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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Bjarni Benediktsson, Prime Minister-to-be of Iceland (from Le Monde).

On Saturday Iceland celebrated elections for its unicameral parliament, the Althing, under an open-list proportional representation system. The Independence Party (right), led by Bjarni Benediktsson, won with almost 27% of the vote. On second place is the Progressive Party (center, agrarian), chaired by Sigmundr David Gunnlaugsson, with 24% of the vote. The incumbent party, the Social Democrats, fell to the third place. The Independence and Progressive Parties each won 19 of the 63 available seats, for which a center-right coalition government will rule the country.

It has been widely underlined by the press that the victory of those two parties is, in a way, very surprising as they were in power when Iceland had the financial crisis in 2008 that almost drove the country to bankruptcy. However, the story is not so different to what happened and has happened in other places of Europe, a political swinging going from resentment against the parties that were in power when the economic crisis began and that had to agree on rescue measures, to anger against the opposition parties that had to implement those measures.

In Iceland banks were lending cheaply a lot of money, but on 2008 this scheme became unsustainable, and the whole financial system collapsed, followed by debt and currency exchange crises. The incumbent government Independence Party lost support from the Parliament, a political crisis emerged, and the then third party, the Social Democrat, headed by Johanna Sigurdardottir, obtained the relative majority in the special elections of 2009. Its task, of course, was to apply the austerity measures negotiated by the previous administration with the International Monetary Fund, which translated into tax increases, unemployment, and reductions in the welfare system.Now that the legislature is over and elections were scheduled, the Social Democrat party is paying the price of implementing a policy it did not negotiate that had tangible social costs. Electors are upset with the negative effects of the austerity reforms, and a relevant element of support for the social democrats, negotiations to join the European Union (EU) which could facilitate the economic recovery, has waned due to the fading of the signs of the crisis. In addition, Sigurdardottir’s promises to deliver a new Constitution and a protection wall from eviction to morose homeowners failed. Thus, platform under which the Independence Party is running includes propositions such as tax reduction, forcing banks to assume losses in order to reduce mortgages, and stop negotiations to join the EU.

Commentators that showed surprise about the return of the Independence-Progressive alliance to power wonder if Icelanders have forgotten that those were the parties that caused the crisis with similar policies to the ones they promote now. It might be the case. However, it is also true that the Social Democrat Party arrived to power by default (it had always been a relatively minor party) and, once in office, had the infamous charge of implementing unpopular and harsh measures that it did not negotiate. The outgoing Prime Minister Sigurdardottir said she felt sad about the electoral results. Now, the Social Democrats have to work to constitute themselves as an attractive political alternative if they want voters to vote for their candidates again.

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Second place in the presidential poll, Henrique Capriles in a press conference accusing President Nicolás Maduro of stealing the election (from AFP).

A new feature of the current political system of Venezuela is pluralism. This is something the late President Hugo Chávez did not face until his last election, when he competed against Henrique Capriles. Chávez won, although Capirles got the largest share of the vote for an opposition candidate ever since Chávez got to power. Before dying, Chávez anointed Vice President Nicolás Maduro as the leader of his so-called Bolivarian Revolution. But Maduro still had to be elected President. In the election of last week he won. However, he got a very small margin of victory, a little above 1.5% of the total of the vote over Capriles. Not only Chavismo has stopped being hegemonic in Venezuela, but the support for the opposition is almost the same as that for Chávez’s project.

In order to strengthen his popular support (the issue of whether or not the bureaucracy and the army back him as successor of Chávez could lead to a different discussion) it can be argued that Maduro has two options, not necessarily mutually exclusive. First, to augment the patronage delivery system to large sectors of the population, that constituted a fundamental pillar of Chávez’s popularity. Some public works, some health care, some education or some housing always given with a lot of pomp. This could work as long as public revenue in the form of oil sales, debt, or taxes continue flowing into the state (which we can assume happens) and as long as the economy sustains sloppy spending (which we can assume does not happen, given the recent but little publicized devaluation of the national currency). In any case, continuing with this strategy is not very difficult in this moment, as bureaucratic momentum will more likely than not keep it going for some time. The problem is that doing the same thing will produce the same results: a waning support for Chavismo.

