Perú in a critical situation: the protests against the Merino coup continue

Originally published at: http://estrategia.la/2020/11/12/peru-en-situacion-critica-siguen-las-protestas-contra-el-golpe-de-merino/ 

By Mariana Álvarez Orellana | 14/11/2020 |  Latin América and the Caribbean

Sources: Rebelión / CLAE

The situation in Peru is critical. The coup has consolidated. The armed forces and business groups have recognised Manuel Merino as president, while the the national indignenous movements, unions and feminist movements reject him and the regional governments in the south of the country have decided to not acknowledge the new president.

Manuel Merino, an opposition deputy that won his seat with barely 5,000 votes, took over as president of Perú after the Congress dismissed Martín Vizcarra after a controversial constitutional process that moves the country towards unavoidable instability in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Merino, who was and will continue being the head of the Legislative Power in a parallel manner to also hold the position of Head of State, which he assumed as the third president of Perú in four years while across the country protests were happening in opposition to the dismissal of Vizcarra and the “usurping” Congress.

The new head of state, from the right-wing party Acción Popular (AP), promised to convene a “cabinet of consensus and national unity”, composed of professionals “with the highest qualifications” and without political affiliations. Various political parties complained that the dismissal owes to a “distribution” of posts and promises among those who voted in favour of it to defend private interests.

In March 2020, Merino was elected as a member of Congress with some 5,000 votes for Acción Popular to represent the state of Tumbes. The election had 24.7 million eligible votes, and AP got 1,518,000 votes, 10% of the general vote, with which the party obtained the majority and the presidency of the Congress, after defeating Rocío Silva Santiesteban from the Frente Amplio party. He was a driver of the two motions of censure against the president Martín Vizcarra.

Meanwhile, now converted into a civilian, Vizcarra retook his private activities and expressed his “concern” about the self-imposed president, as it deals with an authority that lacks two basic conditions, legality and legitimacy. “The legality is in doubt because the Constitutional Court still hasn’t made a declaration, and the legitimacy, who gives that? The people. Then, an authority that doesn’t have defined legality nor legitimacy of support generates concern”, he concluded.

Tuesday and Wednesday were very difficult days, full of police brutality and arbitrary arrests in different cities. The humanitarian organizations don’t know how many people have been detained or where they are. Despite the repression the public continued protesting in Lima and other regions to show their opposition to the coup d’etat.

Vizcarra was accused of alleged bribes that he would have received when he was the governor of the southern region of Moquegua. The irony is that 68 of the congress members are implicated in investigations for collusion and bribes in the public prosecutor’s office. The depositors of these bribes to Vizcarra would be consortiums of businesses that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating in a case known as the Construction Club, bribes from the big construction companies -among them the Brazilian transnational Odebrech- to secure themselves road construction contracts.

With massive demonstrations of protest in the streets of different regions of the country: Lima, Huancayo, Trujillo, Arequipa, Chiclayo, Iquitos, among others-, thousands of Peruvians expressed their rejection of Manuel Merino’s assumption of the presidency, after the dismissal of the head of state Martín Vizcarra was approved by the Congress.

The immediate response of the new government was violent repression by police of the demonstrators, that left several detained and injured from rubber bullets, blows and teargas bombs. “Merino, listen, the people reject you”, “Merino Out”. “Merino is not my president”, were some of the chants that demonstrators yelled.

No country has sent congratulations to the new head of state. The Organization of American States showed its concern with the political crisis in Peru, five months from elections.

Repressive Prime Minister

The mobilization has a new reason: the election as prime minister, without a cabinet, of the lawyer and conservative politician Ántero Flores-Aráoz, who held the portfolio of Defense in the administration of Alan Garcia during the El Baguazo, which occured in 2009, that ended up with the death of 10 indigenous people from the Amazon region, as well as 24 police.

