the appointment was unconstitutional as it should have been approved by a three-fifths majority in the Senate. Guianze favours prosecuting members of the military implicated in human rights abuses.

• Latest data

  24 July 2007 Hits: 204

  

  

  

• US Congress seals deal on trade

  25 July 2007 Hits: 235

  The prospect of Peru and Panama securing free trade agreements with the US looks more likely after President George W. Bush clinched a deal with Democrats to include labour and environmental provisions. More is at stake with regards to the FTA with Colombia, which has become a dispute over foreign policy as much as trade. Democrats are unwilling to supply President Alvaro Uribe with the unconditional support provided by Bush.

  The Bush administration's major concession to the Democrats was to incorporate into the FTAs the five principal standards of the International Labour Organisation (ILO): freedom of association; the right to collective bargaining; prohibitions on forced labour; protections against child labour; and freedom from discrimination. Signatories will also be required to enforce their domestic environmental laws and comply with international ones. The vote in the US Congress is not a foregone conclusion but the deal has the support of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the head of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel. 

  There is some doubt over whether the Peruvian and Panamanian congress will need to re-ratify the FTA now. Peru's minister of foreign trade, Mercedes Aráoz, insists that an annexe to the agreement will suffice but opposition legislators are insisting that it should go before congress again. Uribe, meanwhile, is keen to get Colombia's legislature to approve the FTA before he heads to Washington for the second time in as many months in June to continue lobbying Congress. Not only is there marked resistance to the deal from the Democrats [WR-07-18] but also domestic approval is looking less assured as four of the five legislators arrested in the latest wave of parapolitical arrests were Uribistas.

• MEXICO: Mexico picks envoy to Venezuela

  16 August 2007 Hits: 270

  On 9 August, the Mexican government nominated Jesús Mario Chacón Carrillo, currently ambassador to Colombia, as its new ambassador to Venezuela. President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, however, indicated that he did not expect to have a summit with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez in the immediate future.

  What is clear is that relations between Mexico and Venezuela are on the mend. President Chávez used President Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic as an envoy to Calderón. Fernández had to leave the PetroCaribe summit in Caracas early on 11 August for his state visit to Mexico which finished on 13 August. Chávez told him to take his best wishes to Calderón. 

  Mexico and Venezuela are exchanging ambassadors for the first time since they withdrew them in 2005. Chacón is a career diplomat with 25 years experience. He is less of a political animal than Venezuela's new man in Mexico, Roy Chaderton, who has been foreign minister.
  What is interesting about Chacón, according to the biography circulated by the Mexican foreign ministry, is that his US experience forms only a minor part of his total career. Chávez is deeply suspicious of the US.

  Chacón has served in several posts in Europe and Japan and was a key negotiator in the European Union-Mexico accord. Chacón clearly made a good impression on the Mexican president during his pre-inauguration trip to Central and South America just before he took office as president last December.

• BRAZIL: Witch-hunt at the Ipea

  22 November 2007 Hits: 431

  The newly appointed president of the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Ipea) last week sacked four economists who published research critical of the government. The Ipea was founded during the military regime to help the federal government to design long-term economic policies. Significantly, the institute has always had a tradition of autonomy from the government. Government critics claim that this is no longer the case and suggest that the incident heralds a "witch-hunt" by President Lula da Silva's administration.

  The new Ipea president, Marcio Pochmann, denied that the dismissal of economists Regis Bonelli, Fabio Giambiagi, Otavio Tourinho and Gervasio Rezende was politically motivated. He told Veja, a news magazine, that their removal was "merely administrative" - that is to say, motivated by cost cuts in the institute. This, however, is doubtful. Pochmann was appointed by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, head of the newly created long-term planning secretariat. The new secretariat has 626 employees.

  Also, since coming to power in 2003 Lula has created more than 6,000 new positions in agencies linked directly to the presidency (such as the long-term planning secretariat), which are filled by his supporters.

