A person holds up images of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, right, and Venezuela's independence hero Simón Bolivar as people gather to pray for Chávez at Simón Bolivar square in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Dec. 11. (Fernando Llano/AP)
What happens if Venezuela's Hugo Chávez misses his inaguration?
As has been widely reported, on Saturday night, Dec. 8, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made a nationally televised appearance to announce that he had suffered a reoccurrence of his cancer and to designate a successor, current Vice President and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicolás Maduro.
The announcement came after he had reappeared in Venezuela only 24 hours earlier. President Chávez had gone to Cuba for treatment on Nov. 27. While it was announced that he would be receiving treatment in a hyperbaric chamber to “continue his recovery,” there was a great deal of speculation that it was something much more serious since his departure was not publicized and he had not made any public appearances or even tweeted for several weeks. The rumors only increased when it was announced that Chávez would not be attending the Mercosur summit [in] Brazil.
It seems clear that the primary purpose of Chávez’s weekend return to Caracas was to consolidate support for Mr. Maduro within the pro-government coalition and leave no doubts among the population as to who he wants to succeed him by creating a major media event. Not only did he name Maduro successor but had him swear before God, the people, the flag, and Simón Bolívar’s sword, to continue the revolution.
Among the major players in the Chávez government, Maduro is on the left side of the political spectrum. He has warm relations with the Castro brothers and has frequently visited Cuba. While much has been made of his humble origins as a bus driver, he was an important union organizer before Chávez came to power and has been Minister of Foreign Affairs for over six years. He is comfortable at the negotiating table, popular among the bases, and has not received significant accusations of corruption.
Since Chávez named Maduro Vice President the week after the presidential election, it has become conventional wisdom that Chávez sees him as his successor. Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution says that if the president were to die or be incapacitated in the first four years of his term, the Vice President becomes acting president and must call elections within 30 days. So why was Chávez’s quick trip back to Caracas and dramatic announcement necessary?
Chávez's pick vs. Constitutional law
It seems likely that Chávez’s fourth surgery is risky enough that he is not sure he will be able to assume his fourth term on Jan. 10. And Article 233 also says that if a president-elect were to die, resign, or be declared physically or mentally incapacitated before being sworn in, it is not the Vice President but the President of the National Assembly that becomes acting president. Currently that is Diosdado Cabello.
What is more, the Constitution does not specify what would happen if the president-elect is alive, has not resigned, nor been officially declared incapacitated, but is not able to be sworn in. Presumably in such a case it would also be the President of the National Assembly who would assume the presidency, since cabinet positions such as the Vice Presidency do not automatically carry-over from one term to the next but must be reconfirmed.
And this is the problem for Chávez. In a country in which power is so centralized in the presidency and in which there is so much money and so little accountability, incumbent’s advantage takes on extraordinary dimensions. It is likely that whoever becomes interim president will end up becoming the Socialist Party’s candidate. And while some in the Chávez coalition might protest a Cabello candidacy, if it seemed like he would win and was not stoppable, they would most likely applaud, because doing otherwise would be political suicide. So Chávez wants to make it absolutely clear that he wants Maduro, not Cabello, to be the candidate if he is not able to assume or complete his term.
Cabello is a former military officer and has been working with Chávez from the beginning. He has worked in a number of capacities, including governor of Miranda, minister of infrastructure, and vice president. He has been something like a “hatchet man” for Chávez, taking on some of the most difficult tasks – such as shutting down RCTV’s cable network. However, within the Chávez coalition, he is known as part of the “endogenous right,” is unpopular with the bases and is frequently accused of corruption. He is not strongly leftist and has cool relations with the Castro brothers; indeed he has never visited Cuba. Cabello is known for being pragmatic but cunning and ruthless. If he were to become acting president it is assumed he would do his utmost to outmaneuver Maduro and find a way to stay in power for more than 30 days. While Cabello has been a key player for Chávez on multiple occasions, it seems clear that Chávez does not want him to lead his revolutionary project forward.
One important element that has received little attention in all of this is that during his 48 hour stay Chávez repeatedly affirmed that the Constitution stipulates new elections within 30 days if he is not able to continue. Since the Oct. 7 presidential election many analysts have speculated that Chávez will seek a constitutional reform allowing the Vice President to fill out the presidential term instead of going to elections. Chavez’s repeated mentions of the actual provisions of the Constitution would seem to make such an initiative less likely.
