miércoles, 15 de octubre de 2014
jueves, 9 de octubre de 2014
Rouseff and Neves for Brazil's presidency(1)
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| Marina Silva (center) was defeated in Brazil's first round of presidential elections. |
The dream of electing Brazil’s first
black president, an environmental activist from the Amazon jungle, lasted only
40 days and was frustrated in Sunday’s elections. In the end, it is the two
parties that have dominated Brazilian politics for the last 20 years that will
face off in the second round of voting on Oct. 26.
Former environment minister Marina Silva, who was briefly the
frontrunner in the polls after she was named presidential candidate by the
Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) on Aug. 16, saw her popularity plunge in the
last three weeks. She came in third, with 21 percent of the vote.
Aecio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy
Party (PSDB), which governed Brazil from 1995 to 2003 under former president
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party
(PT), garnered 33.5 and 41.6 percent of the vote, respectively.
Improvisation, a result of her sudden
designation as candidate and the diverse coalition that backed her up, headed
by the party that thrust her into the race, may have contributed to her failure
and makes the political future of the black former Amazon activist unclear.
If projections are borne out, the economy will
be the central focus of the new campaign, which will be the sixth time since
1994 that the PSDB and the PT, both of which have a social democratic
orientation, face off at the polls.
But in elections characterized by sudden
shifts, such as Silva’s rise and fall, a new surprise could come from a scandal
at Brazil’s state-run oil giant Petrobras, involving billions of dollars in
kickbacks over the last decade.
During part of that period, Rousseff chaired
the Petrobras board.
The investigation is in the hands of the
police and the legal authorities. But the names of some politicians and
companies implicated in the scandal have been leaked to the press.
The fear, especially in the government, is
that other information will come to light.
The opposition criticizes the current
administration for what it calls errors in the management of the economy, which
it says have led to the current stagnation, high inflation, fiscal
deterioration and imbalances in the external accounts.
But Rousseff, for her part, can point to the
low unemployment rate – just five percent in August – the result of the
generation of millions of jobs during the nearly 12 years of PT government, as
well as the progress made in income distribution and poverty reduction.
The results of the Oct. 5 elections also
reflect a geographically and socially polarized country. In the industrialized
south and the state of São Paulo in particular, the strong desire to unseat the
PT gave rise to a “useful vote” cast by many who, as they saw Silva’s
popularity decline, threw their support behind Neves. In the state of São
Paulo, Neves took 44 percent of the vote, compared to Rousseff’s 22 percent.
The PT’s strongest backing is in the
impoverished Northeast, which has only slightly more voters than São Paulo. The
president took nearly 60 percent of the vote in the Northeast, Brazil’s poorest
region. The country thus remains ideologically
divided, since the first victory by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
(2003-2011).
Please read Brazil, page 2.
Rouseff and Neves for Brazil's presidency(2)
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| Aecio Neves and Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff. |
Brazil, page 2.
The two rivals are now both hoping to win the
support of Silva and the coalition that backed her, headed by the socialists,
which could be decisive in the runoff.
The difference between the moderate left-wing
Rousseff and the business-friendly centrist Neves in the first round was 8.37
million votes, while Silva took 22.17 million votes.
What is still unclear is the direction that
will be taken by the heterogeneous coalition headed by the PSB. In 2010, when
the environmentalist ran for president as the Green Party (PV) candidate, she
won 19.3 percent of the vote and remained neutral during the campaign for the
runoff between candidates of the same two parties as today.
But the situation was very different back
then. Silva presented herself as a third alternative, criticizing the polarization
between the PT and the PSDB, and setting forth her own proposals.
Dissatisfied with the PV, she abandoned the
Greens to create the Sustainability Network, aimed at promoting
socioenvironmental sustainability and a new way of doing politics.
But her group did not achieve the necessary
492,000 signatures to become a political party because the electoral court
failed to validate 95,000 signatures. Silva then decided to join the PSB, which
named her vice presidential candidate on the ticket led by socialist leader
Eduardo Campos.
