Almagro’s Freshman Year: Bold Actions or Unnecessary Risk?

By Maria Carrasquillo*

Luisito

Photo Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera (OAS)/Flickr/Creative Commons

Secretary General Luis Almagro’s quest to revitalize the Organization of American States (OAS) seems premised on being an “activist” Secretary General in what could be a make-or-break gambit to assert the organization’s hemispheric leadership.  Only 13 months in office, Almagro has taken an approach that is a clear departure from the low-key, consensus-building ways of former Secretary General José Miguel Insulza.  In his 2015 inaugural address, Almagro laid out his plans for the rejuvenation of the OAS, including internal changes to “adapt it to the realities of the 21st century” and “insert [it] into a world different from the one in which it was developed and has grown and operated.”  Almagro underscored the need for the OAS to promote transparent and inclusive elections throughout Latin America and, in regard to democratic governance, “lend a hand to countries that are going through moments of tension and conflict.”

Almagro has taken a number of positions that confirm his desire to redefine the OAS’s role in the region.

  • In 2015, Almagro took the lead in developing a plan to fight corruption in Honduras, resulting in the formation of the Support Mission Against Corruption and Impunity (MACCIH) – a watered-down version of the successful UN-backed CICIG in Guatemala. The jury is still out on whether MACCIH will have a serious impact, but Almagro has staked his reputation on its credibility.
  • He has claimed that the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff lacked sufficient justification and that accusations against her were politically driven. Almagro also called for anticorruption investigations under Operação Lava Jato to continue as essential for the rule of law.
  • Prior to the Peruvian elections, Almagro warned that the disqualification of two candidates reflected unequal application of the law and raised concerns that the contests would be “semi-democratic.” Following a meeting with disqualified frontrunner Julio Gómez, Almagro called for the reinstatement of both candidates’ right to participate in the elections.
  • Perhaps Almagro’s most controversial action has been his attempt to invoke the OAS Democratic Charter against the government of Venezuela, without a finding by the Permanent Council, as required under Article 20 of the Charter, that the situation there amounts to “an unconstitutional alteration of a constitutional regime.” The Permanent Council implicitly rejected his appeal by urging more dialogue between the OAS and Venezuela.  Almagro then sent a strongly worded letter to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accusing him of lying and “betraying his people,” and calling for the release of political prisoners, restoration of legitimate powers to the National Assembly, and a referendum to recall Maduro in 2016. (The Permanent Council is set to discuss the situation in Venezuela again on June 21.)

Almagro has taken on some very difficult issues, and explanations for his motivations are varied but not mutually exclusive.  Some observers perceive a personal embrace of OAS principles, others detect a desire to avoid the sort of U.S. criticism that plagued Insulza and constrained U.S. support and funding, and still others speculate about his future political ambitions as a reformist on the non-radical left of Latin America.  The democratic principles he is defending are clearly enshrined in OAS documents, but his activism has so far not reversed adverse situations: Rousseff was impeached, the Peruvian candidates were forced to sit out the election, and Maduro has yet to soften.  Being an “activist” Secretary General in the case of Venezuela entails great risks; his predecessors were criticized both for getting too directly involved in the country’s internal affairs and for remaining passive in the face of growing authoritarianism in Caracas.  It seems, moreover, as though Almagro has often acted alone, and the tone of his letter to Maduro was uniquely strident.  A great deal is on the line for the OAS.  If Almagro’s activism works, it will enhance the organization’s leadership on a range of issues confronting the hemisphere, but it may also put the OAS in the middle of future conflicts in which failure would bring a loss of institutional credibility. 

June 16, 2016

* Maria Carrasquillo is a recent graduate of the M.A. Program in American University’s School of International Service and a research assistant at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies.

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Peru: Serious Challenges Ahead

By Michael Baney*

CLALS Keiko protest Peru

Photo Credit: harimarachinv / Flickr / Creative Commons

Peru’s presidential election, won by Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, bore the hallmarks of Peru’s distinct brand of democracy – political parties that are mere temporary electoral vehicles with little ideology; strong anti-incumbent sentiment; and the absence of a serious challenge by the left.  Neither Kuczynski’s Peruanos Por el Kambio (PPK) nor Keiko Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular is a party with any true structure.  The fact that the acronym of Kuczynski’s party forms his initials and that Keiko Fujimori’s party uses a large K as its symbol underscores the personal nature of these parties and of politics in Peru.  For the fourth time in a row, not only did the governing party not remain in power; it did not field a candidate – symptom of the deep distrust of institutions and unhappiness with the status quo in the country.  The lack of a serious challenge by the left was also repeated.  Although Socialist Verónika Mendoza’s effective handling of a press challenge to her heritage gave her a surge in nationalist and indigenista support, her campaign faltered when her economic policies came under scrutiny.