The indigenous people rejected two decrees approved in the Free Trade Agreement with the United States that permitted private companies to drill on community land in search of oil and gas. After the massacre the decrees were repealed.

In a ceremony of less than three minutes in the presidential palace with no media access, Merino took the oath of Flores-Aráoz, 78 years old, who said that he will look to leave a country organized to confront the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus and that the government won’t adopt populist measures.

The fall of the president impacts still further the already battered Peruvian institutionality and sets up a scenario marked by uncertainty. With Vizcarra out of the game, the political-institutional crisis becomes more serious and profound. The scenario remains tainted in the face of the elections and the possibility continues to appear that the vacancy might become institutionalised from here to be more like a dismissal mechanism for parliamentarian minorities.

Elected for a special period of barely more than a year, the multiple parliamentarian groups have demonstrated that they legislate according to their business agenda and political interests, in the country with the third highest number of deaths in the world due to Covid-19 for each 100 thousand inhabitants. The disconnection of the political class from the concerns of the public appears to have become a common feature in a country that suffers its worst crisis in decades.

In low profile, Merino, a cattle business owner, publicly made apologies in September after two high-ranking military leaders informed the Ministry of Defense he had called them to secure the backing of them both for the process of dismissal that was up for debate in the Congress and from which Vizcarra would leave successfully. He rejected the accusation of Vizcarra that he had conspired to dismiss and then succeed him.

Six months from scheduled elections, whoever can capitalise on the social discontent and propose thorough solutions to the concrete demands of the population, will occupy a major place in a Perú that in 2021 will celebrate its bicentenary amongst dismissals, generalised corruption, economic, social and health crises...and popular struggles.

The famous democratic institutionality

The Interamerican Commission of Human Rights (CIDH) showed its concern about the delicate political situation in which the country now is, after the Congress managed the dismissal of presidency of Martín Vizcarra, it made a call to the new State so that it might guarantee “democratic institutionality”, the full validity of the State of Law and the respect of human rights, and that the general elections will take place next year.

For his part Manuel Merino, declared that the general elections for 2021 wouldn’t be postponed and they will take place on the 11 April 2021 just as has been established.

Amnesty International highlighted that the authorities should send a clear message: the role of the security forces should be to protect the population, respecting the right to peaceful protest and the right of Courts to investigate all acts of violence and establish the corresponding criminal responsibilities.

It indicated, as well, its concern with some declarations of congress members that have suggested an amendment to the Constitution and the complaint from the American Convention on Human Rights “to reestablish the death penalty for all these corrupt presidents and high public servants”, and demanded that the authorities to immediately halt the repression of the demonstrators and guarantee the human rights of all people.

Polarization and coup

The sociologist Albert Adrianzen noted that “what happened in the Congress deepens the crisis in the country” that it enters “a stage of tension and polarization that is going to be reflected in the next elections. It is difficult to say now who could take the greatest advantage of this, but I believe that radicalism is going to gain ground”

“What has happened is terrible for democracy. What has taken precedence in the Congress is an ambition for power. The government of Merino could be an unfeasible government. Despite being very short, it could do a lot of damage”, commented the political expert Martín Tanaka.

Four presidential candidates for the April elections, the former president Ollanta Humala, the leftist Verónika Mendoza, the centrist Julio Guzmán and the right wing George Forsyth, expressed their opposition to the dismissal of Vizcarra by the Congress, which they criticised harshly.

The potential presidential candidate for Juntos por el Perú, Verónika Mendoza, highlighted that Peruvians will continue mobilising until they restore democracy. “While the illegitimate Government swears itself in to Congress, thousands of citizens in various regions express their rejection of this political class that turns its back on us and gives orders to repress us. But they don’t scare us, we will continue mobilising until we restore democracy”, she tweeted.

Mendoza pointed out that “only the people organized and mobilized could restore democracy and put the life and dignity of the people first and she criticised the congress members that voted in favour of the presidential dismissal. “The only thing that they have cared about is their immunity to flee from justice and tighten their hold on power”, she said.