Honduran lawmakers fire four Supreme Court judges
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
The events in Honduras over recent weeks have created a renewed serious institutional crisis in which President [Porfirio] Lobo, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are all vying to show their power over the other branches. Tensions are high as the Congress is trying to remove four Supreme Court justices who had ruled a law unconstitutional.
In late November, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the controversial and poorly implemented police reform law is unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the right to due process for police officers. President Lobo and the Congress rejected that decision.
Last weekend, Lobo claimed that the same forces that caused the 2009 coup were out to overthrow him, pointing specifically at the publisher of newspapers El Heraldo and La Prensa.
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Yesterday (or early this morning), the Congress approved a bill to hold a referendum on the police reform law, though whether that referendum process or the resulting bill are constitutional is certainly up for debate.
More importantly, earlier this week, the Congress formed a commission to investigate the four Supreme Court judges who ruled the original bill unconstitutional. Early Wednesday morning, the Congress used the commission's report delivered in 24 hours (fastest commission ever) to order the removal of those four judges. Again, the constitutionality of whether the Congress can do any of this is at question, which is why this is an institutional crisis.
Several media outlets, including El Heraldo and La Prensa (both of which supported the 2009 removal of President Zelaya), are calling the Congress's vote a "technical coup" against the judiciary. Not helping, Army soldiers deployed near the presidential palace and Congress to "protect" those branches create the image of the military taking sides.
So that's the basic info of a complex and rapidly developing situation.
In the background, the legacy of the 2009 coup still haunts the country and will lead to many comparisons and contrasts with the current situation. Honduras remains one of the most violent countries in the world. Organized criminal networks are deeply infiltrated in a number of institutions, particularly the police. The country can't solve its security challenges until it cleans up the corruption within the police force and deals with impunity for crimes. The political class and business elite within the country are constantly jockeying for position, power, and influence in a political game that usually doesn't represent the country's best interests or immediate needs. And there are elections next year.
The last thing the country needs is another institutional crisis.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
Inmates walk inside the state prison in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, last month. Punishments in Latin America for drug-related crimes – cultivation, use, or trafficking – have become as severe as those for violent offenses, a new report reveals. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)
Is Latin America punishing nonviolent drug offenders too harshly?
If Latin American justice systems struggle with terribly high impunity rates, if penal systems are so often plagued with problems of severe overcrowding, why do countries in the region frequently punish nonviolent drug possession and trafficking harsher than even rape or murder?
A new report reveals that punishments in Latin America for drug-related crimes – cultivation, use, or trafficking – have become as severe as those for violent offenses. Sometimes even more so.
The maximum sentence for drug trafficking in Bolivia is 25 years, compared with 20 years for homicide. Colombia’s maximum sentence for drug trafficking is 30 years, while the maximum punishment for rape stands at 20 years. And minimum sentences for drug-related crimes in Peru climbed from 2 years in 1970 to 25 years today.
The report, “A Punitive Addiction: The Disproportionality of Drug Laws in Latin America,” produced by the Bogotá-based Center for Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia), tracks the path of seven Latin American countries in creating anti-drug legislation.
The number of laws and the severity of penalties attributed to drug production, consumption, trafficking, or sale, have risen steadily since the 1950s. That’s left the region with a penal system that disproportionately attacks nonviolent drug-related crimes, the Dejusticia researchers say.
“This greater severity with which drug-related crimes are repressed ... doesn’t meet any criteria of proportionality,” meaning the punishment matches the infraction, according to the report.
'Sentencing family'
Minimum and maximum sentences for drug crimes in Latin America have climbed sharply since the 1980s – around the same time the United States launched the so-called “war on drugs” and pressured the region, especially producer nations, to join the fight.
Beginning in those years, Mexico and Peru instituted especially drastic changes to maximum penalties, raising them from 15 years to 40 years and 35 years, respectively.
The question of who gets jailed for what crime is of special importance in Latin America, where jails are often extremely overcrowded and justice systems struggle to reach their objectives.
Prisons in Latin America are often packed with nonviolent offenders who violated drug laws and are serving out long sentences – an issue that has led El Salvador, for example, to consider alternative punishments for drug offenders, such as a bracelet-based parole program.
Jails in El Salvador, built for a few hundred people, are filled with more than 1,000 offenders. Conditions are dismal: no electricity, no potable water, not even a cot on which to sleep.