However, Campos died in a plane crash on Aug. 13 and Silva
replaced him as presidential candidate. Seen as the leader who best represented
the widespread discontent that fueled the June 2013 nationwide protests,
her popularity soared, until she was ahead of Rousseff in the opinion polls.
But the future of Silva, who took only two
percentage points more of the vote than in the 2010 elections, is now cloudy.
Her political and personal weaknesses were revealed by the harassment from her
opponents, especially the Rousseff campaign, which mounted aggressive ad
attacks against the other woman in the race.
For example, the PT charged that Silva would
eliminate the Bolsa Familia program, which provides cash transfers to nearly 14
million poor households, would reduce investments in pre-salt oil fields
exploration, and would hand power over to the bankers.
Under Brazil’s election laws, Silva’s team had
just two minutes of electoral programming on nightly television – hardy enough
time to defend herself from the allegations, let alone set forth her
environmental proposals, which brought her international renown, or other
attractive points on her platform, such as a “renewal of democracy”.
Because free electoral programming time in
Brazil is proportionate to the parliamentary representation of each coalition,
Rousseff had 11 minutes a day of broadcasting time.
For the second round, the time allotted is the
same for both candidates: 10 minutes each.
But the ambiguous policy proposals and
reversals that marked Silva’s campaign also hurt her image. She started out by
reversing her stance just after the socialist party officially announced its
support for same-sex marriage and other rights for homosexuals. She later fell
into other contradictions regarding her record in the Senate.
Nor did Silva perform well in the televised
debates.
It is not yet known whether she will stay with
the PSB, which was left without a strong leader to hold it together, or will go
it alone with her Sustainability Network. The socialists seem to be coming
apart: some of the PSB’s leaders have already come out in favor of Neves, while
others have ties to the governing PT.
On the economic front, Silva’s advisers are
close to their counterparts in the PSDB, which would push her towards
supporting that party’s candidate in the second round. To that is added the
accusations by the PT, which include the label “neoliberal” because of Silva’s
economic orientation.
Backing either of the two candidates still in
the race would hurt her central stance, which is to lead a third route to
overcome the polarization between the PT and the PSDB while renovating and
cleaning up Brazilian politics.
sábado, 4 de octubre de 2014
Anti-protest laws create conflicts in Mexico(1)
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| San Bernanrdino Chalchihuapan residents fought police about a roadblock. |
People in the town of San Bernardino Chalchihuapan in the
central Mexican state of Puebla found out the hard way that protesting can be
deadly.
A new law passed in Puebla makes it possible for police to use
firearms or deadly force to break up demonstrations.
Local inhabitants felt the impact of the
measure during a harsh crackdown on a protest against another law that they say
undermines their autonomy.
A dead 13-year-old boy, another who lost three
fingers, a third with a broken jaw and teeth knocked out, a driver who lost an
eye, and 37 others injured by beatings and tear gas were the price this Nahua
indigenous town of 3,900 people paid for blocking a road to demand the repeal
of a state law that transferred responsibility over civil registries from local
community authorities to the municipalities.
“It’s not fair that they attack the people
like this just because we are asking that our community life, our authorities,
be respected,” said Vianey Varela, a first year high school student.
On Jul. 9, when local residents blocked the
Puebla-Atlixco highway some 150 km from Mexico City, the state police first
used the powers given to them by the Law to Protect Human Rights and Regulate
the Legitimate Use of Force by the police, which the state legislature passed
in May.
The “Ley Bala” or Bullet Law, as it was dubbed
by journalists, allows Puebla state police to use firearms as well as
“non-lethal weapons” to break up “violent” protests and during emergencies and
natural disasters.
The roadblock was mounted to protest another
state law approved in May, which took away from the local authorities the
function of civil registry judges or clerks and put it in the hands of the
municipal governments.