The election also marked the emergence of a new generation of young antifujimorista activists who combined efforts on social media with traditional protests to undermine Fujimori’s electability.  These efforts included the production and online dissemination of Su Nombre es Fujimori, a documentary that links Keiko to some of the worst abuses of her father’s government, as well as pillorying her distribution of Keiko-branded tupperware (called tápers in Peru) among the rural poor in an apparent vote-buying effort.  Online voices ridiculed her by rewriting reports on the number of votes by which she trailed Kuczynski as indicating the number of additional tápers that she should have distributed, and the hashtag #KeikoTAPERdiendo – a colloquial pronunciation of “Keiko is losing” – was widely used to track reporting on the election.  Whereas protests traditionally were organized by older demonstrators linked to Marxist parties, this year a Facebook-based group organized two days of nationwide marches of tens of thousands of mostly younger antifujimoristas.

The weakness of Peru’s parties will complicate President Kuczynski’s efforts to govern, as it has with past presidents.  Kuczynski’s narrow victory was largely due to the effort of this new form of activism – which he did not lead, which is not necessarily loyal to him, and to which he does not have any strong allegiance.  His ability to continue to benefit from such efforts designed to shut fujimorista politicians out of office will be extremely constrained, particularly because his lack of support in the fujimorista-majority congress will likely compel him to adopt a friendlier attitude toward his former rivals.  Kuczynski has previously stated that he would sign a law allowing imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, Keiko’s father, to serve out his prison sentence at home, a move that he may consider to secure the cooperation of the fujimorista congressional bloc to move proposed legislation forward.  Such a move would be a major blow to Peru’s human rights movement, which spent many years campaigning to imprison the former leader, and it would also infuriate the antifujimoristas, bringing them out onto the streets once again.  Fujimorismo and antifujimorismo may remain the most salient political positions in a country where economic progress has not improved people’s trust of the system, a recipe for further polarization that could overwhelm the Kuczynski government should it attempt to straddle the two positions in an attempt to overcome the weaknesses inherent in a system with no parties.

June 13, 2016

*  Michael Baney is Political Risk Analyst at Allan & Associates in Washington, DC.

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Seismic Shift in the Politics of Language in the U.S.?

By Chip Gerfen*

Cruz Rubio Spanish

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr / Creative Commons

Heated words between the two Latino U.S. senators seeking the Republican nomination earlier this year may have been the first time national-level candidates cudgeled each other over their use of Spanish on the campaign trail.  Current party frontrunner Donald Trump set the stage for it in June 2015, when he declared that Mexicans are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”  In July, Trump promised a crowd in Phoenix that he would build a wall between the United States and Mexico – a trope and applause line that still stands front and center in his campaign.  Seven months later, during one of Ted Cruz’s attacks on Marco Rubio – over the issue of undocumented immigrants – the Texas senator attacked Rubio’s use of Spanish, saying:

“Marco has a long record when it comes to amnesty.  In the state of Florida, as speaker of the house, he supported in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.  In addition to that, Marco went on Univision in Spanish [emphasis added] and said he would not rescind President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office.”

Several years earlier, in a Fox News interview during his 2012 Senate campaign, Cruz refused to debate in Spanish, explaining:

“Most Texans speak English.  If we were in Mexico, if we were in Cuba, we’d do the debate in Spanish.   Here in Texas, we should do it in English.  [My opponent] wants to do a debate in a language where the vast majority of primary voters don’t understand it, because he doesn’t want them to hear about his record.”

