News, Research and Opinion articles on World Current Affairs, Money & Finance, Natural Resources, Latin America, the Middle East, as well as other Miscellanea from the web.
From electing #Mugabe as Goodwill Ambassador @WHO and #Erdogan to the @UNESCO Board, to naming #SaudiArabia to its #Women's Rights Commission ...
The #UN, with special mention to the @UN_HRC #HumanRights Council, has outdone itself this year...
The Top 10 Most Evil U.N. Actions of 2017 @UNWatch
UN Briefing
UN Watch Briefing Latest from the United Nations
December 25, 2017
The Top 10 Most Evil U.N. Actions of 2017
10. Denied Venezuelan Hunger: In the first-ever U.N. visit to Venezuela, Alfred de Zayas, the U.N. Human Rights Council's Cuban-backed "Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order," posted propaganda photos to deny mass hunger caused by the regime's failed policies.
After UN Watch exposed the sick lie—in truth, Venezuelan hospitals are filled with starving children—the U.N. official was pressured into deleting his blog post and tweet.
Several years into a Chinese economic slowdown, the Latin American economies that relied on China to buy up their key exports are feeling the pain. With less hard currency coming in, governments across the region are rapidly readjusting their spending plans and preparing to govern in an environment in which they will have fewer resources to secure their key constituents' political loyalties.
The Role of Geography
Ever since commodity prices began dropping several years ago, much has been written about how slow economic growth and potential political instability will plague Latin America in coming years. But what will Latin America as a whole look like in a decade as a result of the Chinese economic downturn? What ideologies will dominate in a continent that over the past decade veered toward leftist populism? And what issues will define its relationship with the United States, the hemisphere's undisputed hegemon?
The region's geopolitics hold the beginning of an answer. The first step is to view Latin America's geographic regions and countries as a series of divided islands rather than a united entity. Unlike Western Europe, where the relative absence of natural obstacles eventually gave rise to interconnected political entities, South America is bisected by the dense Amazon rainforest and divided lengthwise by the nearly insurmountable Andean mountain range. Latin American colonies were divided even before the collapse of the Spanish Empire in the Americas more than two centuries ago. After independence, this disconnected geographic landscape created dozens of economies of wildly varying sizes often more linked by trade with partners outside the region than with each other. With few unbroken expanses of arable land and high transport costs across the forests and mountains, Latin America was simply not in a position to create capital on the scale of the United States or Western Europe. Consequently, even major Latin American states such as Brazil or Mexico remain highly reliant on inflows of cash from abroad to keep their economies afloat and rely on exports to China or the United States for a significant part of their foreign trade.
Unsurprisingly, the goal of forming institutions that can provide lasting political and economic unity has eluded Latin American statesmen. Numerous attempts have been made to unite the fractious region: Simon Bolivar's ill-fated 19th-century bid to unite South America, a similar attempt at uniting the Central American states into a federation and the more recent creation of separate economic blocs in Latin America. Yet the isolation created by geographic barriers has foiled leaders' attempts to unite the region's countries into a real economic or political union on the scale of the European Union or even the North American Free Trade Agreement. In recent history, the closest that Latin American states came to some sort of unity — besides regional trading blocs such as the Common Market of the South and the Pacific Alliance — was the wave of leftist populist governments that swept the continent beginning in the early 2000s. But after a decade of budgets and politics buoyed by high commodity prices, the raw realities of geopolitics are back with a vengeance.
The Shape of Governments to Come
We cannot define the exact nature of the national governments that will emerge during the next decade; short-term actions are less predictable than long-term trends, and attempting to forecast which people or parties will lead countries such as Brazil after its 2018 elections or Venezuela after its presidential election in 2019 is very risky. However, we have a rough idea of the shape these governments will take. With less revenue available to pacify restive populations, the new governments will likely be more economically pragmatic than their predecessors. This is not to say that populism as a means of governance in Latin America will subside; rather, rulers are likely to take more care in how they relate to their voters and the outside world.
Because the region is so dependent on foreign capital for continued economic growth, and because states' export revenues are so depleted (in Bolivia, for example, export revenue is down by nearly a third compared with last year), leaders are more likely to refrain from mass nationalizations or hostility to foreign companies. During the past decade, leftist governments seized numerous private assets in disputes with private firms. Except for extreme cases such as Venezuela — which, because of its default risk, economic problems and past expropriations, is already de facto cut off from most foreign lending and many investments — most states will likely now try to encourage investments rather than scare them off. Consequently, Latin America is likely entering an era in which the grand populist gestures of the past decade will no longer yield the same results as before and can, in fact, be counterproductive for leaders trying to restart their faltering economies.