As a result, since May, in at least 190
villages and towns in the state, no one has been born, no one has died, and no
one has been married – at least officially, because there are no records.
Javier Montes said that he became “presidente auxiliar”- a post
just under mayor – of San Bernardino Chalchihuapan in
May, but added that “I still haven’t signed a thing. The archives are in our
care, but we don’t have stamps or the necessary papers. And in the municipal
presidency [mayor’s office] they don’t know what to do, so in the meantime nothing
is being registered.”
“We sent letters to all the authorities,” said
Montes, who has received anonymous threats for speaking out. “They never
responded. When the ink and paper ran out, and our fingers were worn out from
so much typing, we went out to protest and this is what happened.”
The town is in the municipality of Ocoyucan and the local
inhabitants belong to the Nahua indigenous community. According to the latest
estimates by the government’s National Commission for the
Development of Indigenous Peoples, the native population of Puebla
is one million people – one quarter of the state’s total population. In Mexico’s municipalities there is a
“presidente” or mayor, and “presidentes auxiliares”, who are the highest level
authorities in the communities, many of which are remote and located far from
the seat of the municipal government.
Read Puebla, page 2.
Anti-protest laws create conflicts in Mexico(2)
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| Puebla Gov. Rafael Moreno Valle. |
Puebla, page 2.
The presidentes auxiliares name the police
chief and run the town. And up to May they were also the civil registry judges
or clerks.
They are directly elected by local voters
without participation by the political parties, and they tend to be highly
respected local leaders who are close to the people.
In the Jul. 9 police crackdown, 13-year-old
José Luis Alberto Tehuatlie was hit by a rubber bullet in the head and died
after 10 days in coma. On Jul 16, a district judge in Puebla cancelled the
Bullet Law, and said the excessive use of police force against civilians who protest
in public is illegal.
The Puebla state government initially denied
that rubber bullets had been used. But the public outrage over the boy’s death
forced National Action Party (PAN) Gov. Rafael Moreno to announce that he would
also repeal the law.
Puebla is not the only place in Mexico where
there have been attempts to regulate public protests. In the last year, the
legislatures of five states have discussed similar bills.
The first was, paradoxically, the Federal
District, in Mexico City, which has been governed by the leftwing Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) since 1997.
In the capital street protests are a daily
occurrence, but since the very day that Enrique Peña Nieto was sworn in as
president, on Dec. 1, 2012, demonstrations and marches have frequently turned
violent.
A Federal District bill on public
demonstrations, introduced in December 2013 by lawmakers from the rightwing PAN,
failed to prosper.
In April, the southeastern state of Quintana
Roo, ruled by the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), became the
first part of Mexico to regulate protests.
A state law, the “Ley de Ordenamiento Cívico”,
known as the “anti-protest law,” is a toned-down version of another initiative
that would have required demonstrators to apply for a permit to protest at
least 48 hours ahead of time.
But the law maintains the ban on roadblocks
and allows the police “to take pertinent measures” against demonstrators.
Other initiatives to regulate and allow the
“legitimate use of force” have been adopted in the states of San Luis Potosí
and Chiapas.
Global rights groups like Article 19 and Amnesty
International have spoken out strongly against these laws aimed
at regulating demonstrations, pointing to a worrisome tendency towards the
criminalization of social protests in Mexico since 2012.
But the governmental National Human Rights Commission has
failed to make use of its legal powers to promote legal action challenging the
anti-protest initiatives as unconstitutional.
On the contrary, in October 2013 it recommended
that the Senate amend Article 9 of the constitution referring to the freedom to
hold public demonstrations and to the use of public force.
The Jul. 9 protest was not the first time
rubber bullets have been used in Puebla.
Just hours before Tehuatlie’s death was
confirmed, the Puebla state secretary of public security, Facundo Rosas, showed
a document from the secretariat of national defense which indicated that the
government had not purchased rubber bullets under the current administration.