Cruz’s attack on Rubio’s use of Spanish was a suggestion that he used the language to deceive non-Spanish speaking voters by saying one thing in Spanish and another in English.  This use of what linguists refer to as implicature – suggesting something in speech (or in writing) without explicitly stating or even openly implying it – is something that we all produce and have to interpret every day.  But Cruz makes a number of implicatures: that Spanish hides the truth from most voters; that the public political language for Texas is English and that Spanish should be used in other countries; and that he himself does not to fully embrace a Hispanic identity.  He also said that his Spanish was “lousy.”  In the February confrontation, Rubio turned the tables on Cruz by mocking his Spanish, asking “how [Cruz] knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak [Spanish].”  (Cruz responded in idiomatic Spanish – “ahora mismo díselo en español, si tú quieres” – that was much better than “lousy.”)

Such attacks are not entirely new.  As the Dallas Morning News reported in February 2012, Cruz stated that the traditional “American dream” was being destroyed by “letting people use their native languages and grow dependent on government aid,” suggesting that non-English speakers are non-contributing members of the society.  He also perpetuated the nonsensical but persistent myth that immigrants actively “refuse” to learn English.  Rubio apparently believes, however, that speaking Spanish is an asset.  Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush – from a white, patrician family – had no difficulty spinning his Spanish skills positively.  But things are different for people surnamed Rubio or Cruz, for whom language use is a political decision.  Whereas Cruz attacked Rubio according to an old playbook – one that conjures up suspicious behavior and a refusal to integrate – Rubio calculated that bilingualism and biculturalism can now be positives in national politics.  With both Latinos out of the race, the baton has been passed back to Trump, who recently asserted that a U.S.-born “Mexican” judge named Gonzalo Curiel cannot fairly oversee a class action suit against him.  Rubio’s portrayal of language as a political asset, however, may be the more accurate bellwether in the long run, even if his party’s candidate continues to embrace the old playbook.

June 10, 2016

* Chip Gerfen is Professor of Linguistics and Spanish and Department Chair, World Languages and Cultures, American University.

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Peru’s Election: Close Vote Count, Divided Nation

By Cynthia McClintock*

Keiko Kuczyinski

Photo Credits: Venezualan Government / Public Domain and Diario La Primera / Wikimedia Commons

Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) will not announce the final results of Sunday’s run-off presidential election until later this week, but the current statistical tie is already setting the stage for serious tensions.  The ONPE’s official count, with about 93 percent of votes counted, puts Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (Peruanos por el Kambio) at 50.32 percent and Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular) at 49.68 percent.  Some local observers say that late-arriving vote tallies from rural areas could give Fujimori the edge, but others point out that recent quick counts have reliably predicted final results.  The campaigns may have aggravated tensions on Sunday night, when Fujimori’s spokesperson proclaimed her victory, and Kuczynski called on loyalists to “defend the vote” and “to be vigilant that they not steal votes from us.”

The campaign underscored the country’s enduring polarization over Fujimori’s imprisoned father, Alberto.  Although Alberto Fujimori was convicted on charges of human rights violations and corruption, and although his 1990s government became increasingly authoritarian, he is still perceived by many Peruvians as the savior who restored order and broke the back of the Sendero Luminoso guerrillas.   Primarily for this reason, Keiko Fujimori won almost 40 percent of the votes in the first round on April 10; Kuczynski was the runner-up with 21 percent, narrowly defeating leftist candidate Verónika Mendoza (Frente Amplio), with 19 percent.

  • The last two weeks were a roller coaster. At the time of the first round, Kuczynski had held a slight lead over Fujimori, but only a week ago was trailing her by about five points.  An international economist and banker who had lived for long periods in the United States, Kuczynski lost support in part because, after the first round, he spent eight days in the U.S., exacerbating perceptions that he was more gringo than Peruvian, while Fujimori traveled to remote areas of Peru.  She claimed that, whereas her opponent favored big business, she favored small and medium business.  Also, in the first debate, Kuczynski, who is 77, appeared at a loss to counter Fujimori’s attacks.
  • In the last week, however, it was Kuczynski with the momentum. He effectively communicated integrity and a commitment to democracy just as memories of the corruption and authoritarianism during the government of Fujimori’s father were revived.  A scandal implicating the head of her party, Joaquín Ramírez, in money laundering gradually took a toll, especially when her vice-presidential candidate was believed to have orchestrated the broadcast of a doctored audiotape in an effort to clear Ramírez’s name.  Fujimori appeared to believe that “the best defense is a good offense,” but her increasingly confrontational style and dismissive tone may have been a factor in the decision by third-place Mendoza to strongly endorse Kuczynski.  In the second debate a week ago Sunday, Kuczynski emphasized that Fujimori could not be trusted to keep her key pledge to fight crime when Ramírez and other leaders of her party were under criminal investigation.