In Ecuador, Analía Silva, a mother of two, served eight years in prison for selling drugs. Ecuador has some of the region’s toughest laws when it comes to drugs: Drug-related crimes without violence can receive the same sentence as murder.
“When they sentenced me, and when they sentence every woman, they’re not sentencing only the person who committed the crime but also her family; they’re also sentencing her children,” Silva said in a video that is part of the report.
And while tens of thousands of people go to jail on drug-related charges in Latin America each year, much of the region cannot keep up with the investigation and punishment of violent offenders. For example, in Mexico the justice system has the capacity to pursue some 4,000 cases of homicide annually but – with the ongoing drug war – homicides have risen to some 25,000 each year, according to research firm Mexico Evalua.
“People end up in jail for many years” for drug offenses, said Kristel Mucino, communications director with the Washington Office on Latin America, which is promoting the Dejusticia report. “It’s irrational and unjust. All punishment should be proportional.”
El Salvador gangs accept proposal to create 'peace zones'
The leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha, Barrio 18, and three other street gangs in El Salvador said they accepted a proposal to end all gang activity in designated "zones of peace" in the country [See the Christian Science Monitor's recent focus on the Salvadoran gang 'truce'].
In a statement released to the public, gang leaders said that they'd already handed over a list of 10 possible municipalities where they would agree to cease all criminal activity (read the full text of the statement here).
The creation of several designated "peace zones" in 10 municipalities was first proposed by Bishop Fabio Colindres and ex-congressman Raul Mijango on Nov. 22. The two men helped negotiate a ceasefire between the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 earlier this year, which caused the national homicide rate to fall from 14 murders a day to just five. The negotiators intended the creation of these "peace zones" to be the second phase of this gang truce.
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Within these designated zones, gangs would agree to a non-aggression pact, and would commit to stopping all homicides, extortion, theft, and kidnapping. The municipalities that would include these peace zones have not yet been identified, although gang leaders said the agreement would affect some 900,000 people who live in the proposed areas. In their statement, gang leaders said that they'd already ordered affiliate groups – or "cliques" – to begin disarming in these areas, and hand over the weapons to the truce facilitators.
The three other street gangs who agreed to the proposal include the Mao Mao, La Maquina, and the Miradas Locos.
InSight Crime Analysis
Barrio 18 leader Carlos Mojica Lechuga, alias "Viejo Lin," told the AFP that one of the aims of these peace zones is to allow gang members to "reinsert" themselves back into society. However, the proposal comes with a condition: According to the AFP, gang members are demanding the repeal of a 2009 anti-gang law which allowed police to conduct mass arrests of alleged gang members. Some of these raids have involved the arrest of dozens of suspected gang members at once.
It remains to be seen whether the government would have to agree to this – or grant some other kind of concession – to keep this proposal moving forward. Security and Justice Minister David Munguia Payes expressed optimism about the proposal when it was first announced, but this may change if it leads to increased demands from the gangs.
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In this image released by Guatemala's National Police on Wednesday, software company founder John McAfee sits after being arrested for entering the country illegally Wednesday Dec. 5, 2012 in Guatemala City. The anti-virus guru was detained at a hotel in an upscale Guatemala City neighborhood with the help of Interpol agents hours after he said he would seek asylum in the Central American country. (Guatemala National Police/AP)
McAfee's rise and downfall via technology (+video)
Computer protection guru John McAfee’s high-profile run from the law is over, and it may have been a simple slip in digital security that helped lead to his downfall.
Mr. McAfee, on the run for nearly a month since his neighbor in Belize turned up dead, was arrested Wednesday in Guatemala for crossing into the Central American country illegally. He is being held in a detention center with other migrants, authorities say.
Guatemalan authorities say he will be sent back to Belize, where he is wanted for questioning related to his neighbor's death. Fernando Lucero, spokesman for Guatemala’s immigration office, tells the Monitor that the timetable for doing so was not clear.
“This is a matter in the hands of the courts,” Mr. Lucero says. “At this time, we have no court order.”
For a man on the run, McAfee has been in the public spotlight frequently in recent days, granting interviews with television reporters and writing regularly on a blog WhoIsMcAfee.com. All the while, he was doing so from a concealed location.
Among those to reach him were video journalists from the magazine and website Vice who are planning an “epic” documentary about the ordeal. But in promoting their access, the journalists accidentally revealed McAfee’s location.