Now there isn’t anymore more to expect from this political class that is rotten. Only the people organized and mobilised will be able to restore democracy and put the life and dignity of the people first, added the young leader of the centre-left.

Mariana Álvarez Orellana, is a Peruvian anthropologist, teacher and researcher and she is an analyst associated to Centro Latinoamericano de Análisis Estratégico (CLAE, www.estrategia.la)

Corruption: The tool to oust Peruvian presidents

Originally published at http://estrategia.la/2020/11/10/corrupcion-la-maquina-de-deglutir-presidentes-peruanos/

By Mariana Álvarez Orellana | 12/11/2020 |  Latin América and the Caribbean

Sources: Rebelión / CLAE

The president Martín Vizcarra has also fallen: less than two months after having escaped from a first attempt of declaring the Presidency vacant, the Peruvian leader was dismissed by the Congress, that accused him of “permanent moral incapacity”, an ambiguous constitutional concept that allows a wide margin of interpretation, but refers to him having received bribes years ago when he was the governor of the southern region of Moquegua.

Five months from elections, a president of the Congress; Manuel Merino, smiled satisfied after convoking a session where he himself will put on the presidential sash that nobody handed over. Only 19 voted to save the leader and there were four abstentions.    

The decision, highlighted La Otra Mirada, shows the moral incapacity of the more than 60 parliamentarians that have indictments in the public prosecutor’s office or those that have proven cases and that are awaiting the decision of the congress to lift their parliamentary immunity.

“How have we arrived to the point that these gentleman “fathers of the Homeland” with more than one in question that puts them in a similar boat: chats, tablets, the Richard Swing case, tampered photos, bribes, protection rackets, among other things and they cook up a presidential vacancy without any proof other than a press report based only on the testimony of three candidates hoping to be witnesses with immunity that have spent the more than two years trying to obtain benefits in the public prosecutor’s office?”, it asked.

The panorama is not at all favourable, the political leaders that aren’t represented in the Congress will try to play it to their own benefit, meanwhile, in the media, there remain the millions of poor people that die not only from COVID, and hunger, but also from diphtheria, and those to which the assistance bonus hasn’t arrived and at best already it won’t arrive to them, those that perhaps won’t receive any vaccine, those to whom a pension will appear an eternal fairytale. 

Vizcarra, at 58 años, had taken the struggle against corruption as his main political rallying cry since he arrived to power,  and paradoxically, was dismissed by the Congress dominated by an opposition that accused him of moral incapacity and of receiving bribes seven years ago.

The motion of dismissal of the head of state was approved by 105 votes in favour, 18 against and four abstentions, thoroughly surpassing the 87 necessary, at the closing of a plenary session of almost eight hours. Vizcarra ruled out undertaking legal action to overturn the decision, at the same time that the streets of Lima were the setting of protests against the dismissal, and besides which it was condemned with a banging of pots and pans.

In a previous judgment on the 18th of September, Vizcarra was accused of urging two functionaries of the government palace to lie about a questioned contract made with a singer, but his adversaries only obtained 32 votes. In this way, he has become the second president that has left the post during this governmental period of five years, that started in July 2016.

Among those who voted to oust the president were Fujimorist legislators, with a long history connected to corruption, and that today savour their revenge against the man that made them lose their majority in the Parliament and supported anti-corruption processes that took their leader, Keiko Fujimori, to prison.

Also voting for his dismissal, the lawmakers from the ultranationalist Union por el Perú (Union for Perú), whose principal parliamentarians are accused of corruption and that is directed from jail by the ex-soldier Antauro Humala - brother of the ex-president Ollanta- in prison since 2004 for the death of four police officers during the capture of a police station in a frustrated attempt to topple the ex-president Alejandro Toledo.