Another strategy, available mostly (but not only) in undemocratic environments, is attacking, although still not crushing, the opposition. Failing to get a vote recount in the immediate aftermath of the election because he said there had been fraudulent actions against him (he pressured organizing protests which resulted in the death of at least eight people), on Wednesday Capriles gave a further step in his post-electoral protest and blamed Maduro personally for “stealing the election”. The new president seized the opportunity and in several occasions in Twitter called Capriles and his supporters (though without saying their names) the “oligarchic loitering”, “the new fascism”, and “the desperate right”. He accused them of sabotaging the “peace and hope” of a country. He even created the twitter hashtag #tropa (troopers) to rally the rejection of the opposition while at the same time he appealed to order and to ignore Capriles’ call for demonstration.

It is too early to being thinking what Maduro’s administration will look like or what will come of the interactions between his and Capriles’ supporters. Furthermore, it remains an open question to see if Capriles is able to maintain support for himself. If he falls into the game of accusations started by Maduro he might lose. He must work to keep the opposition united if he wants to continue being an alternative to Chavismo and Maduro. At least, for the time being we can see that plurality will not have an easy entrance into the current Venezuelan political system.

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Horacio Cartes celebrating with his supporters his election to the Presidency of Paraguay (from Al-Jazeera).

Last Sunday, Paraguay held general elections. Horacio Cartes, from the Colorado Party (Red Party; formally the National Republican Association), won the presidential contest with 45.8% of the vote. The Colorados also got a relative majority in the legislative chambers.

This electoral result marks the return of the Colorados to power after five years of absence. The alternation of the party in power is seen as a healthy, even desirable, electoral outcome for democracies. However, there are some doubts about the democratic credentials of the Colorado party. It first came to power in 1947, and left by means of elections in 2008. General Alfredo Stroessner, who repressively governed Paraguay between 1954 and 1989, was a member of the Colorado Party. Afterwards, the party remained in power, but by means of civilian and democratically elected governments. Although multiparty elections were recurrent after Stroenssner’s rule, the Colorados retained a hegemonic position in the Paraguayan political system.

Not only there were historic reasons to cast some doubt about the democratic nature of the Colorado Party. The presidential candidate in this occasion, Horacio Cartes, has also been criticized. A political outsider (he mentioned that last Sunday was the first time he voted in his life), he is one of the richest men in the country, owning a tobacco company, a bank, ranches, and a drinks factory. The problem is not his wealth, but that, according to one of the diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, the U.S. government suspected that he used his businesses for money laundering and drug trafficking. Additionally, there are many reports about people from the Colorado party buying or inhibiting votes throughout the whole country. Some argue that Cartes’ political inexperience and his obscure businesses, next to the election rigging practices of the Colorados, do not make a good cause for the democratic feature of this presidency.

This does not imply that the Colorado Party represents a return to authoritarianism or that the Liberal Party and its presidential candidate, Efraín Alegre, who got the second place in the election, were completely democratic. President Fernando Lugo (2008-2012) sacked Alegre out of his cabinet under accusations of corruption. In 2012, Alegre was one of the main promoters of the impeachment and eventual ousting from power of Lugo. This act, in spite of its constitutionality, was considered as a technical coup d’État by domestic and international observers (the impeachment was the final aftermath of a confrontation between the police and peasants that ended with 17 dead people). For many Paraguayans, Alegre was part of the group that wanted to personal obtain political benefit by removing Lugo from office.

The transition to democracy in Paraguay gave its first big step in 1992 with the writing of a new constitution. An alternation of the party in power (what happened on Sunday) would be a token of the consolidation not only of abstract democratic regulations, but of concrete democratic actions. However, it seems to be that in Paraguay the party in power, the President, and the opposition experience mutual mistrust. It could very well be, however, that the past of all those political actors becomes irrelevant when sitting down to discuss the current challenges that Paraguay has, including a 0.5% of GDP growth or the concentration of land ownership in very few families, with all the problems of socioeconomic inequality this implies. Democratic transitions are not complete just by writing rules or complying with them. Democracy also requires some level of confidence on the actions of politicians. For the moment, this feature seems to be absent among their peers and citizens.

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The Italian Parliament in joint session to elect the President (from Al-Jazeera).

Yesterday Italy began the voting rounds to elect its next president. 630 deputies, 315 senators, 4 senators-for-life, and 58 regional delegates have the right to vote. Formally there are no candidates, although each party or alliance represented in Parliament usually supports one, who in theory can be any citizen over 50 years of age. Vote is by means of secret ballots. The candidate with at least two thirds of the vote (672 votes) wins. If no candidate receives that proportion, the election is repeated a second and a third time. Afterwards, just an absolute majority is required (504 votes). The position lasts seven years, with no limits for reelection. The term of the current President, Giorgio Napolitano ends next May. As he said he was not interested in running for office again, elections were hold. As of Friday morning, three voting rounds had taken place and no winner had emerged.

