First Round

A press conference of opposition legislators in Venezuela, in which they presented a recording of a conversation about splits in the group in power (from El País).

Somewhat more than a month after his election, Nicolás Maduro’s government is facing two major problems at the same time: scarcity of basic products and the ventilation of a split in the group in power. For the moment, it seems none of these issues threatens the continuity of Maduro in power or of the Chavista project in Venezuela. However, they do represent the first time in which he will have to use all his political skills to maintain Chavistas united and to prevent the support for the opposition from rising.

Scarcity of basic products is a chronic symptom of an unsustainable spending scheme, which in turn is one of the axes of Chavismo. Not surprisingly, Maduro has sought scapegoats for the aggravating situation, which made it to the international press in the last weeks due to products such as toilet paper being included in the scarcity list. The President has blamed businesses of not producing at the top of their capacity in an attempt to increase the demand and maintain high prices. The chair of Empresas Polar, Lorenzo Mendoza, which controls 48% of the flour production in the country, recoiled saying that his company is working at full capacity, in contrast with the state which, being responsible for the remaining 52% of the flour production, is just functioning at 40% of its capacity. At the same time, the Venezuelan Central Bank has hosted meetings with business representatives to discuss pricing, tax, and foreign currency exchange rate policies to increase production to satisfy the domestic market and to export. In spite of the rapprochement between the government and the private sector, some voices judge that for the internal demand to be promptly satisfied, Chavismo’s logic of controlling prices and rates must be abolished.

The other problem, the ventilation of an apparent split in the group in power, is new. For some weeks there had been gossiping about the military not entirely satisfied with Maduro being appointed as Chávez’s successor. But yesterday, a group of legislators from the opposition shared with the press the recording of a conversation allegedly between a Cuban agent in Venezuela and a popular Venezuelan TV anchor, Mario Silva. The latter talked about two antagonist groups within the government: one led by Maduro and another by Diosdado Cabello, President of the Chamber or Deputies, who would be backed by parts of the Army and the private sector. According to the conversation, while Maduro was removing from office people close to Cabello (including the chair of the foreign exchange commission, Manuel Barroso), the latter would attempt to take over the Ministry of Defense and PDVSA, the state-owned oil company, to make it more difficult for Maduro to make and implement decisions, forcing him to resign.

Maduro has not made any public commentaries on those issues. At most, in his Twitter account he still continuously blames “the fascist right” of trying to de-stabilize the country. Similarly, he said arguments about the negative effects of price controls represented “an opportunity to wipe out the vices of the speculator capitalism”. Possibly we will not know the details of any action he undertakes to face these two challenges. But their consequences on the economic performance or the support he maintains will be visible for all.

Justice?

Lt. General Rafael Videla, head of the Military Junta in Argentina between 1976 and 1981. On the left, undergoing a trial. On the right, during his time in office (from AFP).

Last Friday Lt. General Rafael Videla, head between 1976 and 1981 of the Military Junta that ruled Argentina until 1983, passed away. He was serving a life-long sentence for the death of 31 political dissents and another 50-year sentence for the theft of at least 400 babies who were born in political detention centers during the military rule. According to the law, he will receive none of the honors deserved to former chiefs of government or military commanders because of his crimes.

Rafael Videla came to power in 1976 when he staged a bloodless coup against Isabel Perón, the widow and successor of Juan Domingo Perón, the populist leader of Argentina. The Junta he headed implemented the so-called Process of National Reorganization, which tried to bring the country back into order after the legacy of the Peróns, including powerful unions and a weak economy. However, he soon prosecuted any kind of political activist, closing as well the Congress, forbidding political parties, and censoring the press. The death toll during his time in office is estimated between 15,000 and 30,000, plus an undetermined number of tortured. He retired in 1981, the military regime falling two years later after the Falklands War failure.