  The new secretariat is controversial to say the least. The senate revoked its creation in October as unnecessary, because most of its duties can be carried out by the planning ministry on its own. Lula was subsequently forced to re-issue the decree creating it, prompting a crisis with the senate. The opposition contested the secretariat's establishment in the supreme court. The court is still deliberating. Furthermore, Mangabeira once declared that Lula's government was "the most corrupt in Brazil's republican history". He later retracted this statement, prompting accusations that he had "sold himself" to win a place in the government and that it was evidence that Lula "buys allies".

  Since the creation of the long-term planning secretariat, and the submission of Ipea to it, there have been rumours that a witch-hunt would start to get rid of all those economists critical of the government. According to Veja, the government wanted to stop the embarrassment of having the Ipea publishing criticism of its policies.

  The institute is renowned for its objectivity in Brazil and abroad. Its researchers had always been allowed to carry out their work and reach their conclusions with impartiality. Indeed, even during the military regime Ipea researchers published works critical of the government's management of the economy, and were never prevented from doing so.

  The four economists who were removed from their functions have one thing in common: they all defend a reduction in the state's involvement in the economy, criticising excessive government spending.

  They came to conclusions that went entirely against the beliefs held by members of the government's economic team, many of whom prefer a more interventionist approach to economic management. Giambiagi, for instance, researched the crisis in Brazil's social security system and published a very critical report defending the need for a wide-ranging reform.

  Many within Lula's leftwing administration, including Pochmann himself, however, are against this view.

  Authoritarian tendencies?

  • Lula's administration is facing heavy criticism for preventing debate in the government and its agencies. Apart from the recent meddling in the Ipea, Veja, a news magazine, also mentioned the extinction of the economic department of the state development bank BNDES, which defended privatisations. Another case of what Veja deemed "authoritarian tendencies" was the removal of Roberto Abdenur from the Brazilian embassy in Washington for disagreements with foreign minister Celso Amorim. Abdenur claimed that the foreign office was "indoctrinating" new recruits.

• Quotes of the Week

  06 March 2008 Hits: 213

  A flavour of the tone of the debate this week:

   

  "[…] If we don't set a precedent with this anyone claiming to be a visionary or a divine emissary, believing there to be terrorists in other countries, could invade and bomb them. Imagine where we would be then."

  - Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.

   

  "How brave the presidents of Ecuador and Venezuela have been in expelling our ambassadors, the worthy representatives of a legitimate democracy. If only they would show similar bravery in expelling terrorists from their countries."

  - Colombia's ambassador to the OAS, Camilo Ospina.

   

  "Colombia is the Israel of Latin America."

  - Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez .

   

  "Colombia proposes to denounce Hugo Chávez , President of Venezuela, in the international criminal court for sponsoring and financing genocide."

  - Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe.

• TRACKING TRENDS

  19 June 2008 Hits: 280

  PERU | Economy booming. The Peruvian economy is continuing to grow at an extraordinary rate; it expanded by 13.2% in April compared with a year earlier, according to the official statistics institute, Inei. This is the highest monthly growth rate for 13 years and brings 12-month growth to 9.57%. Growth was driven by construction (up 33.9%), fishing (28.8%) and manufacturing (16.5%).

  VENEZUELA | Economic shake-up. President Hugo Chávez has opted for a safe pair of hands in an effort to tackle Venezuela's economic travails: he has brought in Alí­ Rodrí­guez as finance minister. Rodrí­guez is a septuagenarian stalwart who served as energy and mines minister under Chávez and presided over a sweeping reform of the state oil company Pdvsa before picking up the foreign affairs portfolio and later serving as ambassador to Cuba. He replaces Rafael Isea, who is running for the governorship of Aragua in October's regional and municipal elections.
  
  The appointment of Rodrí­guez must be seen in the context of these elections. Chávez needs a trusted ally to try and steer the economy into safer waters. The economy is slowing down (year-on-year growth in the first quarter was only 4.8%) and inflation is rampant, reaching 3.2% in May alone and 31.4% in the 12 months to the end of May. Food prices in Caracas rose by 47.3% over this period. The sharp increase in the cost of food and transport is affecting the country's poorest sectors most of all. Unless Chávez reduces the burden on these sectors, which make up the core of his support, he could suffer a damaging electoral reverse.
  