Likewise, the legislators of Podemos Perú, a party led by a businessman that has made himself a millionaire with a business of low quality universities and that two days ago was detained being accused of bribing judges to manage an irregular inscription of his party; from a party that answers to an evangelical sect.

Also the greater part of the congress members of Acción Popular, the group of the replacement for Vizcarra; a sector of the small number of lawmakers from the leftist Frente Amplio, that only has eight members, and some other parliamentarians.

Among the few that opposed the dismissal of Vizcarra were legislators from the centrist party, Morado, and a couple of lawmakers from Frente Amplio, among some others, due to the risks of instability in these difficult circumstances, but they demanded that the public prosecutor’s office investigate the accusations against Vizcarra, something that is already underway.

Opinion polls by Ipsos and the Institute of Peruvian Studies revealed that 70 percent of the population opposed the cutting short of the presidential term in this situation. Vizcarra had an approval rate of between 54 and 57 percent, while his replacement has an approval rate that barely reaches between 22 and 24 percent.

Bye Vizcarra

Engineer by profession, Vizcarra, an almost unknown to the public, assumed power in March 2018 after the resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, cornered by complaints of corruption, a scourge in this country that has affected its last five leaders. Kuczynski invited him to be his presidential running mate in the 2016 elections due to his qualities of being able to defuse conflicts in a country where the communities protest for greater income from the exploitation of natural resources.

After assuming the post, Kuczynski included him in his cabinet to hold the portfolio of Transport and Communication, the position that he resigned from in May 2017 after receiving harsh criticism for approving changes in the $520 million contract to build an airport. His greatest challenge as president was the dissolution of the previous Congress in September 2019, after tough confrontations with the Legislature dominated by the Fuerza Popular party, of Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former dictator, Alberto Fujimori.

When Pedro Pablo Kuzcynski was dismissed, the country wasn’t facing a health emergency, nor was it a few months from an election, nor in the middle of an economic crisis from the pandemic. Today the situation is different and the congressional forces that promised to lead the country aren’t guaranteeing an ordered transition, noted Fernado Pérez García in La Otra Mirada.

And they don’t guarantee it because they represent the owners of the “Chinese” universities, that he wants to bring under university reform, they represent radical Antaurism and the spiteful Fujimorism that want its leaders out of prison and they represent the most threaten corporate right that wants to sabotage what little he has advanced in the anti-corruption process and has been paralysed by coronavirus, he added.

Who is Merino?

After the dismissal of President Martín Vizcarra by the ambiguous concept of “permanent moral incapacity”, the head of the unicameral Congress of Perú, Manuel Merino, assumed the post of president in Perú. The first great unknown that he will have to decide is resolving if he will call immediate elections (which is outlined in the Constitution) or will he wait until the 11th of April, the date that had been set out by the now former president Vizcarra for the next national vote.

Despite now managing the Executive Power of Peru, Merino, agronomist and cattle rancher, who is 59 years old, was a second rank politician always linked to Acción Popular (AP), the centre-right party founded in 1956 by Fernando Belaunde Terry, not one of its most known figures.

He held a seat in Congress during two periods: 2001-2006 and 2011-2016, representing the northwestern department of Tumbes, where he is from. He returned to Congress last January, when they carried out elections to choose the Parliament after Vizcarra had dissolved the previous one in September 2019.

The victory of Acción Popular - the largest minority in the parliament- thrust him into the Presidency of the body. He gained notoriety during the first frustrated attempt to dismiss Vizcarra, after knocking on the door of the military headquarters without success to ask for support of the military so that he could assume power, to then later give apologies for the error.

“Perhaps making a call in the circumstance of that day could have been ill-judged, for that I express my sincerest apologies to the Armed Forces”, he said after two high-ranking military chiefs informed the Minister of Defense that Merino had called them to get the backing from them both for the process of vacancy that was up for debate in the Congress.

 Now Vizcarra waits to face the investigations of the public prosecutor’s office and probably the courts. The same fate of the last presidents of Peru: Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala, Alan García (who committed suicide), Pedro Pablo Kuczinsky.