The weakening of the Latin American left is another factor that will shape the coming decade. In the next 10 years, the governments that came to power during the boom times will reach the end of their tenures. The list of states that will evolve from leftist administrations into some other type of government is lengthy. Venezuela will reach the painful point of reckoning in which its ruling United Socialist Party will split apart. And as the party splits, Venezuela will undergo a painful economic restructuring and a political shift away from extreme populism. In Ecuador, leftist President Rafael Correa may not secure even another four-year term. In Bolivia, low export prices for natural gas will put President Evo Morales' ability to secure another decade in office to the test.
The left's decline will give the United States an exceptionally benign climate for managing its relationships and priorities to the south. To be sure, longstanding concerns — such as trade, drug trafficking and illegal migration — guiding the United States' actions in much of Latin America will remain. But the bumper crop of leftist states that were often minor hindrances to U.S. political moves in the region will become less of a factor in the next decade. Washington's new priorities in the region, such as cushioning Venezuela's economic collapse and bringing Cuba into some sort of improved trade relationship, will occupy the United States' time.
Of the states currently undergoing deep economic downturns, several seem poised to make a resurgence. Mexico is an outlier, given than it is so linked to the United States through trade. But those links will ensure that despite problematic public finances, Mexico will remain a major force in Latin American economic growth. For Peru and Colombia, international trade will drop over the next several years, but their stable public finances will likely ensure some degree of social stability. And even Brazil, in the midst of a massive corruption scandal at Petrobras, will ride out the crisis due to its strong (albeit currently strained) domestic manufacturing base and sheer economic size.
Re-Emerging Differences
The rampant populism of the past 15 years — bolstered by rapidly increasing exports to hungry markets abroad — imposed a false appearance of unity among the Latin American leftist states. Superficially, Nestor Kirchner's Argentina appeared to have much in common with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, even though both countries' individual geographic and political characteristics ultimately dictated the governments' decisions. With the rise of another leftist bloc unlikely in the next decade, the divided nature of Latin America will again become evident.
And the continent's divided nature means that the shortcomings of international bodies there, such as the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), will become even more self-evident. For example, Brasilia will use Mercosur to do what is in its own immediate benefit: increase trade links with Latin American states outside its immediate neighborhood, such as Mexico. But truly lucrative deals, such as a Mercosur-European Union trade agreement, will remain just out of reach because they require full approval of all the group's members. Mercosur's other key member, Argentina, opposes any such deals lest they harm its domestic industry. Consequently, Brazil will continue looking for small bilateral deals, but it will continue to be hamstrung by Mercosur. Unasur, on the other hand, which was originally conceived of as a sort of South American United Nations, is highly unlikely to progress beyond a regional body that meets a couple of times a year. It is not that there is no political will in Latin America to push toward greater unity, but unlike the European Union, such bodies cannot be superimposed onto a region whose trade ties and key political relationships are focused toward other continents rather than each other.
The next decade will bring with it some political and economic continuity. The region will maintain its fundamental relationship with the rest of the globe, in which its foreign trade is overwhelmingly skewed toward the export of raw materials and its economies are heavily reliant on foreign capital markets. But deeper internal changes are already in motion, and the states of the region will change accordingly. The parties at the helm of these states will be different, and the way these parties relate with the outside world on a political and economic level will be undeniably different. Over the next 10 years, the shortcomings of extreme reliance on the Chinese economy will spur cost-cutting and domestic economic diversification. The trappings of the Cold War will fade in Latin America as leaders are replaced and political institutions evolve, but the new Latin America will continue to be more defined by its divisions than by any idea of unity.
"<a href="https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/new-latin-america">The New Latin America</a> is republished with permission of Stratfor."
In 1812, scarcely a year into Venezuela's independence, an earthquake leveled Caracas, spurring panicked survivors to expel the republican army and return the colony to Spanish rule. Simón Bolívar remained unbowed: "If nature opposes us," the revolutionary leader declared, "we shall fight nature and force her to obey us." Two centuries later, the new "revolutionary" government that has co-opted Bolívar's name has also adopted his obdurate attitude, while perhaps eschewing other qualities — adaptability, diplomacy, competence — that allowed him eventually to reconquer Caracas and liberate five other Andean nations.
