There was little hope left in October of bringing Colombia’s 52 year-old conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to an end, when voters narrowly rejected a proposed peace plan in a referendum. Fears swelled that violence would break out again.
President Juan Manuel Santos, however, was undeterred and set about piecing together a revised peace deal.
Six weeks on, gloom and uncertainty have made way for cautious optimism. (more…)
On Sunday, the people of Colombia unexpectedly rejected what had been dubbed an historic peace deal between their government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). 50.2 percent voted down the proposed accord in a referendum. The peace deal is off.
The 297-page agreement, signed last week after four years of negotiation, was meant to end a conflict that spans back to 1964 and has claimed an estimated 260,000 lives.
In speech after speech, President Juan Manuel Santos has extolled the peace accord’s historic nature. Confident of the referendum’s outcome, he staked his presidency on it. His future is now in doubt as well. (more…)
By the end of this month, not only will the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio have come and gone; it is also likely that the left-wing Dilma Rousseff will have finally been removed from the presidency.
Neither will occur without incident. Nor will they solve Brazil’s increasingly confused, complex and confrontational state of affairs, from a messy entanglement of impeachment proceedings to the possibility of fresh elections to the worst economic recession in Brazilian history. (more…)
When Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) won a two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly last year, it represented an unquestionable shift after sixteen years of socialist rule. There was desire for change. Not just from the traditional array of opponents to the ruling party government, but also from those who still call themselves Chavistas.
Those clamors, in part mobilized by the MUD, have become noticeably louder in recent weeks and months and protests have been firmly met by riot police and tear gas.
The country, home to the world’s largest oil reserves and previously one of the most developed in Latin America, is now suffering from the world’s highest inflation rate, varying between 180 and 700 percent. In the boom times, oil (which accounts for 95 percent of exports) helped pay for a million homes for the poor. Now, after three years of decline, with the sovereign wealth fund depleted and the economy expected to shrink by 8 percent, default is a distinct possibility.
Everyday Venezuelans are feeling the bite through shortages in electricity, food, water and medicine. The bare essentials of society have been stripped away and replaced by blackouts, endless queues for basic household goods, violence and looting. The country has the second highest murder rate in the world.
Desperation is in the air and its manifestations can no longer be passed off by the government as “revolts of the rich,” as was the case following similar protests in 2014. (more…)
Peru’s fourth consecutive democratic election has been marred somewhat by a series of events that have placed the Peruvian Electoral Commission at center stage.
Last week’s presidential election followed a familiar path, once again going to a second round which is set to take place in the first week of June.
But prior to the electorate’s trip to the ballot box, two candidates vying to make it to the presidential runoff were barred from participation.
Long-time poll leader Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto, comfortably made her way to the second round with 40 percent of the votes.
The battle for second place was much tighter but won by 77 year-old Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, known as “PPK”, with 21 percent support. (more…)
Peru’s presidential election in April will come at a time when voters across Latin America are expressing a desire for change.
In November, for the first time since democracy was reintroduced there, a right-wing candidate, Mauricio Macri, was elected president in Argentina. December saw the Venezuelan Socialist Party lose its majority in the National Assembly after sixteen years in power. Dilma Roussef, Brazil’s president and leader of the left-wing Workers’ Party, is under threat of impeachment with approval ratings at an all-time low.
Voters in Peru are no less keen on a break even though their president, Ollanta Humala, has turned out to be far less radical in his populism than his 2011 campaign rhetoric and media coverage may have led them to believe.
Instead, his presidency has been characterized by vacillation, both in terms of policy and personnel — but with no great departure from the liberal economic path trodden by Humala’s predecessors. (more…)
In the aftermath of the November terrorist attacks in Paris, words of solidarity resounded around Europe. But actions have since been harder to find.
Indeed, at a time when the European Union’s legitimacy is questioned across the continent, the twin challenges of terror and immigration have provoked and amplified divisions. The prospect of peace and long-term prosperity is being jeopardized by a combination of perceived inaction and reactionary decisionmaking. (more…)
After sixteen years of Chavismo, a symbolic new phase in Venezuelan politics began this week: members of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) took their seats in the National Assembly as part of a new two-thirds supermajority.