  Chávez announced a series of measures last week designed to alleviate the pressure on the poor, such as agricultural subsidies and the elimination of a 1.5% tax on financial transactions - only introduced last October - which producers have simply passed on to consumers by raising prices. The president also called on the private sector to engage in a “productive alliance" with the government. He put up a development fund of US$1bn, to be funded by the recent windfall tax on the oil industry and a joint fund with China, to encourage investment in manufacturing and food output - an acknowledgement that the lack of private sector investment is damaging growth.
  
  There was no brave opening gambit from Rodrí­guez: he pledged to maintain foreign exchange and price controls and preserve social spending.

• TRACKING TRENDS

  25 September 2008 Hits: 376

  COLOMBIA | Economy slows. The economy grew by 3.7% in the second quarter, compared with 8% in the same period in 2007, the national statistics department (Dane) reported. First quarter growth was 4.1%. This all makes bleak reading for the government which estimated growth of 5% in 2008 after impressive growth of 7.35% last year, the best performance in three decades. The finance minister, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, reduced projected growth to between 3.8% and 4.2% this year. He blamed high food and fuel prices. Sales of automobiles fell 9.1% in the first eight months of the year on the same period last year to 148,976 units, partly as a result of import restrictions imposed by Venezuela.

  PERU | Wooing Brazil. Peru's President Alan Garcí­a took the unusual step of proposing “a sort of bilateral free trade agreement (FTA)" with Brazil during a visit to the country this week. He proposed that the new trade ties be negotiated outside of Mercosur and the Andean Community (CAN). Garcí­a has made no secret of the fact he feels constrained by Peru's membership of CAN when it comes to negotiating trade deals, as testified by the sharp disagreements with Bolivia's President Evo Morales over CAN's tortuous talks with the European Union (EU). He wants to modify the statutes of CAN and Mercosur to allow members to sign bilateral deals outside of the bloc. Bolivia will resist this, although Uruguay would be in favour of such a move. “The Andean Community was created 40 years ago, and Mercosur 25 years ago," he said. “They are instruments, and not ends in themselves, which have to change, adapt or complement new currents and one way of doing that is with a big bilateral agreement between Brazil and Peru." Garcí­a also eulogised Brazil's hemispheric leadership role, and called on Lula to drive integration efforts in South America.

• CHILE: Zaldí­var candidacy will benefit opposition

  15 January 2009 Hits: 514

  Adolfo Zaldí­var will run for the presidency in December for the Partido Regionalista de los Independientes (PRI). Zaldí­var was expelled from the Democracia Cristiana (DC) - the largest party in the ruling Concertación - one year ago, since when he has been a persistent thorn in the side of the government. He became president of the senate, and a handful of deputies who supported him also left the DC to join the PRI, stripping the Concertación of its majority in both chambers of congress. His presence in the presidential contest will deprive both the Concertación and the opposition coalition Alianza por Chile of votes, but the former will be most affected, especially as ex president Eduardo Frei (DC) looks likely to secure the nomination of the Concertación.
   
  The PRI competed as part of Chile Limpio, along with the Partido Ecologista, in last October's municipal elections. It made a pretty impressive debut, winning 8% of council seats and seven mayoral seats. A poll conducted by the national daily La Tercera shortly after the elections suggested Zaldí­var would win 7% for the PRI in the first round of presidential elections in December. This led the standardbearer of the Alianza, Sebastián Piñera, to court the PRI for a second-round alliance to take votes from the Concertación. Zaldí­var knows if the PRI wins the sum of the difference between the Concertación and Alianza candidate in the first round (up to 10%) it would cast him in the role of kingmaker in the run-off, able to dictate terms to both parties in exchange for the PRI's support.