Despite an economy in free fall, harrowing shortages of medicines and foodstuffs, rock-bottom oil prices, nearly depleted foreign exchange reserves, and the worst inflation on earth, the government of Nicolás Maduro has steadfastly refused to come up with even the most rudimentary policy response. The currency remains officially pegged at over 100 times the black market rate and untenable subsidies keep domestic petrol prices at pennies on the gallon. The government has even failed to introduce larger bill denominations, leaving Venezuelans with a currency that tops out at a ludicrous $0.15.
As Bolivarian tenacity has devolved into a self-destructive political paralysis, if not a complete break with reality, the country is fast on its way to becoming a failed state. Indeed, by some metrics — homicide and violent crime rates, broken supply chains, number of high regime officials currently under investigation by the US Treasury for narcotrafficking — it has already arrived.
At first blush, the global economic risks posed by a Venezuelan collapse may seem limited — China, the country's biggest creditor, is paid off in oil, not dollars, while US imports of Venezuelan crude have nearly halved since the 1990s and Brazil's language barrier and forbidding Amazon border would probably shield the country from the worst of the humanitarian consequences. But, even so, the fallout for the region — and beyond — could be severe.
The Obama administration's rapprochement with Cuba is a direct result of Havana's perception that Venezuela, which replaced the Soviet Union as the island's chief benefactor in the 2000s, can no longer be relied upon. Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, former beneficiaries of Venezuela's petro-largesse such as Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are scrambling to retool their economies for its absence. For Guyana, the mainland former British colony embroiled in a centuries-old territorial dispute with Venezuela, the stakes are even higher. As Mr Maduro's popularity has plummeted, he has leaned increasingly hard on his eastern neighbour, in an apparent bid for nationalist support.
Perhaps most at risk is Colombia, which has emerged as a superstar economic performer. The collapse of Venezuela's import sector, Bogota's second-largest market, is already hurting it economically. For a decade it has received the bulk of Venezuela's fleeing educated class, even while its own surplus of unskilled labour has headed in the opposite direction. The return of such emigrants to Colombia, alongside fleeing Venezuelans, could worsen the security crisis at the countries' porous border — where smuggling and narcotrafficking are already rife and guerrilla groups operate with impunity.
In the end, should Venezuela's leaders continue with the untenable economic policies they inherited from Hugo Chávez, the country's late leader, the results will be dire. In refusing to bend, they will eventually break. And while globally the short-term economic effects may seem limited, a failed state at the heart of a region already undermined by corruption scandals, domestic instability and economic malaise, would be a recipe for disaster: like Bolivar's earthquake, only transnational, and imminently avoidable.
The writer teaches Latin American business at the Kellogg School of Management
A number of powerful individuals who were propelled into positions of influence during the administration of former President Hugo Chavez have used that influence to shape the economy into a mangled instrument that suited their personal interests. These individuals now function less as a government than as a mafia.
Disbanding the Venezuelan Mafia
As the price of Brent crude continued its five-day dip, settling at $64 per barrel Tuesday, we can assume the latest slump is extremely worrisome for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The petrodollars he needs to keep the Venezuelan economy afloat are dwindling. He has only $17.8 billion sitting in largely illiquid reserves, most of which are stored in gold, and total reserves are declining by roughly $2 billion every month. Less oil revenue means fewer dollars to fund imports, which in turn means the average Venezuelan with a necessary ID card can shop only on days designated by the government. And on those days, that citizen has to rush to stand in maddeningly long lines patrolled by security guards only to find that basic goods, from toilet paper to milk, are stripped from the shelves.
But the drop in the price of oil is not the only thing Venezuelans can blame for the shortages. Festering within the government are a number of powerful individuals who were propelled into positions of influence during the administration of former President Hugo Chavez and who have used that influence to shape the economy into a mangled instrument that suited their personal interests. These individuals now function less as a government than as a mafia. Military generals and government officials have worked hand in hand to move cocaine from Colombia through Venezuela while gaming the country's purchasing and distribution mechanisms and subsidized exchange rates to realize profits from various arbitrage schemes. So even when the government is able to import basic goods, their partners in crime can hoard products at ports or in warehouses to sit and rot or eventually be sold on the black market.