Parliamentary elections in Italy took place in February. Although the Democratic Party (PD, center-left), led by Pier Luigi Bersani, won the most seats (295 of 630), choosing the Prime Minister and forming a government required negotiation with the other political forces. These are the Five Star Movement (5-SM, left), chaired by former comedian Beppe Grillo, and People of Freedom (PF, right), headed by Silvio Berlusconi, former Prime Minister and media tycoon. No agreement has been reached to the day. Berlusconi calls for a coalition government, which is rejected by Bersani. Grillo says he will not support any Prime Minister coming from either of those parties. Weeks after the election, President Napolitano created two “special groups” of notable Italians to help with the negotiations. After being received with mistrust, this proposal failed.

Presidential elections take place without a Prime Minister. Voting rounds reflect the stalemate among the most important political forces. Originally, Bersani supported the former leader of the moderate CISL union, Franco Marini, as Presidential candidate. He even got Berlusconi to back him. As an alliance between the PD and the PF was sketched, optimism sprouted for the election of President and Prime Minister and for the formation of a new government. However, Bersani’s rival for the PD leadership, Matteo Renzi, opposed Marini, taking 50 votes with him. In the first round of the Presidential vote, Marini just got 521 votes, falling to 15 in the second round. Stefano Rodotà, backed by Grillo, got the first place in that ballot, but with 240 votes. Somewhat expectedly, in the third round the majority of votes casted were blank, legislators deciding to wait until the fourth ballot, requiring just absolute majority, to play again. No strong candidate appears yet for such occasion.

As Head of State, the Presidency of the Italian Republic is a largely ceremonial role (government authority is given to the Prime Minister, formally known as President of the Ministers’ Council). However, in this particular context, during his first days in office the President will have the task of brokering, or at least facilitating, the negotiations between the political parties represented in Parliament to elect the Prime Minister and form a government. As the original candidacy of Marini suggested, the agreements reached to nominate and support a presidential candidate could foreshadow the coalition that will form a government, killing two birds with the same stone. At the same time, as remembered by Renzi’s withdraw of support for Marini, parties can split. Uncertainty remains in the Italian political system.

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Nicolás Maduro giving a victory speech (from El País).

Last Sunday, the official candidate Nicolás Maduro won the polls and will become Venezuela’s next President. With 50.66% of the vote for him, he was closely followed by Henrique Capriles, who received 49.07% of the tally. Capriles called for a vote recount, alleging that there are 3,000 documented irregularities, sufficient to prevent a final result from being announced. However, yesterday the electoral management body confirmed Maduro’s triumph; he is expected to be inaugurated this Friday.

In one way, this result is not surprising. It was clear that Maduro would win; little else was expected given the large media exposure he has had at least since January, when he began working as de facto acting President. What calls the attention is the small difference in the votes for both candidates. In the last presidential contest in October, Hugo Chávez won with an advantage of 10 points (55 vs. 44) against Capriles. However, in surveys conducted before the campaigns for this election began, Maduro was estimated to receive 53% of the vote, against 35% for Capriles.

There are two things to notice in those figures. First, that the support for the Chavista project (impersonated by Chávez himself or by Maduro) has more or less been the same since October last year. This could suggest that, under the current political and economic conditions of Venezuela (devaluating currency, patrimonialist policies, reduced spaces for opposition) and faced against the figure of Henrique Capriles, Chavismo has reached the peak of its popular appeal. Second, that Capriles has sufficient capacity to make undecided voters, or voters supporting other candidates, to change their preferences for him.

In any case, those observations are valid for the first days after the election. With the passing of weeks, the scenario might be completely different. Some analysts have mentioned that Maduro faces the challenge of ruling a country divided almost in halves. In a “normal” democratic environment, this would not matter too much (in the U.S. 2012 Presidential election, vote can be said to have been split in two). Usually, this is because the electoral system is generally reliable, and the opposition can exercise a real influence in policy making with its share of seats in Congress, many times making it difficult for the President to get his bills approved.