  Zaldí­var's candidacy is intriguing. Ironically, given that the DC suffered the most serious setbacks in the municipal elections, it means that the electorate is likely to have a choice of three Christian Democrats in the elections: Zaldí­var, a DC dissident; Piñera, whose father, José Piñera Carvallo, was a founding member of the DC, and to which Piñera belonged until 1989 and still admits an emotional affinity; and Frei. Frei may yet have to compete in primary elections for the Concertación nomination. A deputy representing the Partido Socialista (PS), Marco Enrí­quez-Ominami, said this week that he would stand against Frei and José Antonio Gómez, a senator for the Partido Radical Socialdemócrata (PRSD).

  Zaldí­var has taken control of the party which welcomed him when he was a DC outcast. One of the DC dissidents who left with Zaldí­var, Jaime Mulet, is now PRI president: the two men are refashioning the PRI as an independent party providing an alternative to the centralised national political panorama in Chile, and competing for the centre ground by taking votes from disillusioned supporters of the country's two main coalitions. They are also trying to expunge the party's image as a refuge for retired Pinochetistas.

  The PRI formed in July 2006 after two parties with powerbases in the far north and far south of Chile fused. Juan Carlos Moraga, Mulet's predecessor and one of the founders of the party, was a Socialist who opposed the 1973 coup and was exiled under the Pinochet dictatorship. He returned clandestinely six years later. Socialists accuse Moraga of selling out to Pinochet and denouncing them: the Partido Socialista Chileno he set up in 1988 sought to support Pinochet.

  Moraga welcomed the DC dissidents into the PRI last year to help expand the party, but he now accuses them of usurping power. He argues that Mulet broke party statutes by becoming president within six months of joining the PRI.

• CHILE: Piñera struggles to preserve opposition unity

  23 April 2009 Hits: 475

  The likely presidential candidate of the opposition coalition Alianza por Chile, Sebastián Piñera, is battling to resolve sharp differences between his centre-right Renovación Nacional (RN) and the right-wing Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI). The crux of the dispute is the selection of candidates for December's congressional elections, and the UDI's difficulty in accepting it is no longer the senior partner in the coalition. The upshot: the Alianza failed to capitalise on the travails of the ruling Concertación, which faced an awkward week as the umbrella trade union, Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) organised a general strike.

  Senator Pablo Longueira, a big-hitter in the UDI, resigned from Piñera's campaign team last week. The vice-president of the RN, Manuel José Ossandón, followed suit. Longueira resigned over the RN's decision to nominate Nicolás Monckeberg to stand against the president of the lower chamber, Rodrigo Álvarez (UDI) in an electoral district in Greater Santiago, in December's elections. Longueira said he would run Álvarez's campaign.

  Piñera has struggled to contain the tension between the UDI and the RN since announcing that both parties could field their own congressional candidates to compete against each other rather than presenting a joint slate. Piñera promised to back all the Alianza candidates equally but he has failed to defuse the tension.

  Piñera's own campaign received a setback when he was publicly insulted by the relatives of a girl killed on a public bus. Piñera had attended the girl's funeral wake in a poor barrio in southern Santiago, but he was forced to scrap a planned speech on urban insecurity after the girl's relatives accused him of seeking to derive political capital out of their grief. The images were broadcast on all the main television networks. Piñera excited further controversy by claiming that Ema, the daughter of the finance minister, Andrés Velasco, had only survived a serious accident in a swimming pool in February because of her father's position. He said ordinary families would never have got hospital treatment so quickly.

  • CUT strike

  The CUT trade union staged a nationwide strike on 16 April. One key demand was for the government to abolish a labour reform introduced under the Pinochet regime allowing companies to dismiss employees to safeguard the viability of the company. There were 50 arrests in central Santiago, where the police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse a march of an estimated 12,000 people. Some 150 people were arrested countrywide. The strike contrasts with the surge in President Michelle Bachelet's popularity in opinion polls (now at its highest level since she took office) due to her perceived good handling of the global economic crisis.

• Quotes of the Week

  30 July 2009 Hits: 464

  “God spare us a war [...] but this does not depend on us [...] We are ready to die, but Venezuela will never ever again be a colony of the yanquis or anyone else."

  - Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez after discerning a 'pattern of aggression' against Venezuela by the US, Colombia and Israel.

  “Both gentlemen are clearly violating national and international norms by issuing a call to violence and insurrection from Nicaraguan territory against the neighbouring sovereign nation of Honduras."

  - Ví­ctor Boitano Coleman, former colonel of the Sandinista army and lawyer, announcing that he will be suing President Daniel Ortega and ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya before Nicaragua's supreme court.

  “I reckon that this could end in an armed struggle. I am very afraid. And the Right, the oligarchs and the military should reflect deeply on what may come next."

  - Bolivia's President, Evo Morales on the situation in Honduras.

• EL SALVADOR: "New-look" congress begins to yield results

  13 November 2009 Hits: 373

  President Mauricio Funes and his ruling left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí­ para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) are beginning to reap the benefits of the recent schism in the main rightwing opposition Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) [WR-09-43]. The subsequent changes in the legislative directorate have strengthened the FMLN's hand in congress, and the ease with which the 2010 state budget was passed illustrated Funes' extra room for manoeuvre.
   
  On 31 October legislators voted to expand the 11-seat congressional directorate by two seats in order to represent the Arena rebel bloc, now known as the Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana). The Gana is now the third most significant grouping in the 84-seat congress, with 12 legislators, after the FMLN, with 35 and Arena, now with 20. Both new seats went to the Gana, while the Arena lost one of its three seats to the now Gana member, Guillermo Gallegos. The FMLN, which has three directorate seats,  also took an additional seat from the rightwing Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC) during the negotiations. Also approved was the decision to rotate the congress leadership between the rightwing Partido de Conciliación Nacional (PCN) - which has ten votes and currently holds the presidency - and the FMLN, serving to further bolster the influence of the ruling party.

  The first tangible result of the shift in power emerged after less than a week; on 6 November congress approved the 2010 state budget for US$2.65bn, with 64 votes in favour and 20 abstentions (all Arena). The new budget, a modest US$26.5m advance on the 2009 plan, included amendments to the original bill, in line with FMLN recommendations. These changes include the re-allocation of funds from the finance ministry, the supreme justice court and the electoral court towards education, health and defence (which received an additional US$5.4m, US$5.1m and US$500,000 respectively); as well as the attorney general's office (which got a further US$1m), and the University of El Salvador (an additional US$200,000).

  Amnesty law again
  In a further barometer of the shifting political climate, Funes last week publicly acknowledged the role of the state in two of El Salvador's most horrific crimes, which could spell further problems for Arena and the Right. On 2 November he announced that the six Jesuit priests killed by a government death squad in 1989 would receive El Salvador's highest honour as a “public act of atonement". The priests had been fierce critics of human rights violations perpetrated by the army during the civil war (1980-1992) and the case remains highly sensitive. Arena's current leader and former president, Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994), has faced charges in Spain of concealing crimes against humanity and other offences, which were subsequently dropped due to questions of jurisdiction.

  Four days later, the government's human rights lawyer, David Morales, informed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that it would set up a committee to investigate another notorious case of extra-judicial killing - the 1980 assassination of the archbishop of San Salvador Óscar Arnulfo Romero, also murdered by right-wing death squads. The case implicates the founder of Arena itself, the late Roberto D'Aubuisson.

  The IACHR had already ruled in 2000 that El Salvador had violated basic human rights for its role in Romero's murder and issued a directive ordering the government to undertake a complete judicial investigation; make reparations and ultimate nullify the 1992 general amnesty law exempting all war crimes from prosecution - widely considered the biggest hurdle to addressing the impunity which afflicts the country. Unsurprisingly, subsequent Arena administrations failed to comply. While Morales pledged commitment to the first two aspects of the directive, he stopped short of the latter, on the grounds that such a repeal was not solely within the power of the executive branch - no doubt a sign of the issue's continued political sensitivity. However the shift in balance in the legislature suggests that the move is not out of the question.