Maduro inherited a government stacked with officials and generals whose primary interest is to maintain the influence and the perks that come with their positions. But Maduro has a problem. Venezuela's shortages are eventually going to reach a critical point as the country's financial cushion deflates, creating the potential for more serious unrest. At the same time, elections are due this year, and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela is going to struggle to win votes when the government is running on the fumes of the Chavez era. If Maduro has any chance of carrying the country through this crisis, he will have to start by dislodging Chavistas who are distorting critical parts of the economy through their elaborate corruption schemes.
Obviously, this is easier said than done. If Maduro had the power to purge his government, he would have done so by now. The people in question are powerful for a reason, and they have military backing and links to armed groups that can cause trouble if they are crossed. The prospect of messy street protests means he needs the support of his security forces more than ever.
It is for these reasons that we are particularly interested in the growing number of leaks and rumors on U.S. prosecutors and Drug Enforcement Administration members working to build cases against high-level Venezuelan officials complicit in drug trafficking. Following weeks of rumors in Venezuelan media on impending indictments against high-level officials, The Wall Street Journal captured a great deal of attention on Monday with its detailed investigation on this very issue. The report claimed that National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, Aragua state Gov. Tareck El Aissami, head of the National Guard Nestor Reverol, Gen. Luis Motta Dominguez and retired Gen. Hugo Carvajal are under investigation in the United States, giving credence to previous claims in Venezuela that Cabello, in particular, is at the top of the United States' list of targets.
Of course, these cases have been building for some time, particularly after the 2010 arrest of Venezuelan drug kingpin Walid Makled. But it is notable that the rumors are intensifying at the same time the United States is trying to repair its relationship with Caracas. U.S. State Department Counselor Thomas Shannon met with Maduro on May 11, following up an April visit, and is reportedly expected to have more meetings with him in the coming weeks. The investigation of such high-profile Venezuelan officials would be discussed in these meetings. It is also reasonable to believe Cabello would be a central point as well.
Cabello, who participated in the 1992 coup attempt led by Chavez, has served in several powerful positions in the government and has influence over several members of the military. So long as he remains in a position of influence, the members in his criminal network are also protected. For now, as president of the National Assembly, Cabello has diplomatic immunity from any charges that the United States could throw at him. But if he loses his power — either through elections or through a decision by Maduro — then he and his cohorts will be susceptible to arrest and extradition if they leave the country now that he faces an impending indictment. Such concerns may be at least part of the reason we have not yet seen the Venezuelan government follow through in setting a date for the elections, even though Maduro likely knows that canceling the elections would result only in more severe and possibly unmanageable unrest on the streets.
That brings us back to the talks between Shannon and Maduro. Holding charges over the heads of powerful members of the Venezuelan government enables Washington to pressure Caracas into making political concessions, including a power-sharing arrangement with the opposition. But there may be more to the negotiation as well. Maduro may not be able to purge powerful figures such as Cabello and El Aissami on his own, but there is a possibility they could be sacrificed as part of a bargain with Washington — beginning the process of routing the government and the economy of its most destructive elements and delivering a message that the criminal networks distorting the economy are not impenetrable.
One way or another, Maduro needs to mitigate food shortages and secure economic aid. The United States is in no way the whole answer to Venezuela's problems or a substitute for the structural reforms needed to repair the economy, but it may be able to offer Maduro a partial solution. That prospect alone should have Cabello nervous.
Cadivi dies, and so does the middle class | Caracas Chronicles
Excellent article on the fallacy of the middle class in #Venezuela and how the current situation is eerily similar to 1989, with a huge discrepancy between the expectations of the people and the current economic reality.
Venezuela's Middle Ground: now you see it, now you don't
In a recent article in Foreign Policy, Javier Corrales argues that Venezuela today is a country of "mostly middle-class people". Following the World Bank's income thresholds for determining class membership, Corrales classifies each income decile in Venezuela into their respective class.
I've replicated his table following the guidelines in the appendix to his article (see Table 1). It is evident, as Corrales highlights, that by this measure in 2012 the majority of Venezuelans belonged to the middle class. Moreover, the distribution differs markedly from 1990 as a result of a large portion of the poor crossing the middle class threshold during the recent windfall (especially post 2005).
Corrales correctly points out that once we agree that Venezuela is a middle class country, then deriding the recent wave of protests as "too middle class" is absurd and, in the case of the government, a political blunder. What else would one expect in a middle class country but middle class demands, including demands for better governance outcomes and representation?