Mariana Álvarez Orellana, is a Peruvian anthropologist, teacher and researcher and she is an analyst associated to Centro Latinoamericano de Análisis Estratégico (CLAE, www.estrategia.la)

Colombians want peace, but ask to also include the issue of social justice (translation)

Originally published at: http://www.revistadebate.net/revista_debate_wp/?p=4510

Posted By: editor December 2, 2015

Felipe Rangel Uncacia and Francisco Ramírez Cuellar during a conversation with the Latin American community in Toronto.

OSCAR VIGIL / TORONTO /

Colombia appears to be starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, given the end of the bloody armed conflict that has been going on for more than 50 years and left 220,000 deaths could be settled in the month of March of the coming year. But Colombia needs something more than the silencing of rifles, it needs a peace with social justice, explained the two leaders in Toronto last week.


Felipe Rangel Uncacia is an indigenous leader of the U’wa people of Arauca, Colombia, spokesperson of the Original Nations and land defender with the Association of Town Councils and Indigenous Authorities of the Department of Arauca, who assures that it is important that the dialogue between the Colombian government and the guerrillas might be taking up the issue because it is the problem that the peasants, the indigenous and African-descended peoples principally experience.


“There are many social problems in our communities, in our towns, and what we expect is that it truly acclimates and lowers the level of intensity of the conflict that we experience in Colombia. But the conflict is caused by certain factors: first by the state abandonment that the government has had for peasant, African-descended and indigenous communities in the country, and the other, also because the government has been implementing many policies that destroy the environment, that destroy everything related to the territory and it also has policies that go against a process for the Indigenous peoples and against all of society in general”, he assured.


Concretely, the Indigenous leader said that it should negotiate also the issue of the socio-economic model by which Colombia can reach a just and lasting peace.

“This process is of great importance because it is important that the war ends, but at the same time we need the government to commit itself and look more at the social issue, that is the most important. We have said also that it is important to converse about the issue of the economic model, because they are structural issues that have been affecting noticeably the Colombian people”, he explained.


Rangel Uncacia come to Canada to tour different cities of the country explaining what the situation is like for the peasant, indigenous and African-descended population, particularly in the context in which they are at the point of reaching the last agreements necessary for the signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In Toronto he was special guest of the Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) in diverse activities with the Canadian, Latin American and Colombian communities, and in some of them accompanied by another special guest, the union leader, Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, member of the legal team of the United Federation of Workers (la Central Unitaria de Trabajadores), and responsible for the international legal actions in the civil jurisdiction of the United States, England and Canada.


Ramírez Cuellar also agreed that the Colombian peace process has remained limited in its scope. “That is a political negotiation that is necessary to do it because it disarms one part of the armed conflict, but we think that while it doesn't discuss the economic model, that is the motor that generates the violence, the inequality, the social, environmental problems, etc., of Colombian society, there there isn't going to be any possibility of peace”, he assured.

The negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, which take place in the city of Havana, Cuba, started formally on the 18^th of October, 2012 and comprised of four phases, the first was the stage of secret rapprochement , later the settlement of the agreements (in which it finds itself at the moment), the third is the ratification by referendum of the agreements and the fourth will be the implementation of these agreements.

In these rounds of negotiations, in which the highest leaders of the FARC, as well as high representatives of the Colombian government participate, have been addressing five topics: policy of comprehensive agricultural development, political participation, the end of the conflict, the solution to the problem of illegal drugs and reparations for the victims. A sixth separate topic will be address the issue of the implementation, verification and ratification through referendum of the agreements.

The agricultural issue is included, but both leaders agree that the scope of the issue will be minimal, for which it is necessary a wider and deeper negotiation that includes the social and economic issue. In contrast, the process is going to remain only in “a negotiation and a peace process, between quotation marks, like what South Africa, El Salvador and Guatemala had, that was a total failure, and new forms of social violence are going to emerge that express the application of a criminal model”, explained Ramírez Cuellar.