With the restoration of democratic rule, a review of abuses of the military took place. Videla received a life sentence in 1985 for abuses of human rights. In 1990, President Carlos Menem granted him a pardon. He was again detained in 1998, under the charge of the theft of the babies in the detention centers. He was imprisoned again, but was successful in claiming that convicts over 70 years of age had the right of house arrest. However, in 2003 amnesty laws and pardons were nullified, so investigations for torture and execution of political officers began anew. Videla argued that the process was illegal, as he had been trialed for the same crimes back in 1985. In 2010, along with other 30 military, he was convicted for the execution of 31 dissidents. And last year he received the sentence for stealing the babies.

As General Augusto Pinochet and other military leaders in the region, Videla never showed any kind of regret for his actions. Furthermore, he always assumed full responsibility for them. In his view, he was a commander during a civil war against communism and the left, threatening to take over Argentina. He acknowledged cruel things happened, but he understood them as inevitable characteristics of any war, which the country had to go through in order to remain being a republic. Furthermore, he complained that he was a political prisoner of the successors of the leftist groups he defeated during his time in power.

The leader of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an association of women investigating the whereabouts of their children and grandchildren who were detained by the military regime, said that they should not be happy about any death, but that Videla’s passing away brings the victims and their relatives some kind of comfort. What is pending, though, is to obtain information about the missing victims of the dictatorship, the detainees of whom there are no records and the babies stolen from the detention centers. Although Videla never avoided his responsibility in those actions, dying in jail for them, the story is not over yet.

We’ll Meet Again

President of Bolivia Evo Morales (from El Comercio).

This week the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies approved a reform to a law that would allow incumbent Evo Morales to presenting himself to the presidential elections in 2014, opening the possibility for a third term in power. This reform comes after a decision of the Supreme Court that rules this eventual re-election as legal. This will come to force once it is voted in the Senate.

The Bolivian Constitution allows the President a maximum of two consecutive terms. Evo Morales first came into office in 2005. He was the first presidential candidate in the history of Bolivia to obtain the absolute majority in the polls. Furthermore, he received wide popular support: he introduced himself as an outsider from the political system, a true representative of the people, contrasting with the leaders of the three strongest parties during the 1980’s and 1990’s who had struck a deal to distribute power exclusively among themselves. Being able to mobilize coca producers and peasants, Morales was a key organizer of massive protests against the privatization of the water supply system and against the construction of a gas pipeline, which among their outcomes were the cancellation of those projects and the resignation of the Presidents that supported them.

In 2005 Morales campaigned under the promise of re-founding the country in order to protect the interests of Bolivians and to give them voice in the political processes. One of his first actions once in power was to call to elections for a Constitutional Assembly. The new Constitution was approved in 2009. Under its regulations, Presidential elections were held and Morales again achieved the absolute majority, with an even larger support than four years earlier.

Some months into his second term, Morales said that he would like to participate in a third election. The opposition argued that such a desire was impossible, given the two-consecutive-term limits mentioned in the Constitution. Morales replied that as the state was re-founded in 2009 when the new Constitution was approved, his first administration should not be included in that count. This was the controversy that the Supreme Court has just resolved in favor of Morales, opening the door for his third participation in an electoral contest.

Without question, the President is bringing the law to its limits, backed by the Supreme Court. This opens the door to a marginal but constant lengthening of his term in office, similar to what the late President Hugo Chávez did in Venezuela, proposing amendments to the constitution’s limits on terms in office as he needed. Additionally, the opposition has been unable to come up with an alternative to Morales: besides his Movement Towards Socialism, no major party has survived from one presidential election to the other since 2003. However, there is still almost a year and a half for the contest to take place. It is within this lapse of time that a coherent opposition to the government could emerge, preventing the further alteration of Bolivia’s institutions.

Red Corruption

This weekend the Chinese Ministry of Supervision informed that it was conducting an investigation for “serious discipline violations” against the Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission (in charge of economic planning), Liu Tienan. As of Tuesday morning no more information has been officially released on the specific charges faced by Liu or what sanction he faces.