The presidential campaign has reflected deep polarization and tensions since at least March, when electoral authorities disqualified two important candidates – Julio Guzmán and César Acuña – for violations of party and electoral regulations. Guzmán’s party had not kept to the letter of its internal party statutes and Acuña handed out cash at a campaign rally.  The disqualifications prompted OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro to label Peru only “semi-democratic.”  A key problem was that the laws were not consistently enforced; most saliently, Fujimori, captured on video passing out prizes at a campaign event, was not disqualified.  Strains are likely to remain high this week, and could grow worse after ONPE’s final announced tally at the end of the week.  Fujimori’s followers, embracing the polls showing her lead prior to election day, may cry foul if a Kuczyinski victory is declared.  Many of Kuczyinski’s and Mendoza’s followers, for their part, intensely fear a return to Fujimorismo.  In this context, it is not impossible that disqualified candidates Guzmán and Acuña and their supporters could call for a total do-over.  Although serious, sustained instability remains unlikely, Peru’s 2016 election is by far its most problematic since the country’s return to democracy in 2001.

(Previous analyses on the Peruvian election are available here and here.)

June 6, 2016

* Cynthia McClintock is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University.

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How Sustainable are Latin America’s Advances on Poverty and Inequality?

By Eric Hershberg

Brazil Contrasts

“Projeto Contrastes.” Photo Credit: Gabriela Sakamoto / Flickr / Creative Commons

The significant decline in poverty rates and income inequality in Latin America over the past two decades – driven by a combination of sustained economic growth and intelligently designed social policies – may slow or even be reversed as economic conditions deteriorate across much of the region.  Poverty had begun to drop in most countries even before the commodity boom accelerated growth rates in South America beginning around 2003.  The “Washington Consensus” policies of the 1990s impacted wage income and employment negatively, but other factors diminished their impact on poverty.  By overcoming profound macro-economic instability, which among other things produced hyperinflation that devastated disadvantaged sectors of the population, the economic adjustments of that period were not entirely regressive.  Moreover, a concurrent shift toward targeted social programs – which redirected subsidies away from less vulnerable segments of the population in order to protect the poorest of the poor.  By 2002, the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day had declined 4.6 per cent from where it had been at the beginning of the 1990s, according to the World Bank, while the number living on less than $3.10 stayed flat and actually rose (from 135.6 million to 138.1 million).  Performance varied across countries.  By 2012, after a strong decade of growth and a wave of progressive governments, the progress was much more impressive, with poverty dropping to 33.7 million ($1.90/day) and 72.2 million ($3.10/day).

Inequality declined also – a different challenge in the region that Kelly Hoffman and Miguel Centeno aptly labeled the “lopsided continent.”  Measured by GINI coefficients, income inequality in Latin America, which exceeded that of any other world region at the beginning of the century, grew less pronounced under governments of various ideological proclivities.  A substantial body of research shows that this was a product of two factors.

  • Investments in primary and secondary education, which accelerated during the neo-liberal years, meant lower wage premiums for those with more than basic skills: near universal attendance in secondary school reduced the significance of gaps between workers who had secondary education and those who had little schooling.
  • Innovative social policies – particularly conditional cash transfers – meant that the lower rungs of the income ladder received meaningful transfers from the state, enabling them to narrow the income gaps vis-à-vis less disadvantaged sectors. Less frequently acknowledged was the positive impact of reforms on minimum wage policies and the creation or expansion of non-contributory pensions, both of which were pushed aggressively by several governments associated with the “Left Turns.”  Non-contributory pensions were especially important since the most vulnerable of Latin American aged populations, having spent their working years toiling in the informal sector, had previously lacked any sort of retirement pension.  (Read further analysis of pension reform.)

The region’s slowdown in economic growth and the pressure on public finance brought about by the end of the commodity boom – and the infusion of cash into state coffers that it afforded – raise questions about the sustainability of these advances.  The benefits of investments in education will endure for some time.  Even if education budgets decline, the costs in terms of lower educational achievement would take years to become evident, and it is not at all certain that the funding will decline.  However, the social programs are much more vulnerable, as are the ambitious efforts to increase minimum wages and labor protections more broadly.  Should the economic contraction underway in some countries and on the horizon in others generate an increase in informality, the labor market achievements of recent years could be quickly eroded.   This would impact inequality, and it might soon exacerbate poverty as well.