However, in December 2011 the state human
rights commission rebuked the Puebla police chief for the use of rubber bullets
to evict local residents of the community of Ciénega Larga, when 70-year-old
Artemia León was injured, as reported by the Eje Central online news site.
It became clear in conversations held with
people in San Bernardino Chalchihuapan that they are very angry. Hundreds of
people attended the boy’s funeral, on Jul. 22, where many of them called for
the governor’s resignation.
“Why doesn’t he try the rubber bullets on his
own kids,” said one man after the funeral, which was attended by some 40
“presidentes auxiliares” from other communities.
So far no one has been held accountable for
the boy’s death.
Argentina: deuda odiosa o mala gestión(1)
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| Un protestante conta los "fondos buitre" en Cleveland, Ohio. |
Argentina se enfrenta a Estados Unidos en la Corte Internacional
de Justicia de La Haya porque un tribunal de Nueva York bloqueó el pago que el
gobierno argentino acordó en 2005 y 2010 con la mayoría de sus acreedores, lo
que resalta la necesidad de un mecanismo internacional para los países que caen
en quiebra.
Mejor aún sería un plan monetario mundial
sostenible que evite la necesidad de la quiebra soberana.
Argentina cayó en un mar de deudas tras años de políticas
económicas neoliberales impuestas por el Fondo
Monetario Internacional (FMI). La grave crisis de 2001 la
arrojó a la mayor suspensión de pagos de una deuda soberana de la historia
mundial.
En 2005 renegoció la deuda que mantenía con la
mayoría de sus acreedores con un recorte de 70 por ciento, a la que siguió otra
restructuración de los bonos argentinos en 2010. Pero los llamados fondos
buitre, ultra especulativos, que habían adquirido los bonos argentinos a
precios rebajados, reclamaron el pago integral.
El fondo Elliott Management, del
estadounidense Paul Singer, pasó más de 10 años intentando que Argentina pagara
casi 1,300 millones de dólares de bonos soberanos. Este fondo obtendría unos
300 millones de dólares por los títulos que, según el gobierno argentino,
adquirió por 48 millones.
La mayoría de los acreedores aceptaron el pago
con una pérdida de 70 por ciento, pero Elliott Management ganaría un beneficio
de 600 por ciento sobre su inversión.
En junio de 2014, la Corte Suprema de Estados
Unidos rechazó la apelación a la orden de un tribunal de Nueva York, presidido
por el juez Thomas Griesa, que bloqueó el pago de los demás acreedores hasta
que los fondos buitre recibieran el suyo.
Ese dictamen llevó a Argentina, según algunas
calificadoras de riesgo, a un nuevo impago, parcial, que sería el segundo de
este siglo y el octavo desde 1827. Pero el gobierno de la presidenta Cristina
Fernández niega que tal default (suspensión de pagos) exista, dado que
depositó los vencimientos de junio en un banco fiduciario y fue esa entidad la
que no los entregó a los acreedores.
El 7 de agosto, Argentina solicitó a la Corte
Internacional de Justicia de La Haya que tomara medidas contra
Estados Unidos para dirimir la disputa.
¿Quién tiene la culpa? Los grandes medios
financieros del mundo la atribuyen a la mala gestión fiscal de Argentina, pero
Buenos Aires destaca su cumplimiento escrupuloso con todos los vencimientos de
la deuda reestructurada.
La culpa radica más bien en los fondos buitre
y el sistema judicial de Estados Unidos, que insisten en un pago exorbitante
aunque eso signifique poner en peligro al mecanismo internacional de solución
para los países insolventes.
Si los acreedores saben que unos pocos fondos
buitre rebeldes son capaces de provocar la suspensión de pagos, es poco
probable que lleguen a un acuerdo con otros países insolventes en el futuro. La culpa también yace con el FMI y el sistema
bancario internacional por no proponer un mecanismo justo de solución para los
países en quiebra.
Lea Fondos, parte 2.
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