An iPhone photo
In an update on the Vice website titled “We are with John McAfee right now, suckers,” the journalists released an iPhone photo with metadata that included the exact coordinates of McAfee’s location. They were in Rio Dulce, a small town near Guatemala’s Caribbean coast not far from the Belize border.
After initially suggesting the co-ordinates were manipulated to hide his location, McAfee later wrote on his blog: “Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters.”
A day later, McAfee was in Guatemala City, where he was planning a press conference until he was arrested. On his blog, he wrote, “I am in jail in Guatemala. Vastly superior to Belize jails. I asked for a computer and one magically appeared. The coffee is also excellent.”
It was an unexpected turn for McAfee, who amassed a fortune building software to prepare against security threats. (He sold the company in 1994.)
In hiding, McAfee has displayed a streak of paranoia fitting for a man who built a fortune in security. Belizean authorities have said he’s not a suspect in the murder of Gregory Faull, a neighbor on the small island of Amergris Caye who was found dead on Nov. 11.
Yet, McAfee has claimed Belizean authorities would kill him once in custody. He left the country, slipping through a porous border into a lightly populated area of Guatemala.
Mr. Faull had reportedly complained about McAfee’s rowdy lifestyle and his pack of dogs that occasionally bit passersby. On Nov. 9, four of the dogs died of poisoning. Two days later, Faull was shot in the head in his home.
McAfee has insisted he has nothing to do with the death and authorities have said they only want to question him. It looks like they’re about to get their chance.
Chemical weapons in Syria: What can Latin America do about it?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
In the past week, the Syrian government has been [reportedly] moving its chemical weapons stockpiles and mixing ingredients that would allow it to weaponize sarin nerve gas. The United States has made clear that the use of chemical weapons is a red line, one which will lead to direct US action.
Back in February of this year, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela were five of only 12 countries in the world to vote against a UN resolution condemning the violence in Syria and endorsing an Arab League plan that called for President Assad to step down. Additionally, Venezuela has broken international sanctions to provide fuel to Syria.
Thus far, the US has publicly ignored ALBA's [The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas] support of Assad. The reality is that ALBA has little real influence globally and its support is a small diplomatic buffer that isn't changing things on the ground in Syria. Their UN votes and a few ships of fuel aren't worth making a big deal over.
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That said, Syria's potential use of chemical weapons would change that equation. It's a red line that no country or group of countries should step across with the Assad government. The US may take diplomatic actions against countries that continue to stand with Assad if he steps across that red line.
ALBA should send a message to the Syrian government that the use of chemical weapons will end their support (though that support should have been withdrawn long ago). It's a piece of leverage those countries have and for humanitarian and diplomatic reasons they should use it to convince Assad he would be making a big mistake.
Other Latin American countries, specifically Brazil, should make clear to ALBA that this step is a potential red line for them as well. If Syria uses chemical weapons, any Latin American country continuing to stand with Assad will be condemned.
I'd like to think that condemning the creation and use of chemical or biological weapons is one of the things that the hemisphere can agree on. In the coming weeks and months, ALBA may face a choice on that issue. It would be best to have a united hemisphere against Syria's potential use of chemical weapons. If some or all of the ALBA countries choose to walk with Assad as he steps over that red line, it may lead to some serious diplomatic consequences.
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– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
A street scene in the city center, in September, in Rio de Janeiro. Most of the Latin America region is one of the worst for corruption, Brazil however, offers a bright spot this year for the region. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor)
Latin America: Region one of worst for corruption
Latin American economies may have weathered the global recession better than most, reduced poverty, and grown the middle class, but across most of the region corruption remains as entrenched as ever.
That’s the message of Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index. This year, two-thirds of the region’s 32 countries fall in the bottom half of the list, among the world’s most corrupt nations.
“What caught my attention the most was how in Latin America, the good economic news has not translated into an improved quality of life for the majority of Latin Americans,” says Alejandro Salas, Americas director with Transparency International. “Corruption is a central element that continues to affect us.”
Venezuela and Haiti ranked lowest in the region: tying for No. 165 out of 176 countries total. Chile ranked highest at No. 20, one slot below the United States (The index assigns a score to each country on a scale from 0 to 100, or from highly corrupt to very clean. Venezuela earned a score of 19, for example, versus Chile’s 72.)
Mexico – Latin America’s second-largest economy behind Brazil – tied for the No. 105 spot with a score of 34, along with Bolivia, Algeria, Gambia, the Philippines, Mali, Kosovo, and Armenia.