On her part, Sandra Cordero, co-ordinator of Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) and organiser of the tour, said that many Canadians of Colombian origin that live in Toronto agree with the approach of the two leaders.

“Peace is being negotiated between two organisations to get rid of the armed link, that is very good, but in their agenda the issue of the neoliberal system or globalisation isn't included, and if this topic isn't there, there isn't going to be social justice, there isn't going to healthcare for the people, there isn't going to be public services or education or work”, she pointed out.

Argentina – Election in continental code (translation)

 ** Article published in Argentinian version of El Tiempo.
Originally published at: http://www.telesurtv.net/bloggers/Balotaje-en-clave-continental-20151029-0004.html

By Juan Manuel Karg

29 October 2015

The upcoming 22nd of November. Argentina will go to the a second round of elections for the first time in the history of the country, faced with two antagonistic political models; that expressed by the Front For Victory (Frente Para la Victoria), presently in government, and that headed by the conservative coalition, PRO+UCR1, that looks to retake political power in the country after twelve years of Kirchnerist governments.

What is the regional importance that these elections have? Why are the Latin American right-wing huddled waiting for a hypothetical triumph of Macri? The novelty of the closeness between Daniel Scioli (FPV) and Maurico Macri (PRO), expressed at the ballot box the past 25th of October, has already passed, it necessary to realise that the insertion of the second round in Argentina is the framework of a regional debate.

To contextualise: after the decisive elections in Argentina two important electoral dates in Latin America will take place. The 6th of December Venezuela should renew its National Assembly, in a growing contest between the pro-government PSUV2 and the conservative alliance MUD3; and the 21st of February of the coming year Bolivia will got to the ballot box to define if will allow Evo Morales Ayma to stand again for a new presidential period.

Therefore Henrique Capriles took a stance, scarcely knowing the news of the second round in Argentina, saying that “the big challenge that Mauricio Macri has if he wants to win the election is to be the leader of change”. What is Capriles after? That a hypothetical triumph of Mauricio Macri might strengthen the Venezuela right, to look to the 6th of December to overcome Chavismo4 at the ballot box, something that hasn't happened ever – with the exception of the 2007 referendum – since Chávez arrive to Miraflores5 in 1999.

In similar manner the Bolivia cement business owner, Samuel Doria Medina – also an ex-presidential candidate –did the same by saluting “the unity lead by Macri, unity that will be a victory 22-N”, in order to later annouce that “a new time arrives”. What is the intention of Doria Medina? That a hypothetical triumph of Macri might strengthen the “NO” a possible renomination of Evo Morales. You also have to highlight the link of Ecuatorian banker and leader of the opposition to Rafael Correa, Guillermo Lasso, who said that “the struggle of Mauricio Macri inspires us and fills us with energy to reach better days in Ecuador”.

Verifying an advance of the right in Argentina could have direct repercussions not only in the elections of Venezuela and Bolivia, but also in the institutional framework that the region has constructed during these years. An example: Will Mercosur6 will in a “flexibilisation” - such as Aécio Neves in Brazil and Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou in Uruguay were demanding in their respective campaigns in 2014 – so that the member countries can sign FTA in a direct way with, for example, the European Union? Judging by the document presented last April by the “Consensus Group” - space of encounter of the guides of international politics of the PRO and of radicalism -, yes, asking “to strengthen our relations with Europe and the United States” and advancing in a “fast, broad and frank discussion with our partners in Mercosur”, looking for an opening towards the Pacific Alliance7.

It isn't hare-brained, then, with these important elements, to consider that the second round in Argentina will have a significance that surpasses, by far, the borders of the country. It puts in play, such as happened in the elections in Venezuela in 2013 and in Brazil in 2014, one of the most important governments of the post-neoliberal administrations in the regions, that precisely said NO to ALCA8, ten years ago.