June 3, 2016

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Trumping GOP Resistance to Strengthened Ties with Cuba

By Eric Hershberg

Malecon Twilight

Nighttime on the Malécon in Havana, Cuba. Photo credit: William Beem / Google Images / Creative Commons

One wild card on the horizon in the normalization of U.S.-Cuba ties looks unlikely to materialize.  As pointed out in several CLALS publications (such as here and here), ever since Presidents Obama and Castro announced on December 17, 2014, that they intended to improve relations, there has been a sense of uncertainty regarding whether their successors might roll back the advances they make.  This was particularly so when several Republican politicians seeking their party’s presidential nomination campaigned against President Obama’s “coddling” of the Cuban Communists and his “unilateral concessions” to Havana.  Marco Rubio (Florida) and Ted Cruz (Texas) – two of the Cuban-Americans in the U.S. Senate –made particularly aggressive statements indicating an intention to reverse all or parts of the Obama administration’s executive actions affecting Cuba policy, which, unlike legislation, can be reversed by a subsequent administration.  But they have dropped out of the race as presumptive nominee Donald Trump defeated them and former Governor Jeb Bush, whose Florida political base, family background, and public statements also indicated opposition to normalization.

Trump and the leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, have very significant policy differences on many issues, but apparently not on Cuba.  Clinton in her memoirs about her tenure as Secretary of State, like Trump in his public statements, appears inclined to sustain the current direction of Washington’s engagement with Havana (although Trump claimed last year that “we should have made a better deal”).  The two likely nominees share noteworthy characteristics, including, remarkably, that they are the least popular candidates that either major party has nominated since polling data have been collected. Advocates of full normalization cannot take either candidate’s leadership on the issue for granted. Clinton’s challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders, has pushed her to the left on some domestic issues, but recent press profiles on her indicate that she remains wedded to a hawkish approach to foreign policy.  The endorsement of several key Washington Neo-Conservatives further suggests she could swing to the right on foreign policy matters.  On the other hand, Trump’s zigzagging on Cuba – 15 years ago he was a staunch proponent of the embargo – and his impulsive decision-making style leave open the possibility that he also could reverse Obama’s executive actions and call on the Congress to keep embargo legislation unchanged.

Although mistakes can occur and various wildcards can slow, or even break, the current momentum, the twists and turns of the U.S. primary election season seem to have diminished substantially prospects that a new President sworn in next January would significantly change Obama’s winning formula on Cuba.  Clinton will have no incentives to abandon a policy that she takes some credit for promoting.  Trump has, if anything, proven that he revels in taking on GOP orthodoxy – and will presumably continue to do so on Cuba policy.  His sympathies align much more clearly with the pro-business Chamber of Commerce, an aggressive opponent of the embargo against Cuba, than with the ideologues on the right of his party, and he will give a green light to the many members of Congress who want full trade with and free travel to the island to change the law.  Concerns that a new U.S. president could reverse Obama’s executive actions on January 20, 2017, can now be assuaged, and Congressional proponents of lifting the embargo likely will have time to build momentum to pass legislation rendering the executive measures moot.  One can imagine that the Donald’s criteria of success for Cuba policy begin with the glare of a gaudy neon Trump sign on a casino along the Havana Malecón, but it’s reasonable to wager that the Cuban government will negotiate a better deal.

May 31, 2016

 

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Political Upheaval in South America

By Eric Hershberg

MarchaVenezuela

Thousands of protesters in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Photo Credit: Google Images / Creative Commons

2016 is proving to be this century’s most complicated year to date for South American political systems, and the coming months will be critical to assessing how well the region’s democracies can govern amid declining economic conditions and spiraling corruption scandals.  Brazil and Venezuela – two very different systems with very different problems – are suffering the most visible crises.