Brazil a bright spot
Brazil, ranked at No. 69 with a score of 43, offers a bright spot this year for the region—and a potential example to follow, Mr. Salas says.
The country has recently given corruption a one-two punch by punishing corrupt officials and instituting numerous reforms to increase transparency and reduce graft.
A series of trials dealing with the mensalao scandal – a vote-buying scheme using public funds – has resulted in a judge sentencing more than 20 high-ranking public officials, many with jail time. This is a major success in a country where a former president could be booted for corruption only to enjoy political reincarnation as a senator a decade later.
At the same time, Brazil has advanced reforms including a freedom of information law and a law known as the Clean Bill of Record, which prohibits people who have pending legal cases from running for office. When the clean bill law went into effect, several dozen officials were barred from competing again in elections.
Mexico has instituted numerous transparency and anti-corruption reforms over the past decade, while Peru managed to put a corrupt former president, Alberto Fujimori, behind bars.
Yet both Mexico and Peru remain troubled by high levels of corruption.
What is needed is simultaneous actions of increasing transparency and punishing wrongdoing , says Salas.
“Brazil is doing both,” Salas says. “It may be early to celebrate but the country is creating hope.”
Would the US free the 'Cuban Five' in exchange for Alan Gross?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, thehavananote.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
With the Obama administration and Congressional Republican leaders’ current stalemate over the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations as the appropriate backdrop, an American government subcontractor serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba hopes to force the most infamously stalemated parties of all – the United States and Cuba - to the negotiating table.
Three years ago, as he completed his 5th trip of the year to the island, Alan P. Gross was arrested and after a lengthy investigation, found guilty of crimes against the "sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Cuba. Gross was hired on a $600,000 subcontract (his employer was USAID grantee DAI) to set up several wireless internet networks around the island which could be hidden from the Cuban government using an "alternative SIM card" often used by US intelligence agencies. Three years and more than 100 pounds (lost during his incarceration) later, Gross wants the US and Cuba to sit down together and negotiate a non-belligerency pact.
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Given the history between our two countries, such a pact would mark a true turning point, but it may be as hard to come by as ever. The State Department is refusing to move its own agenda forward with Cuba while Gross remains in prison. But having tied its hands thusly, State has also not taken any (visible) steps to secure his release. Though former Governor Richardson made a private trip to Havana more than a year ago to seek Gross's release, and says he suggested "a process" to remove Cuba from the US list of terrorist states, the Cubans rebuffed him, perhaps because they were unwilling to negotiate with someone who did not represent the US government, perhaps because he pushed too hard, too publicly – threatening not to leave until he saw Mr. Gross – and perhaps because Cuban officials were indignant about being offered, as a political trade, removal from a list on which they don't think they belong.
Of Mr. Gross’s activities, State officials have said little other than to claim that he was merely trying to connect the Jewish community across Cuba with better access to each other and to the world, and to insist on his immediate, unconditional release. The US government has sought to paint Gross as nothing more than a humanitarian aid worker who broke no Cuban laws. It’s hardly an invitation to a serious discussion with Cuban authorities holding Mr. Gross when it is clear that Gross did break Cuban laws (more than one), and that the US. government sent him there specifically to do so.
For its part, Cuba has not been much more cooperative. While Cuban officials have made very plain their position that Gross – and the US law that authorized his and other USAID activities on the island – violated Cuban sovereignty, they’ve dropped few and often contradictory clues as to whether Mr. Gross could hope for any early release. It could well be because there are dueling opinions in the highest ranks in Havana about whether to make a gesture which could go unanswered, or to extract something from the US for his return.
Several times, Cuban officials have suggested a reciprocal humanitarian gesture could be possible, and recently, there's increasing talk of swapping Gross for five Cuban intelligence agents, [known as "The Cuban Five'"]though the State Department has ruled out this possibility. Cuba says the five were investigating anti-Castro militants in South Florida and that after it invited the FBI to Cuba to review the evidence, the FBI then rounded up the Cuban agents instead of acting against the Cuban exile militants. The five were tried and convicted in Miami and given long prison terms more than a dozen years ago.
The agents admit to being unregistered foreign agents in the US, which usually carries a shorter sentence, but they've denied other charges, including the leader of the group, Gerardo Hernandez, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for what prosecutors argued was his foreknowledge of the Cuban government’s decision to shoot down 2 civilian aircraft. The aircraft belonged to a group called Brothers to the Rescue, which had repeatedly, purposely breached Cuban airspace and overflown the capital.