The other half of the story
Yet Corrales' table shows only half the story. In a country highly dependent on oil revenues, defining social progress solely in terms of income is problematic as we run the risk of confusing a temporary increase in consumption, financed with oil revenues, with a permanent increase in welfare. The only way the latter can be achieved is through sustained increases in productivity.
There is little doubt that the oil bonanza of the past decade and the government's (re)distributive policies increased the income of the poor in Venezuela, swelling the middle class, at least as defined by the World Bank's income thresholds. But to the extent that these outcomes are not the reflection of increased productivity but rather of increased consumption financed by high oil revenues, they are highly dependent on the incremental (not just continued) flow of this revenue. Once this flow becomes strained, as has been occurring since 2013, the model not only becomes unviable, but its apparent achievements can quickly be wiped out.
To get a sense of what this would entail, I reconstructed Corrales' table using the World Bank data on GNI in local currency, converting it at the black-market exchange rate and applying the same PPP and inflation adjustment as in table 1 (see Table 2). While at the official exchange rate, Venezuelans' incomes are indeed those of a middle-income country, at the black-market exchange rate this no longer holds. In this picture the majority of Venezuelans are poor.
Which picture is right? This depends on the capacity of the government to maintain its distributive policies including an overvalued exchange rate, which in turn depends on sustaining a steady supply of dollars. While Table 1 is likely a more accurate representation of income distribution in Venezuela between 2004 and 2012, I would argue reality is rapidly converging towards the second picture (Table 2), as the supply of dollars shrinks and becomes erratic.
Some will correctly point out that the black-market exchange rate is not a proper measure of the market exchange rate one would see if it were allowed to float. In reality, it would be somewhere in between the official rate and the black market one (estimating this is not straightforward).
This deserves two comments: first, at this moment, as the government prevaricates in its economic policy, it is forcing the picture to look much more like Table 2 than need be, as goods are priced at the black-market rate for lack of access to dollars, or are simply non-existent. Second, Table 1 is but an illusion that is unraveling, with the trend nowadays clearly in the direction of the second picture. Whether we ever reach it or not is inconsequential for the argument that follows.
Yes, many Venezuelans, and most particularly the poor, managed to climb up the income ladder as a result of the government's distribution of the oil bonanza. In particular, as has also been common in previous governments, through the use of an overvalued exchange rate. Yet, as dollars have become scarce for reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, the precariousness of these outcomes becomes manifest.
The income ladder has not only been withdrawn, but those that had climbed up are being pulled back down. I would posit that this, rather than middle class demands, explains the growing discontent, part of which (although far from its entirety) has expressed itself on the streets in recent weeks. Whether the "new" middle class identifies itself with traditional middle class demands of better governance and representation remains to be seen. The speed and means through which this change in incomes occurred – distribution of rents rather than productivity – arguably suggest the contrary.
That is not to say however, that the focus of the opposition's discourse should lie on unsatisfied basic needs rather than demands for accountability, representation and political and economic freedoms. The challenge lies in explaining how the scarcity of the latter explains the abundance of the former.
Is this really so different from 1989?
Unfortunately the data on income distribution is not readily available, yet we can still look at mean income (in constant 2005 international $) measured at the official and black market exchange rates (see Figure 1). The widening gap between these two measures is evident since 2004. Yet we see exactly the same pattern in the period preceding 1989. As in 1989, what we are observing today is the confrontation of inflated expectations, formed over a period of bonanza and grand promises, with an increasingly grim reality.
In 1989 the consequences of this confrontation were traumatic. This time around, the gap between expectations and reality is I arguably much larger, and hence the potential for an explosive outcome much greater. A lot depends on how the government confronts its economic demons, although it might already be too late. If this narrative is correct, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to discontent taking over the streets. Are the paramilitary groups known as colectivos enough to contain this?
Mirages in the desert
To be clear, the proposed narrative is not inconsistent with Corrales'. It could very well be that the swelling of the middle class observed over the past oil boom led to the emergence of middle class demands for governance and representation. It should be possible to see this in surveys such as Latinobarómetro. The narrative above however does claim that the main source of discontent brewing today is the result of the confrontation of inflated expectations with a dismal reality. This discontent is not so different from that which led to social unrest in 1989. Venezuelans are once again at that point when the mirages created by the bonanza disappear, leaving them in the same desolation they found themselves in over twenty years ago.