  • In Venezuela, where the Bolivarian project has descended into an incompetent Putinism in the tropics, is collapsing under the weight of monumental mismanagement of the economy. Many of the ills of the Venezuelan petrostate predate Chavismo, but during a collapse in oil prices President Maduro has doubled-down on profligate economic policies introduced by Hugo Chávez, bringing the country to catastrophe made worse by increasingly draconian repression of loyal and disloyal opposition alike.
  • President Dilma Rousseff’s mismanagement of coalitions in a presidential system predicated on coalition-building has opened the way to political and economic implosion in Brazil.  Contrary to the fervent assertions of important segments of the Workers Party (PT), her impeachment does not precisely constitute a coup, but it may indeed amount to an ill-advised bending of institutional mechanisms by cynical legislators and aggressive judges, egged on by rightist sectors whose commitment to democracy is in fact dubious.  Dilma didn’t invent the corruption and footloose budgetary practices that have been her undoing, but her fall does respond to overwhelming popular rejection of her performance.  Interim President Temer’s appointment of an entirely white male cabinet that includes representatives of some of the country’s most retrograde interests suggests abandonment of many of the most laudable achievements of more than a decade under PT rule – and more backlash as well.

Other institutional crises may be on the horizon.  Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa pursued a high-risk strategy of debt-driven expansion of the state, which is not sustainable amid economic contraction.  Argentine President Mauricio Macri’s honeymoon may prove short-lived.  Much-needed economic reforms are likely to provoke even greater inflation and have already stoked resistance from the Peronist opposition.  Macri enjoys some unprecedented assets – for the first time non-Peronists also control the city and province of Buenos Aires– but Argentine public opinion overwhelmingly favors statist economic policies that he aims to dismantle, and no non-Peronist elected president has completed his term in office since the rise of Peronism as a political force.  Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, wounded by a drop in mineral export revenues and comparatively minor corruption allegations involving her daughter-in-law, reshuffled her cabinet earlier this month but continues to tank in the polls.  Latinobarómetro reports that 70 percent of Chileans believe their political system doesn’t work.

It’s not hard to envision other relatively stable South American democracies facing hard times ahead.  The June 5 presidential runoff in Peru could leave the country deeply polarized, especially if Keiko Fujimori, heiress to the country’s darkest episode in recent history, wins.  It is not a foregone conclusion that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who has staked his second term on a long-awaited and much-needed peace accord, will secure its ratification, risking lameduck status for the remainder of his administration.  If the presidents elsewhere appear to be weathering the storm, democratic governance nonetheless faces important challenges.  It would be rash to predict that democracy will fail the test – and that such failure will give rise to a new era of authoritarian rule – but it’s clear that the region will witness widespread instability during the coming years.

May 26, 2016

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Haiti: Crisis Upon Crisis

By Fulton Armstrong

Haiti OAS

OAS Secretary General Almagro visits Haiti. Photo Credit: OAS / Flickr / Creative Commons

Haiti is stumbling, again, from one crisis into another, but the timing of this ongoing mess puts the United States and other international partners in a particularly bad position.  The country’s political institutions are dysfunctional, without an elected executive nor fully legitimate legislature, and efforts to rebuild them continue to be haphazard.  Under Interim President Jocelerme Privert (formerly leader of the Senate), the government has missed another deadline for resolving disputes over the first round of presidential elections held last October and re-running them or scheduling the second round.  Instead, Privert, who assumed the Presidency in February, on 28 April formed a five-member “verification panel” to take yet another look at allegations of first-round fraud and determine which candidates should participate in the runoff, with a 30-day deadline.  The deadline for Privert to step down passed on 14 May.

  • The move coincides with growing perceptions that Privert is enjoying the perquisites of the job and may be dragging things out on purpose. Both sides to the contested elections – supporters of Jovenel Moïse, former President Martelly’s hand-picked successor, and the opposition party’s Jude Célestin – are mobilizing crowds, some numbering thousands, for almost-daily protests.  Calls for Privert to resign are growing intense as suspicions of his own ambitions and imputed bias for or against one of the candidates surge.  Several dozen gunmen, allegedly directed by an enemy of Privert, shot up a police station in the southern city of Les Cayes earlier this week, resulting in six dead.
  • International reactions to Privert’s delays have been mixed but predictably of frustration.  The former leader of an official OAS mission to Haiti in early April supported the verification process, and OAS Secretary General Almagro said recently that elections “shouldn’t be rushed.”  But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last month condemned “this process of delay” and urged Haiti’s “so-called leaders” to act.  His Special Coordinator for Haiti Affairs, veteran diplomat Kenneth Merten, called the new verification process a “black box” and said it was “opaque and non-democratic.”

The political mess coincides with other serious challenges.