The Cuban government argues that the five didn’t get a fair trial in Miami but there’s not much the Obama administration can do about the case, other than to pardon some or all of the five, in order to win Alan Gross’s release. And while President Obama won a record share of Cuban American votes in the recent election, either because of or in spite of his less aggressive policy toward Cuba, it’s hard to see the administration going quite that far, particularly at at the beginning of a new term.
Where there’s a political will, there’s usually a way, but from the Gross family’s perspective, the administration just isn’t working to get Gross released. Having waited three years for Washington to out-muscle Havana, or else for Havana to respond to pressures or entreaties, the Gross family is wielding the only leverage it has: the potential to embarrass and implicate others in his incarceration.
The US government has so far dodged any discussion of how its own policies designed to knowingly violate Cuba’s sovereignty actually put its civilian implementers, like Gross, at risk. If, in suing the US government and its grantee, DAI, the Gross family can prove – or threaten to prove in embarrassing detail – negligence that helped land Gross in jail, it might motivate the US to quietly settle the suit and redouble its efforts ahead of an embarrassing trial. But as one former Senate investigator notes, in making this public case that the US government ill-prepared Gross for a seemingly covert mission, the Gross family is actually reinforcing the Cubans' case against him.
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While no one knows for sure what Cuba wants in exchange for Gross's release (particularly if the US won't budge on the five), now is the time to go back to the negotiating table and find out, and consider options from there. Some insist the US must not negotiate with Cuba to secure Gross's release. But we should remember that Mr. Gross did in fact violate Cuban law, US laws and ethics have no authority in Cuba, and Gross himself is now asking the US government to negotiate for his release. Gross must eventually accept some responsibility for the choices he made, but at the same time, the US government had (or should have had) a far deeper understanding of the potential risks it would pay Gross to take on his trips, and should have at least prepared him for them.
Three years in, the Gross family has chosen a new strategy, by turning up the heat on the Cuban and the US governments. Time will tell whether this new strategy will pay off. With the election behind it, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her way out, might it be time for the Obama administration to change its strategy as well? If the US finally gets serious about making a deal with Cuba, such a deal could and ought to include the very program for which Gross was working. USAID’s work in Cuba, carried out in near total secrecy and without cooperation from the host country government, thus risking the safety of grantees and their contacts on the island, is also undermining the broader mission of the USAID organization, which is development, not diplomacy or intelligence. The USAID program in Cuba could be ended or cut back, given the reality that it is tainted by the regime change statute that authorized its existence. The administration can easily find other revenue streams (not linked to specific regime change laws or policies) through which to maintain humanitarian aid to political prisoners’ families, to champion human rights on the island, and to make a more constructive contribution to economic reform and prosperity on the island.
– Anya Landau French blogs for The Havana Note, a project of the "US-Cuba Policy Initiative,” directed by Ms. Landau French, at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.
In this 2006 photo, Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderon, of the National Action Party, at a campaign stop in San Jose del Rincon, Mexico. (Gregory Bull/AP/File)
As Peña Nieto prepares to take office in Mexico, a look back at Calderón's presidency
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
If you had been told on President Felipe Calderón's first day in office that murders would double and the PRI would return to power, you would have defined his administration as a failure. While his supporters would like to tell a more complex and detailed narrative, his legacy will be based on those two negative results. (Read The Christian Science Monitor's full story on Calderón's legacy here.)
In the early weeks of his administration, Calderón made an operational decision to deploy military units to fight the drug cartels. I say operational, because the decision certainly wasn't strategic. There was no strategy for victory, no vision of what "winning" would look like or what resources and reforms would be needed to achieve victory. In fact, Calderón did not even release a security strategy until mid-2010, over three years after he deployed his first military units.
Calderón may have had good intentions when going on the offensive against the criminal groups. The president was certainly correct that the criminal influence in society was unsustainable and needed to be combated. The Mexican security situation in 2006 was far from ideal. There may have been good reasons to use the military. However, the results from 2006-2012 didn't match the good intentions. The results were tens of thousands additional dead, disappeared and displaced.