At first glance this seems another case of a high-level public officer in China accused of some form of corruption or misbehavior, with prospects of being fired, expelled from the party, exposed in a media scandal, stripped off from any kind of benefit he would have right to for his years of militancy in the party and of service to the state, and being barred out of the public light for the rest of his life. Undoubtedly, Liu’s case contains all those elements. But this time the investigation was prompted by the commentary on Weibo, the country’s Twitter version. The government-sponsored English-language Chinese newspaper The Global Times indicated that since the most recent Party Congress in October, in which citizens were called to have a more active role in supervising the government, 17 investigations against public officers have started after citizens blew the whistle, many times using the internet. What is more, this is the first time that a journalist is the source of the denunciation.

In December last year, Luo Changping, editor of a financial magazine, said that Liu had authorized fraudulent contracts in the name of the Commission for which he works, had sent death threats to a former mistress, and had lied about academic credentials. Quickly, the press office of the Commission dismissed the information. The case remained silent until now, that a Ministry confirms the investigation.

It is a good thing that governments prosecute corruption, mostly if it involves high-level officers. The question in this case is that given the opacity with which the Chinese public administration works, there is always some room for suspicions around the real motivations for the investigation of officials accused of corruption. Is he really guilty, or will he be used as a token of President’s Xi Jinping’s efforts in combating government corruption? Is the fact that the denunciation originally came from the internet supposed to indicate that the government has not diminished its capacity to review the activity on the web and act when something undesirable appears? What are the limits for citizen supervision of the government? Is it possible that a larger reliance of the government on the internet to obtain denunciations will play against it in the medium or long term? Will anyone be benefitted by the eventual conviction of Liu? Maybe all of these questions are mere over-speculation about the Liu case; he might be guilty of all the offences mentioned by Luo and that is the end of the story. But, again, in authoritarian governments the point of combating corruption is not so much to ensure a good utilization of public resources, but rather to eliminate any activity that could endanger the position of the ruling group. And China has frequently shown that is a goal it constantly keeps in mind.

Mentality for Justice

A thug riding a camel during protests in Tahrir Square on February 2, 2011 (from Al-Jazeera).

On Wednesday, the Appeals Court of Egypt confirmed the acquittal of 24 supporters of Hosni Mubarak who were charged with organizing a strike with camels and horses against protestors in  Tahrir Square on February 2, 2011, during the political turmoil that ended the Mubarak’s rule. The attack left 12 dead and tenths of wounded. The acquittal had been dictated by a court in October last year because, it was alleged, witnesses were unreliable due to political grievances against the defendants and evidence was thus was insufficient. Among the trialed was Fathi Sorour, former speaker of the Lower House along other members of the legislative power who, according to an investigation whose results were released in July 2011, hired thugs and ordered them to attack the crowds, killing demonstrators if necessary. Given that the Appeals Court is at the highest level in the Egyptian judiciary system, its decisions are final.

Hence, no sentences will be dictated for the repression of protestors. From a micro perspective, this amounts to the tragedy of the family’s victims, who not only saw their relatives killed or badly injured, but the perpetrators will not be punished. In addition to having lost the provider of income to the household, it could also be that the families live with fear of some kind of retaliation because the attackers are free in the streets. Justice failed them in providing some sense of security.

From a macro perspective, the Court’s decision further calls into question the scope of changes in Egypt towards democracy. Clearly, an effective and impartial administration of justice is one of the most compelling challenges for any country transiting from an authoritarian rule. Judges, prosecutors, and lawyers must interiorize new ways of understanding the law, and must also master new procedures that, if carried out incorrectly, might result in a whole process being annulled. These issues acquire more relevance when trials are about people related to the outgoing authoritarian regime. Seeing them in jail is a strong symbol for new times.

If the process failed because of incompetence of lawyers to present evidence or to follow all the rules of the process, the lack of a sentence may be more understandable, although a sense of impunity will emerge. But the situation in Egypt is even worse. The argument of the Court was that witnesses were unreliable, in spite of the attacks having been recorded in video and seen all around the world. The problem seems not to be only of justice officers being poorly trained, neither of the prevalence of corruption. The issue is something larger, the persistence of an authoritarian mentality in justice administration, implying that top-level officers cannot be sentenced because they might take revenge, because something is owed to them, or for any other reason. This is a major obstacle Egypt must surpass in order to continue its transition to democracy.