  • Floods

  Funes was forced to declare a national state of emergency this week after floods and landslides claimed 157 lives (with the toll still rising), left 80 missing and 12,930 homeless - the worst natural disaster to afflict the country since Hurricane Stan in October 2005, which caused 69 deaths.
     The capital San Salvador and the central San Vicente province were particularly badly struck, while other affected areas included Cuscatlán, La Libertad and La Paz. In San Vicente, 355mm (14 inches) of rain fell in 24 hours on 7-8 November - the most intense rain in more than a decade.  The rains were attributed to a disturbed weather area off the Pacific coast of El Salvador, an indirect effect of Hurricane Ida, which passed to the east of the country several days earlier.
      The Funes government has yet to put an official estimate on the cost of the damage although Carlos Cáceres, the treasury minister, estimated some US$1bn would be required to deal with the emergency and reconstruction, with the cost of rebuilding roads expected to total some US$88m.  The national agriculture chamber (Camagro) has also estimated US$32.5m in losses to crops including corn and beans - the staples of poor Salvadoreans.
      While El Salvador has historically suffered various natural disasters, due to its geographical location and natural dynamics (it has suffered no less than ten major disasters since 2000), Funes blamed the extent of the tragedy on past Arena governments, which he accused of failing to put in place prevention measures that could have mitigated the worst effects of the floods.

  • Army

  President Mauricio Funes announced the army would be deployed to assist the police in fighting crime over the next six months, an idea he had floated in recent weeks in response to the country's appalling security problem [WR-09-43]. An additional 2,500 soldiers will be sent to 19 municipalities and 28 crime hotspots in the five departments of Sonsonate, La Libertad, Santa Ana, San Miguel and San Salvador.

• MEXICO: Mexico backs away from FTA with Brazil

  12 March 2010 Hits: 293

  Mexico's economy minister, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, testified to the trade and industry committee of the Mexican senate on 9 March about the prospect of a free trade agreement (FTA) with Brazil. Ruiz Mateos said that Mexico would only go into a deal if it secured major concessions from Brazil. Progress towards a Brazil-Mexico FTA was one of the main results of the Grupo Rio summit in Mexico on 22 and 23 February.

  Ruiz Mateos stated that the Mexican government will only sign an FTA with Brazil if it is clear that Mexican business will not be disadvantaged. Mexican businessmen have long argued against an FTA with Brazil because they claim that Brazil has lots of non-tariffs barriers which complicate the business of exporting there.

  What Mexico wants in particular, Ruiz Mateos said, is a commitment from Brazil not to impose non-tariff barriers on Mexican products. Mexico also wants tender treatment for those industries it regards as strategically significant. One of these industries is likely to be the shoe industry, which has a powerful lobby in the Mexican congress.

  Brazil is the world's third biggest producer of shoes while Mexico is struggling to hold its position as the 10th biggest producer. In both countries, the shoe industry is geographically concentrated. In Mexico, the state of Guanajuato (controlled by the ruling Partido Acción Nacional) feels itself to be highly vulnerable to Brazilian competition from the Brazilian shoe industry which is based in Franca, in the state of São Paulo.

  Ruiz Mateos tried to argue that an FTA with Brazil would help Mexican industry, which needs to diversify away from the US, and that Brazil is a promising alternative to the US. The US currently accounts for about 80% of Mexico's manufactured exports. In 2009 Mexico exported US$185bn worth of products to the US but only US$2.2bn to Brazil. Mexico's total exports in 2009 came to US$229.7bn.

  The rationale for an FTA is obvious. The two countries have the biggest economies in Latin America, a combined GDP of US$2.7 trillion, and a combined population of just over 300m people.

  Ruiz Mateos wants negotiations with Brazil to cover issues such as services; investment; public sector tenders; intellectual property rights, as well as the usual debate about tariff levels.

  The minister's caution (and the hostility in the senate) means that the memorandum of understanding to start preliminary discussions about an FTA may wither. The memorandum was signed at the Rio Group summit by President Felipe Calderón and his Brazilian peer Lula da Silva.