The question that remains is whether the opposition is able to offer a way out of this vicious cycle. To do so, it must explain why we are where we are, and provide a credible vision of how we are going pull ourselves up by our bootstraps rather than hold on to vain hopes of a new bonanza. We all want the first picture to be true (Table 1). Indeed we want all blocks to be colored red or grey. Yet the only way for this to be sustainable is via a continued increase in productivity. Our oil income can be an instrument in this endeavor but it can never substitute for our effort. Whether we've understood this remains to be seen, otherwise we will keep grasping at mirages in the desert.
.... the government will likely try to
bring the more conciliatory segments of the opposition into some kind
of negotiation. This could weaken the protest movement by isolating the
more combative groups among the protesters from the movement's
leadership negotiating with the government. If Sicad II effectively
distributes foreign currency, it could provide the opposition's business
representatives with a reason for continuing negotiations. However, the
Maduro government will need to give the opposition's political leaders
-- including Capriles -- more concessions to bring them into talks. ... Maduro may need to make other moves, such as
releasing political prisoners, to bring a wider part of the opposition
coalition into negotiations. These are concessions he may not be able to
afford...
Los Teques, Venezuela — As I compose these words from the Ramo Verde military prison outside Caracas, I am struck by how much Venezuelans have suffered.
For 15 years, the definition of “intolerable” in this country has declined by degrees until, to our dismay, we found ourselves with one of the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere, a 57 percent inflation rate and a scarcity of basic goods unprecedented outside of wartime.
Our crippled economy is matched by an equally oppressive political climate. Since student protests began on Feb. 4, more than 1,500 protesters have been detained, more than 30 have been killed, and more than 50 people have reported that they were tortured while in police custody. What started as a peaceful march against crime on a university campus has exposed the depth of this government’s criminalization of dissent.
I have been in prison for more than a month. On Feb. 12, I urged Venezuelans to exercise their legal rights to protest and free speech — but to do so peacefully and without violence. Three people were shot and killed that day. An analysis of video by the news organization Últimas Noticias determined that shots were fired from the direction of plainclothes military troops.
In the aftermath of that protest, President Nicolás Maduro personally ordered my arrest on charges of murder, arson and terrorism. Amnesty International said the charges seemed like a “politically motivated attempt to silence dissent.” To this day, no evidence of any kind has been presented.
Soon, more opposition mayors, elected by an overwhelming majority in December’s elections, will join me behind bars. Last week the government arrested the mayor of San Cristóbal, where the student protests began, as well as the mayor of San Diego, who has been accused of disobeying an order to remove protesters’ barricades. But we will not stay silent. Some believe that speaking out only antagonizes the ruling party — inviting Mr. Maduro to move more quickly to strip away rights — and provides a convenient distraction from the economic and social ruin that is taking place. In my view, this path is akin to a victim of abuse remaining silent for fear of inviting more punishment.
More important, millions of Venezuelans do not have the luxury of playing the “long game,” of waiting for change that never comes.
We must continue to speak, act and protest. We must never allow our nerves to become deadened to the steady abuse of rights that is taking place. And we must pursue an agenda for change.
The opposition leadership has outlined a series of actions that are necessary in order to move forward.
Victims of repression, abuse and torture, as well as family members of those who have died, deserve justice. Those who are responsible must resign. The pro-government paramilitary groups, or “colectivos,” that have tried to silence the protests through violence and intimidation must be disarmed.
All political prisoners and dissenters who were forced into exile by the government, as well as students who were jailed for protesting, must be allowed to return or be released. This should be followed by restoring impartiality to important institutions that form the backbone of civil society, including the electoral commission and the judicial system.
Continue reading the main story
In order to get our economy on the right footing, we need an investigation into fraud committed through our commission for currency exchange — at least $15 billion was funneled into phantom businesses and kickbacks last year, a move that has directly contributed to the inflationary spiral and severe shortages our country is experiencing.
Finally, we need real engagement from the international community, particularly in Latin America. The outspoken response from human rights organizations is in sharp contrast to the shameful silence from many of Venezuela’s neighbors in Latin America. The Organization of American States, which represents nations in the Western Hemisphere, has abstained from any real leadership on the current crisis of human rights and the looming specter of a failed state, even though it was formed precisely to address issues like these.
To be silent is to be complicit in the downward spiral of Venezuela’s political system, economy and society, not to mention in the continued misery of millions. Many current leaders in Latin America suffered similar abuses in their time and they should not be silent accomplices to the abuses of today.