The current reliability of the electoral system in Venezuela remains an open question. No major electoral frauds were recorded or pointed out in the exercise of last October. Now, Capriles says he has evidence for the results not being legitimate. It could be that the small difference in the vote for the two candidates (not present in the last contest) makes him think that a careful recount could give him the victory. That is beyond the idea presented here. The point is that he has questioned the legitimacy of the contest, having echo among some Venezuelans.

Additionally, the opposition might not have many spaces available in the Venezuelan public sphere. The party supporting Maduro has absolute majority with 58% of the seats in the unicameral Congress; Capriles’ coalition has 38% of them. This rapport dates from the 2010 elections; the next legislative poll is scheduled for 2015. It might be until then that the opposition could receive more representation. However, this depends on Capriles’ behavior. His assessment of illegitimacy of the elections made him to call for a vote recount, which was denied, hence calling his supporters to demonstrate to know the real results.

Capriles’ speech is strikingly similar to that of the candidate of the left in Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, after the 2006 Presidential elections. In that case, results also were adverse for him by a small margin (less than 0.50%), and also called the official winner, Felipe Calderón, an illegitimate President. He summoned his supporters to demonstrate against what he called the “electoral fraud” by fighting for a vote recount. He did not get it. The confrontational attitude López Obrador maintained during the first months of Calderón’s government contributed to diminishing the support for his party, making it go from the second place in the Chamber of Deputies to a distant third place in the 2009 legislative elections.

This just indicates that the current landscape of polarization in Venezuela could change. Each of the two most important political figures in Venezuela has a challenge. As during the last days of Chávez, Maduro must learn to deal with the opposition. The Chavista project includes no space for plurality, but society is plural. Similarly, Capriles must be able to maintain his position as a reliable and responsible leader of the opposition. The vote for him was not a blank check; he must also work to maintain the support for him.

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Kim Jong-Un one year ago, when elected First Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party (from China People’s Daily).

On Wednesday, in the midst of the growing international missile tensions, the North Korean official news agency published that “the whole world extended warmest congratulations” to Kim Jong Un to mark the first anniversary of his election to the newly created position of First Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP). This replaced the Secretary General of the KWP Central Committee Secretariat, held by his deceased father Kim Jong Il, who was named Eternal General Secretary of the KWP. As part of the domestic celebrations, high-school students dressed up in solider uniforms and performed military exercises, and statues of Kim and of his ancestors were cleaned up by citizens and school children.

Kim’s speech in the occasion of his ascension was a prelude to many of the features present in today’s growing tensions. He said that his “first, second, and third priorities” were to strengthen the military. Missiles were shown in a following parade, which had the aim of demonstrating that North Korea had a strong and state-of-the-art Army. A reporter of the New York Times questioned if the missiles showed were real or a mock-up, given the failed launching attempt of one of them weeks earlier. Under this light, it could almost be considered logical that the next step would be to show not only North Koreans, but the whole world, that the country actually has sufficient military capacity to respond to any threat against it. This is what Kim is trying to do now, and the assessment of the U.S. government is that indeed he has attack and response capacity.

In parallel, some analysts commented that the appointment of Kim as First Secretary, a position effectively identical to that hold by his father, was a way to mark the beginning of a new leadership, with its own support base from the KWP and the Army, the two pillars of the North Korean regime. In this sense, it was noted that a considerable age gap existed between the high ranks of those two organizations (at least 60 years old) and Kim (believed to be in his late twenties or early thirties). Continuity with the previous government would be necessary, mostly because of the political and administrative inexperience of Kim. But he also would like to have his own loyal generals and party cadres. For instance, the retirement and ulterior disappearance of public light of the Chief of the Military General Staff because of “illness”, along with other top military figures throughout the year following a similar path, aroused suspicions that the old leadership of the Army was being purged.

Hence, in his first year in office, Kim Jong-Un has worked, on the one hand, to demonstrate the world that North Korea has sufficient military capacity to respond to a foreign attack, and, on the other hand, to ensure that a set of Army and party top figures will follow his policies. It is uncertain whether the military capacity is real, or the extent to which it can inflict damage to other countries. In relation to the escalating tensions, following a worst-case scenario the U.S. has assessed that Kim actually has the capacity to attack. The question, then, is whether such a decision will be made. Again, in a worst-case scenario, it can be ascertained that the levels of decision discussions among the new top figures of the Army and the Party, loyal to Kim, are low. The worrisome issue is that if in countries in which government decisions are the object of substantial public scrutiny some very flawed measures can be taken (such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq), in countries like North Korea mistakes could be even worse. But, again, these are just worst-case scenarios.

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