  • Inflation
    The consumer price index rose by 0.58% in February bringing the rate for the past 12 months to 4.83%. The main reason for the pickup in inflation in February was an increase in fresh food prices, mostly fruit and vegetables.
    

• MEXICO: Sense of crisis grows

  30 June 2010 Hits: 210

  Mexico's success in the World Cup appears to be the only bright point in a political and economic miasma. On 23 June, the editorial column in Reforma, the main Mexico City newspaper, ruminated on the forthcoming gubernatorial elections in 12 states. These elections matter because they are the antepenultimate test of public opinion before the 2012 presidential elections. Reforma's conclusion was that the scandals surrounding these gubernatorial elections may only be an overture to a truly vicious and dirty campaign in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. Given that the country is already fighting, and apparently not winning, a war against organised crime, the prospect of politics and gangsterism becoming inextricably entwined is deeply gloomy.  

  Reforma's editorial focused on the unscrupulousness of the current election campaign. At least two of the gubernatorial candidates, Gregorio Sánchez Martí­nez in Quintana Roo and Jesús Vizcarra Calderón in Sinaloa, have questions to answer over their links to drug gangs. Sánchez, the left-wing candidate, is in jail and barred from standing; Vizcarra, however, is still running (and likely to win) as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional's   (PRI) candidate for state governor,   despite being close enough to one of the country's top gangsters, Ismael “El Mayo" Zambada, to appear in photos with him. A third gubernatorial candidate was dismissed by Reforma as a major league womaniser, while a fourth, Reforma noted, has had to fight off press speculation that he was a transvestite.

  These ad hominem attacks and allegations are a clear product of the dirtiness of the election campaign. It is almost a given in Mexican elections that incumbents try to tilt the elections to help their chosen successor. Until the mid-1990s there was the tradition of the “destape" when an incumbent president or governor picked his successor and then committed the government's resources to securing that candidate's victory. President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1994-2000) is the only president to keep himself out of the political fray: he forced the then-ruling PRI to hold a primary to choose its candidate for the 2000 elections and was quick to endorse Vicente Fox Quesada, from the opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) as the winner of the July 2000 presidential election. Fox was the first non-PRI president since the Mexican Revolution.

  Although 38% of the national electorate can vote in this year's 12 gubernatorial elections, the key elections are in four states: Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz. In each of these states the perceived closeness of the election has produced a host of dirty tricks. In all four states the candidates from the incumbent PRI look on course to win. Indeed the PRI may win all 12 gubernatorial elections which will give the party huge momentum going into 2012. Equally importantly, the non-PRI parties, which currently run three of the 12 states going to the polls on 4 July, will be disheartened if the PRI juggernaut proves unstoppable.

  Perhaps perversely, it is distinctly possible that the better the PRI does in the current elections, the more likely it is to face a united opposition in 2012. One of the features of the current gubernatorial elections is the number of “Stop the PRI" alliances. The most important of these is in Oaxaca, but Puebla and Hidalgo also have such alliances.

  The PAN and the main left-wing parties, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), Convergencia and the Partido del Trabajo (PT), however, failed to forge an alliance in Veracruz, the biggest state going to the polls on 4 July. On 17 June, the governor of Veracruz accused the PAN, which holds the presidency of the country, of spying on him. The state is currently ruled by the PRI but in the last election, six years ago, 60% of the voters backed rival candidates, leaving Fidel Herrera to win with just 35% support. This year's election looks equally tight. The main challenger to the PRI candidate, Javier Duarte de Ochoa, is Miguel Angel Yunes from the PAN-Partido Nueva Alianza. The third candidate is Dante Delgado, from Convergencia, who got 28% of the votes six years ago.

  Herrera accused the PAN of illegally tapping his private conversations. These show him offering PRI candidates cash and support to help their campaigns. Technically, the governor should be neutral during the campaign. Herrera does not deny that the voice is his, but argues that under the constitution, private telephone calls are privileged communications.