Will there be a “conservative restoration” or will the Argentinian people confront this option, as they have been doing in the last regional elections? Judging by these direct precedent – no government from the “change de epochs” being defeated in elections – one can be an optimist.




1PRO - Republican Proposal (Spanish: Propuesta Republicana, PRO) is a center-right political party in Argentina.
UCR - The Radical Civic Union (Spanish: Unión Cívica Radical, UCR) is a social-liberal political party in Argentina. The party has been ideologically heterogenous, ranging from classical liberalism to social democracy.

2United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the main party of government supporting the revolutionary process

3Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (Democratic Unity Roundtable; MUD), the electoral coalition of right-wing Venezuelan opposition parties.

4Political movement supportive of and following the policies and politics of Hugo Chávez

5The official workplace of the President of Venezuela, the presidential palace.

6Spanish: Mercado Común del Sur; is a sub-regional bloc. Its full members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Its purpose is to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, people, and currency. It is now a full customs union and a trading bloc.

7The Pacific Alliance (Spanish: Alianza del Pacífico) is a Latin American trade bloc, with some features of further integration. It currently has four member states—Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, which all border the Pacific Ocean.

8The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) (Spanish: Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas) was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas, excluding Cuba.

Contributions to Understand the Argentinian Labyrinth (translation)

By Alfredo Serrano Mancilla

Originally published at ALAI AMLATINA, http://www.alainet.org/es/articulo/173228

26/10/2015.

Everything that habitually happens in Argentina after an electoral date has commenced. The battle of the day after started even before the electoral day itself had ended. Everyone proclaimed themselves the winners. Sergio Massa (Unidos por una Nueva Argentina [United for a New Argentina]), that achieved third place, assumed himself the winner because it was the first time he stood in a presidential election and he obtained a good result, 21.34%. Second placer getter, Mauricio Macri (Frente Cambiemos [We Change Front]), with 34.33%, sees himself with possibilities to be first. And the first place getter, Daniel Scioli (Frente para la Victoria [Front for Victoria]), with 36.85%, forcibly happy, because in the end there wasn't any other option but to celebrate being the person who got the most votes despite being far from what was desired.

With this panorama, what one can affirm is that up until this moment there still isn't a President. The first round only served to open the debate for the second round. In Argentina, one only wins in the first round if it happens that: 1) you get more than 45% of the votes, or 2) you get more than 40% and you have a difference of 10 points with respect to the second highest tally. Neither of these two situations has taken place. The country already thinks about a second round, the first time in history, on the 22th of November: the contest will be between the pro-government candidate Scioli and the conservative Macri.

The majority of the polls showed again their incapacity to ascertain the electoral preferences in a country where society has changed drastically in a few years. There hasn't been any poll that has dared to predict a margin so narrow between both alternatives after that a few months ago, in August, in the Obligatory and Simultaneous Open Primaries (PASO), Scioli obtained 38.67% facing the 30.12% of Macri. What happened between the PASO and what happened in this electoral conflict? What has occurred with these more than 8 points of difference that has now converted itself into only 2? What happened to the 54% that the President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) obtained in the previous presidential elections of 2011?

Some reasons to respond to these questions are the following:

1. The principal thing, undoubtedly, it that Scioli wasn't the best candidate of the Kirchnerist projects. During these months officialism tried to set up the idea that “the candidate is the project” as a formula, to combine the figure of Scioli with what Kirchnerism has been doing. All the evaluations of Kirchner policies and of the President were looking very positive (above 50%) in the recent months. It was so much like this that the the electoral tactic of the opposition wasn't characterised by confrontation. The campaign didn't focus on the nationalisation of YPF[1], or Aerolíneas Argentinas, nor the triumphant restructuring of foreign debt, nor on the public policies guaranteeing social rights. Scioli tried to capitalise on all of it, but he didn't manage to do it. He tried to be the candidate of the project, but he didn't achieve it. There was too much difference between the candidate and the project. Scioli isn't written with a K.