For Venezuelans, a change in leadership can be accomplished entirely within a constitutional and legal framework. We must advocate for human rights; freedom of expression; the right to property, housing, health and education; equality within the judicial system, and, of course, the right of protest. These are not radical goals. They are the basic building blocks of society.
Leopoldo López is the former mayor of the Chacao district of Caracas and the leader of the Popular Will opposition party.
The party is definitely over for "socialism of the 21st century":
Andres Oppenheimer: Venezuela losing clout in region
Beleaguered Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro may be able — or not — to remain in power for the remainder of his term, but Venezuela’s influence elsewhere in Latin America seems to be diminishing as rapidly as the country’ s dwindling foreign reserves.Last weekend, the Venezuelan government lost a new potential ally in the region when leftist candidate Xiomara Castro — the wife of Venezuelan-backed deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya — came in a distant second in Honduras’ presidential elections.
According to official results, the right-of-center president-elect, Juan Orlando Hernández, won by more than five percentage points. Castro disputed the results, but international observers ratified Hernández’s victory, and even Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega — one of Venezuela’s closest allies — congratulated Hernández for his victory.
Weeks earlier, in Argentina’s Oct. 27 legislative elections, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — a populist who was very close to late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez and is friendly with Maduro — failed to win a congressional super majority that would have allowed her to change the constitution and run for a third term in 2015.
Fernández returned from a month-long medical leave in late November with a videotaped message in which she appeared with a little dog named Simón, after Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolivar, which she said was a present she had just received from Chávez’s brother Adán.
But aside from that symbolic gesture, Fernández’s financially-strapped populist government seems to have little hope of getting help from Venezuela as it did between 2005 and 2008.
On the contrary, after her electoral defeat, Fernández seems to be making a sharp turn to the right.
Last week, the Fernández government struck a deal to indemnify Spain’s oil giant Repsol, which it had expropriated in 2012 and threatened not to pay a cent. Argentina, which had triumphantly hailed the expropriation as a “recovery” of its national sovereignty, will now pay more than $5 billion for the takeover.
In another political u-turn, Fernández is now speeding up negotiations with the Washington-based International Monetary Fund to repair Argentina’s damaged ties with international creditors. In recent years, Fernández, much like Chávez, had regularly lashed out against the IMF.
While Fernández clings to her 1970s leftist rhetoric, the end of the boom in commodity prices that allowed her government to buy millions of votes with cash subsidies in recent years is forcing her to seek domestic and foreign investments. The most common phrase you hear in Buenos Aires’ political circles is, “ Se acabó la fiesta” (The party is over).
In Central America and the Caribbean, Petrocaribe — the Venezuelan institution that provides subsidized oil to friendly countries — has raised from 50 percent to 60 percent the cash payments it demands from member countries and is also raising interest rates on their long-term oil debts.
In early November, Guatemala announced its withdrawal from Petrocaribe, saying that the new payment conditions were no longer attractive.
“Over the past six months, the United States has surpassed Petrocaribe as the main supplier of fuels to Central American and Caribbean countries,” Jorge Piñon, an oil expert with the University of Texas at Austin, told me last week. “Things have changed very fast.”
Earlier this year, Venezuela lost another potential ally when right-of-center Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes won that country’s presidential election.
Even some of Latin America’s best-known Chavista ideologues, such as German-born Mexican leftist Heinz Dieterich, who is credited with having coined Chávez’s term of “Socialism of the XXI Century,” are distancing themselves from Maduro. Dieterich made headlines last month when he described Maduro as a “fraud.”
My opinion: You don’t have to be an enlightened political scientist to forecast a continued decline of Venezuela’s political and economic influence in Latin America.
As hard as Chávez tried and now Maduro tries to disguise it with ideological slogans, their “Socialism of the XXI Century” was nothing but an authoritarian populist vote-buying scheme that worked when Venezuela’s oil prices were at all-time highs.
But oil prices have fallen, and Maduro has run out of money to keep giving away to win votes. Venezuela’s foreign reserves have plummeted from an all-time high of $42 billion in 2008 to $20 billion today.
The Venezuelan economy is in ruins, with inflation surpassing 50 percent a year — one of the world’s highest rates — and growing food shortages. The Venezuelan fiesta is over, and you can feel the ripple-effects with various degrees of intensity in much of Latin America.
When even the Russian state media is laughing at you, something is definitely wrong.