  More seriously, Herrera claims that the PAN has been using state agencies to tap his phones for purely political purposes. Herrera demanded to know why his phones were tapped. Usually a judicial warrant is needed for a telephone tap. Herrera argues that there is nothing criminal in what he said in the calls.   The non-PRI candidates disagree and claim that he has broken the law by allowing state money to be used for electoral purposes.

  Of this year's four key elections, probably the most important (in terms of what it means for 2012) is in Oaxaca. Oaxaca is the state where a “Stop the PRI alliance" has the best chance of victory. The implications of a PRI defeat here would be ominous for Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI governor of the Estado de México (which is the major election of 2011). Peña Nieto is widely seen as the most likely PRI presidential nominee for 2012.

  The alliance has coalesced behind Gabino Cué Monteagudo. He is backed by the PAN, the PRD and its two allies, the PT and Convergencia. Cué is up against a PRI candidate, Eviel Pérez Magaña, who is backed by the current (controversial) governor of the state, Ulises Ruiz, and the Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM). There are two other candidates, Irma Piñeiro, from the Panal, which is backed by the teachers' union which opposes Ruiz in Oaxaca. The other candidate, Marí­a de los Angeles Abad Santibañez, is a dissident Panista who opposes Cué.

  The problem for the alliance is that Cué, according to the opinion polls, is running only neck-and-neck with Magaña. If the alliance cannot defeat the PRI candidate nominated and supported by governor Ruiz, it will disappoint a host of its backers who are dismayed at Ruiz's authoritarianism. Ruiz forced the federal government to send in about 5,000 federal police to retake control of the centre of Oaxaca at the end of October 2009. The city had been controlled by radical protesters since mid-June 2009. The protesters, the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), were originally led by the teachers' union but steadily became more radical.

  In Oaxaca, where 2.5m people can vote, 44% of those polled by Reforma disapprove of Ruiz, but 41% approve. Not quite half (45%) of those polled, know the date of the election. This fact is often used by pollsters as a proxy for those people who will actually vote.

  In Hidalgo, Xóchitl Gálvez, who was commissioner for indigenous affairs in the government of President Vicente Fox, is running for the broad alliance “Hidalgo nos Une". She is backed by the PAN, PRD and Convergencia. She is up against Francisco Olvera from the PRI, whose party claims that not only will he win the governorship easily but that the PRI will win all 18 of the first-past-the-post seats in the state congress. In the opinion polls, the PRI is slightly ahead of Gálvez.

  In Puebla, the opposition is still clearly behind. An opinion poll on 23 June put the opposition seven percentage points behind the PRI. The opposition is in an alliance, “Compromiso por Puebla"; the backers of this alliance are the PAN, the PRD, Panal, and Convergencia. The Compromiso's candidate is Rafael Moreno Valle, and the PRI's candidate is Javier López Zavala. Again, Zavala is also backed by the PVEM.

  The current (PRI) governor of Puebla, Mario Marín Torres, is controversial (and unpopular with the left-wing media) for using the state police to arrest an investigative journalist, Lydia Cacho, who had discovered a child prostitution ring in Cancún, implicating Kamel Nacif - a businessman friend of the governor's. Arguably, a defeat in Puebla will be more serious for the PRI than a defeat in Oaxaca. The PRI has never been challenged in the state and is not yet used to the experience.
  

  Gubernatorial elections
  State                                     controlled by
  Aguascalientes                    PAN
  Chihuahua                                  PRI
  Durango                                     PRI
  Hidalgo                                          PRI
  Oaxaca                                          PRI
  Puebla                                            PRI
  Quintana Roo                      PRI
  Sinaloa                                          PRI
  Tamaulipas                           PRI
  Tlaxcala                                   PAN*
  Veracruz                                 PRI
  Zacatecas                                PRD
  *PRI defector is governor

  Telephone tapping

Purificación Carpinteyro, a former deputy transport and communications minister in President Felipe Calderón's administration, called for the president of the PAN, César Nava (who was formerly President Felipe Calderón's private secretary) to be arrested for illegal telephone tapping in Veracruz. The irony is that she was sacked by Calderón for leaking disparaging comments made by her boss about a previous president.