  • The World Food Program (WFP) is increasingly concerned about hunger caused by a three-year drought, aggravated by El Niño, and the country’s economic situation. Some 3.6 million Haitians (one third of the population) face “food insecurity,” including 1.5 million who are “severely food insecure.”  A U.S. program to send Haiti surplus peanuts, which is one of Haitian farmers’ most successful crops, has deflated prices and further hurt local food production.
  • Shortages of medical supplies, worsened by corruption, have prompted doctors to conduct strikes. High-profile cases, including the death of a bleeding pregnant woman at the entrance of the Port-au-Prince General Hospital, have led to dramatic demonstrations, on at least one occasion parading around a victim’s corpse.
  • Fear of spread of the Zika virus is rampant. The University of Florida recently confirmed that Zika was present in Haiti before the outbreak in Brazil last year.  (Carried by the same mosquito, Aedes aegypti, it was mistakenly identified as chikungunya, which has almost identical symptoms except microencephaly.)  Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which has killed 9,200 people since 2010, continues to claim about 50 lives a month, according to some estimates.

The usual threats by the United States and Haiti’s other international partners to suspend aid if the government doesn’t resolve the political impasse have been muted presumably because they’re unlikely to be credible while such major threats to Haitian citizens’ wellbeing loom large.  Haiti’s political and economic elites assume that the outsiders will care for the Haitian people and continue bailing the country out while they pursue their internecine struggles.  Former President Martelly, who is not free from blame for the elections impasse, has been in Miami these days to promote his autobiography ($50 a copy) and reestablish himself as a naughty boy Kompa musician.  The international community is, once again, in a lose-lose situation.  A previous caretaker government, headed by Gérard Latortue, lasted two years (2004-2006).  The United States and others can ill afford a deeper humanitarian disaster, so while Haitian elites fiddle, outsiders will try to put out the fires.

May 19, 2016

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Posted by clalsstaff on May 19, 2016

https://aulablog.net/2016/05/19/haiti-crisis-upon-crisis/

El Salvador: Dual Crackdowns Raise Questions

By Fulton Armstrong

El Salvador Seguro

Photo Credits: Presidencia El Salvador and Departamento de Seguridad Pública OEA (modified) / Flickr / Creative Commons

Salvadoran President Sánchez Cerén’s months-long crackdown on gangs has broadened into a crackdown on proponents of negotiations with them.  Upon orders of Attorney General Meléndez, 18 former officials involved in the past truce (covering two periods in 2012-2014) have been arrested, among them a principal mediator, former FMLN Congressman Raúl Mijango.  Three others, including the former head of prisons, are on the run.  Meléndez claims that the recent passage of legislation outlawing negotiations with gangs was not a factor, and that the detainees are not being held for their role negotiating the previous truce, but rather for violations of laws in place during the truce.  They are accused of “dereliction of duty,” “illicit association,” smuggling mobile phones into prisons, and possible misuse of US$2 million for truce implementation.  Meléndez said the government-gang pact “was not illegal” and he noted that it did help reduce reported murders, but he has asserted that it gave rise to disappearances and other violence, and allowed the gangs to re-arm and consolidate their control in some sectors.

The campaign against pro-dialogue voices has left several prominent players untouched.  The government has distanced itself from the activities of current Interior Minister Arístides Valencia, whose taped conversations with gangs have been revealed by the media, but he has been neither fired nor arrested.  Former Security Minister (and current Defense Minister) David Munguía is widely seen as the principal architect of the previous truce (securing essential cover from the Church for it), but he too remains in place.  Munguía’s name is prominent in Meléndez’s report, according to press accounts, but the Attorney General said that he lacks evidence of his involvement in wrongdoing.  Paolo Luers of El Diario de Hoy (himself a secret negotiator in 2012) and others are severely criticizing the lack of charges against Munguía while others, whom they call “political prisoners,” are detained.

  • Meanwhile, the government is deploying elite joint Army-Police units to hunt down alleged gang members in the countryside, amid growing unconfirmed reports of human rights violations.  The Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman has identified 13 cases of extrajudicial killings in two operations last year.