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The first 3-4 years of Calderón's security policies were a disaster. The final two years saw some improvements, but from a much lower baseline. I think Mexico is improving today and they are implementing a good strategy, including police, judicial, and prison reform, but Calderón's policies should be measured over the whole six years. If you compare the security situation of where Mexico was in 2006 to today, it's not a good picture. The new president has set a goal of simply returning to the levels of violence that existed before Calderón was elected and analysts question if that is achievable given the damage done over the past six years.
That's not to say it's been a good six years for the criminal groups. It's been terrible for them too. Several large criminal organizations have been taken down. The majority of criminal leadership has been arrested or killed. The bad guys are not winning either. Mexico has seen a war of attrition with both sides losing and the civilian population caught in between taking the worst of the damage.
There are things I like about Calderón, things I think he did correct, and policy reforms I think the next president should continue. However, Calderón's legacy will be that he fought a war without a strategy to win. Murders doubled and the PRI is back in power. It's that simple.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
In this photo provided by Miraflores Presidential Press Office, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez speaks during a cabinet meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, earlier this month. At right is a painting depicting Venezuela’s independence hero Simon Bolivar. (Miraflores Presidential Press Office/AP)
Chávez authorized to leave Venezuela for health treatment - Chavismo at risk?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
[Tuesday], in surprising fashion, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized President Hugo Chávez to seek treatment for his ailments in Cuba, under Article 235 of the Venezuelan Constitution which says that any absence of more than five days from the country has to be approved by the Assembly. This is different than a temporal absence, in which the vice president replaces him. (Art. 234), which Chávez has refused to do ever since he started receiving treatment in Cuba for his mysterious ailment.
According to the letter sent by Chávez to the National Assembly, he will receive treatment in a hyperbaric chamber for “oxygenation,” a treatment which according to the American Cancer Society is used for treating bone damage caused during radiation treatment [...]. Chávez has said that he has received chemotherapy, but has never formally acknowledged being treated with radiation, although there are rumors that this was the first type of treatment he received when the cancer was first discovered.
The timing is certainly unconventional, to say the least, as there will be important Gubernatorial elections on Dec. 16th. So far Chávez has been absent for most of the campaign, reducing his appearances in public since he won the Oct. 7 presidential election. [...]
Notice [in graph posted in original post] that Chávez has been absent publicly since about fifteen days ago and now he makes no public appearance to request the leave or as he is leaving the country. Reportedly, he is unable to walk more than a couple of steps at this time. Additionally, the request to be absent from the country was approved at an ordinary session of the National Assembly to “celebrate” the 20th anniversary of the second coup that took place in 1992 and not one scheduled for the approval sought.
There are two important considerations at this time. First, the President of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello read the letter, but also announced Chávez would be here on Jan. 10 to be sworn in as president, suggesting that he will not be here for the remainder of the campaign. This certainly will benefit the opposition, as Chávez personally will not be present to endorse his hand-picked candidates. Additionally, the electorate largely believed that Chávez had been cured from his cancer, with polls suggesting 80 percent of his voters believed the illness was not a factor to consider in the decision. This could benefit the opposition since the Oct. 7th election proved once again that it is Chávez that gets out the votes and generates excitement in the Venezuelan voters.
But more importantly (or ominously) it creates a number of possible scenarios which could complicate things in the next few months, depending on whether Chávez's condition represents an acceleration of the cancer he is suffering. First of all, if there was an absolute absence of the president-elect before he is sworn in, Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution says that the President of the National Assembly (Diosdado Cabello) will become President and elections would take place within 30 days. If the absence were to take place after Chávez is sworn in on Jan. 10, then the Vice-President (Nicolas Maduro) would take his place and elections would also have to take place within 30 days. Note that Chávez would have to appear to be sworn in on Jan. 10t in this scenario, as he has to name a new Vice-President after being sworn in.
For Chavismo [the left-wing ideology which supports the idea of subsidies for the poor and government control of productive assets like oil], this creates a complex situation, in which the party would have to choose a candidate within days, something which would be traumatic, to say the least, unless Chávez personally designated a successor, something that so far he has refused to do during his year and a half sickness. The opposition, on the other hand, is likely to choose Henrique Capriles after his performance against Chávez in the recent Presidential race.
Venezuelan dollar bonds rose sharply when the news was announced today, with most issues reaching historical high values. Investors clearly were betting once again that change may be in the air in Venezuela and a more reasonable economic policy will be implemented, independent of the side that wins were Chávez to suddenly disappear from the Venezuelan political scene.
– Miguel Octavio, a Venezuelan, is not a fan of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. You can read his blog here.
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