The money quote:
The Ministry "will be responsible for implementing and coordinating the famous missions created by our Perpetual Commandant,” Maduro said in his announcement Thursday, referring to Chavez in a North Korean-style life-after-death title. "
The danger however, is that the Vice-Ministry may one day join the opposition when it realizes that nothing will make the people happier than the departure of Chavismo from Government.
"They want war and economic destabilization…the gringos, the empire," ...
In every dictatorship there are always foreign influences conspiring to destabilize the State, the Party, and the People, as Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others always lamented... In Venezuela, Leader Finds Conspiracies Behind Every Door BY EZEQUIEL MINAYA AND SARA SCHAEFER MUÑOZ
CARACAS, Venezuela—The government here is engaged in a battle of narratives.
Most economists, for instance, say Venezuela is plagued by shortages of basic goods like cooking oil and toilet paper due to the leftist government's tight currency and price controls.
President Nicolás Maduro counters that the shortages aren't due to the laws of economics, but rather a plot by the country's political opposition, greedy shopkeepers and the U.S. government. In his view, Washington, together with Venezuela's opposition, plant stories in the media about Venezuela's shaky economy, causing panic shopping and shortages.
"They want war and economic destabilization…the gringos, the empire," ...
we see a number of regime leaders left with little but the dusty legacy of their predecessors to establish their own legitimacy. This is not to say that the desire for strong leadership and control has perished.
One German poet's clash with the sad reality of Venezuela. She thought she was going to a socialist paradise, instead she got a third rate version of a dictatorship.
The symbolism is reminiscent of that of North Korea, East Germany, the Soviet Union. Those in power are presented from a perspective which makes them look overpowering.You have to look up to them.I'm glad when I no longer have to see.The propaganda is boring, one-sided, it sucks.
Es habitual que los hijos adolescentes salgan por peteneras y avergüencen a sus padres en público de vez en cuando con alguna extravagancia. Seguro que a Sonsoles y Zapatero no les hizo ninguna gracia que sus niñas se presentasen con sendos atuendos góticos en la cena con los Obama. Y quiero pensar que a Hugo Chávez, la foto que su hija pequeña (de 14 años) colgó en Instagram, abanicándose con un puñado de dólares, tampoco le provocó ni media sonrisa. Sobre todo teniendo en cuanta que en Venezuela la posesión de moneda extranjera está regulada.
Aunque va a ser que Rosinés le ha salido un poco imperialista. No sólo se toma fotos luciendo una colección de billetes estadounidenses, sino que cuando Justin Bieber dio un concierto en Caracas, aprovechó su condición de hija de su papi para saludarlo y abrazarlo a su llegada al aeropuerto. Y algo parecido ocurrió con Miley Cyrus: una foto de ambas sonriendo a cámara circula desde hace tiempo por internet. Claro que qué culpa tiene ella de que su padre odie a Europa, Norteamérica, el capitalismo, y todas esas cosas. No sería la primera en contrariar a sus familiares líderes de su patria: al nieto de Kim Jong Il, por ejemplo, le encanta navegar por la red y lo hace con mucha soltura, pese a que su abuelo hubiese prácticamente prohibido el acceso a internet en todo Corea del Norte.
A lo mejor a Chávez no le molesta tanto el imperialismo galopante de su descendiente; todo el mundo sabe que Rosinés es su consentida. En el programa número 240 de ‘Aló Presidente’, relató a su audiencia cómo su hija pequeña, convaleciente en la cama, le había comentado que el caballo del escudo nacional caminaba en la dirección contraria: de la izquierda a la derecha. La supuesta anécdota familiar le sirvió al presidente venezolano para pedir a la Asamblea Nacional que se revisase la posición del caballo y se colocase de forma correcta: cabalgando de la derecha hacia la izquierda. Rosinés les había salvado del mal camino al que su propia bandera les guiaba.
Y ojito que nadie se meta con ella. En 2005, el humorista Laureano Márquez escribía una columna en el diario de la oposición Tal Cual en la que le pedía a Rosinés con mucha ironía y canchondeíto que hablase con su padre de algunos temas políticos, incidiendo en las contradicciones entre la vida familiar de los Chávez y su discurso político. El presidente de Venezuela denunció al humorista y al director de la revista por publicar un contenido que dañaba la imagen pública de Rosinés y éstos tuvieron que pagar tremenda suma por sus pecados.
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