The recent arrests have caused debate to flare over the costs and benefits of the past truce and any future agreements with the gangs – as well as the efficacy of the mano dura approach. The crackdown on advocates of negotiations and the simultaneous emerging signs of death squad operations could threaten the credibility of the Sánchez Cerén government’s El Salvador Seguro strategy, which entails an array of efforts requiring political agreement on how to address the violence crisis.  Amidst mounting concern about the implications of the police and army crackdown on gangs, Washington has kept a low profile on these developments.  If current trends continue, however, the dual crackdowns could potentially raise doubts about the Administration’s ability to meet the human rights and other conditions that the U.S. Congress has put on the Alliance for Prosperity under which El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have agreed to form and execute a common strategy against violence and other problems in Central America’s northern triangle.

May 16, 2016

For previous AULABLOG items on the impact of the Salvadoran truce, click here (January 2013), here (November 2014), and here (April 2015).

*This version of the blog was updated May 16, 2016 at 10:25 a.m.

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by clalsstaff on May 16, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in El Salvador
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Posted by clalsstaff on May 16, 2016

https://aulablog.net/2016/05/16/el-salvador-dual-crackdowns-raise-questions/

Increasing the Benefits of Trade Agreements

By Antoni Estevadeordal and Joaquim Tres*

Trade 1993-2016

Source: IDB (Full-sized images at bottom of page)

Latin American and Caribbean countries were major players in global trade liberalization in the 1990s but have since been held back by complex rules, infrastructural obstacles, and the poor flow of information.  The successful conclusion in 1994 of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) fueled growth and optimism in the region, but the slow progress of the Doha Round drove the region into the silent tide of regional trade agreements (RTAs), which now govern about half of world trade.  Latin American and Caribbean countries have concluded some 70 RTAs – a far cry from the handful of sub-regional customs unions and free trade areas in place in 1994.  As a result, tariffs applied by Latin American countries have dropped from an average of 40 percent to 10 percent during this period.

Despite these policy advances, Latin America and the Caribbean’s participation in international trade is still limited.  Whereas the region and the developing nations of Asia had a similar share of world trade in 1962 (around 6 percent), Latin America’s global trade share has remained relatively unchanged – and that of Developing Asia has grown to nearly three times its previous size.  Latin America registers lower levels of intra-regional trade – 18 percent – compared to 37% in Developing Asia and 61% in the European Union.  Our research indicates that Latin America and the Caribbean could close this gap through a series of measures:

  • Harmonizing the different rules of origin in the RTAs and the wide array of sanitary, phytosanitary, and technical standards that qualify market access.
  • Improving infrastructure and reducing inefficiencies at border crossings to reduce transportation and logistics costs, which amount to three times more than existing tariffs.
  • Harnessing the power of information and communications technology to reduce costs through one-stop shops and process automatization, such as the trade single windows being introduced in several countries in the region. The cost of information about consumer preferences, market demand, and foreign regulations is the first barrier that potential exporters face.
  • Simplifying and reducing administrative burdens through expedited and secure customs and other trade facilitation measures. Some experts estimate that, worldwide, some 75 percent of delays are due to inefficient processes (compared to 25 percent due to inadequate infrastructure).

The main lesson for Latin America and the Caribbean is that trade agreements are a necessary – but not sufficient – condition to achieve economic development potential.  Increasing companies’ participation in international value chains is key to unleashing trade as an engine for economic growth and poverty reduction.  Trade-driven growth in the region, much of it from South American commodities, enabled a reduction of poverty from 22 percent in 2002 to 12 percent by creating new employment opportunities and the fiscal capacity to fund poverty reduction initiatives such as conditional cash transfers (Mexico’s Programa Oportunidades, for example).  By our calculation, trade facilitation measures such as customs and border simplifications can increase Latin American and Caribbean exports by as much as 15 percent, translating into a 5 percent increase in export-supported jobs that pay almost 20 percent more than jobs at non-exporting firms.  It is within policymakers’ grasp to create the enabling environment for firms to export, especially for the small and medium-sized enterprises that may represent the next generation of exporters.

May 9, 2016

*Antoni Estevadeordal and Joaquim Tres are, respectively, the manager and principal specialist of the Integration and Trade Sector of the Inter-American Development Bank.  Click here to access the IDB’s new course on trade agreements, and here and here for related studies.

Trade 1993-2016 v2

Source: IDB

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by clalsstaff on May 9, 2016  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on May 9, 2016

https://aulablog.net/2016/05/09/increasing-the-benefits-of-trade-agreements/

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