Prior to last month’s surprisingly peaceful parliamentary election, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) had a majority of 96 out of 167 seats.
Because of the dire straits the country finds itself in, and in spite of considerable obstacles, the MUD has managed to increase their 63 seats to an overwhelming 112. Although an opposition victory was no surprise, the scale of the triumph has sent an unequivocal message of dissatisfaction with the “Bolivarian Revolution” in its current form. (more…)
Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet for violating its airspace in November has left an indelible mark on Russo-Turkish relations. However brief the incursion — which Russia contests — it could have far-reaching consequences for Turkey’s ties with the West and a resolution to the crisis in Syria.
Neither side is likely to climb down from its position, with Turkey refusing to apologize and Russia punishing it economically. Yet neither do the two have an interest in escalating what has so far mostly been a diplomatic standoff. (more…)
A smattering of outbursts by the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Rodrigo Londoño, also known as “Timochenko,” have suddenly cast doubt on the peace talks between the Colombian government and the still 8,000-strong rebel group.
The current negotiations, initiated in Cuba three years ago, are the fourth such talks since the conflict began in 1964. An agreement reached in September, on the controversial issue of transitional justice, was seen as a significant breakthrough.
The conflict has, at different stages, been characterized as a war on communism, a war on drugs and a war on terror. It has claimed an estimated 220,000 lives; a further five million people have been displaced.
There is no manifest clarity to this struggle, with involved parties ranging from the smaller National Liberation Army — yet to enter any kind of peace negotiations — to the right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), supposedly disbanded in 2003 and adjudged to be responsible for up to 80 percent of civilian casualties. The waters have been further muddied by a thriving drugs trade infiltrating all parties. (more…)
Last month, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, announced the beginning of the long-awaited process of rewriting the Latin American country’s constitution.
Before her election in 2014, Bachelet campaigned on three issues: tax reform, education reform and, last but certainly not least, the introduction of a new constitution.
Chile made the transition to democracy in 1990 after seventeen long years of military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. Yet the constitution drafted by Pinochet and his junta in 1980 remained in place.
The legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship was one of extensive executive powers, unforgiving neoliberal reform and the loss of thousands of lives. Although his regime brought significant economic growth, through the privatization of state-owned companies and a liberalization of the overall economy, it came at the expense of wages, benefits and working conditions. Over 40 percent of Chile’s population was living below the poverty line by 1990.
Bachelet’s return to the presidency last year arrived on a wave of optimism with over 50 percent of the votes and a feeling that she would bring long-anticipated changes to address the fact that among developed countries Chile remains the most unequal in the world. (more…)
Last weekend, Argentina experienced something of a shock as presidential candidate Daniel Scioli of the governing Peronist party was forced into an historic second voting round by the conservative mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri.
Following twelve years of Kirchnerismo — the most radical form of the Peronist umbrella movement to govern to date — Argentina is set for a change in political direction. The extent and speed to which the country’s political course shall be altered, though, depends on the outcome of the presidential runoff next month. (more…)
A reluctance to devalue the sol, a collapse in world commodity prices and protests at the deregulation of extractive industries promise an uncomfortable year for Peru’s president, Ollanta Humala, before the election in 2016.
After more than decade as one the highest-growing economies in the world, Peru’s expansion weakened last year. Falling commodity prices, particularly a 25 percent price reduction in copper in the last six months, have hit Peru hard.
The Central Reserve Bank’s desire to proceed with “business as usual,” forecasting growth for 2015 between 4.5 and 5 percent, can only exacerbate Peru’s predicament. (more…)
As President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner comes to the end of her second and final presidential term, Argentina’s October elections could bring a new party to power for the first time since the 2001 economic collapse. Conservative businessman Mauricio Macri leads the polls after a 12 percent upsurge in the past year.
After Argentina defaulted on its debt last year for the second time in less than two decades, all the major parties acknowledge a need for economic reform.
New economic policy announcements from the incumbent government are unlikely to carry much weight, however, given how little is left of Kirchner’s presidency. Still, it is possible to gauge the mood of the country based on the reaction to her latest policies. (more…)