2. CFK didn't want to (or couldn't) be the determinant throughout the campaign. The President withdrew even since before it was established that Scioli was going to be the candidate. She scarcely participated in the campaign. She didn't managed build up a candidate more tailored to her either, more allied to the centre of Kirchnerism. She didn't have that fight; or she had it, but lost; or she believed that she didn't have a winning candidate in her ranks; or she trusted in herself believing that she could think about the next presidential contest without having won still this one. This “distance” of CFK from the elections has had a high cost. The figure of the Vice-President, imposed by the President, Zanini, appeared, at moments, to be a candidate from another party. More an ally than a running mate. The Kirchnerist proposal for the Province of Buenos Aires, Aníbal Fernández, wasn't correct in light of the results: he lost a Peronist bastion at the hands of the Macrista María Eugenia Vidal. In short, you can affirm that the President didn't add up to what was expected. It was so much so that for example her most symbolic and important organisation in these years, the Cámpora[2], didn't even attend the closing of Scioli's campaign. In politics, every detail counts. And this “attitude of distance”of CFK from Scioli has undermined and surely erroded more than what was predicted.

3. Scioli carries the weight of an administration of eight years in the Province of Buenos Aires (36% of the electoral roll), with his good decisions, but also with his mistakes. He has a presidential profile, but very distance to the epic, to the emotivity, of the Kirchnerist narrative. Scioli didn't manage to identify himself with the youthful impression that has so much characterised Kirchnerism in recent years. He is too much from the 20th century, perhaps, for 21st century politics. His discourse is surely typical of a more obsolete Peronism than that which Kirchnerism has been moulding. Besides, Scioli opted for scarcely confronting: he preferred to talk like he had already won. He accepted easily in this way the field proposed by Macri's advisers (especially of Durán Barba) of avoiding to dirtying himself in the boxing ring. And in politics, in the democratic electoral game, to win, you have to enter the arena, and fight, giving and receiving, with respect, but also cornering to the rival questioning him on every proposal. Surely, it will be like that the Scioli that we will see from now until the end of the campaign of this second round. Better late than never.

4. The Argentinian right has known to reinvent itself. That which appears to be an isolated attempt with Macri as the leader in the capital, has today converted into a movement with a presence in all the territory. Macrism went from a little: to covering the length and breadth of the country. Bringing together in the first stage characters know to be remote from traditional politics. But later, in the second moment, it commenced to weave alliances with old political parties (particularly with radicalism) to provide itself with territorial structure. Macri has been using a very 21st century language, with the new tone of the right on good terms. Constantly avoiding confrontation; distancing itself from its own past of neoliberal appearance; knowing to carry out everything advanced by the political opponent. It has scarcely proposed anything new despite having wanted to present itself as the leader of change. Its programmatic emptiness was packed  with political marketing. This is the new strategy of the regional right that obeys good sportsmanship and resignation that the new common sense is characteristic of a change of epics in Argentina and in a good part of Latin America. In this way Macri has managed to slip through to a second round with real options of winning. This election it has tallied up; it leaves with the wind in its favour. But its real capacity of victory will depend a great deal on how it finds itself in a ring against Scioli. Up until this moment, a scenario not desired either by one or the other. We will see what happens from now on.

5. The mediator, Massa, managed to remain inside despite the duel of the two. Massa, the past of Kirchnerism, and now more anti-Kirchnerist than Macri, knew to negotiate what is supposed to be the importance of the votes useful in this type of electoral situation. He snuck into the party to stay. His discourse had a pendular movement: from conservative right in everything referring to punishment against insecurity, and liberal in everything economic. He was more critical of the role of the State than Macri. He looked to the extreme for confrontation, which served to express with notoriety his political proposal. No doubt that getting 21% of the vote permits him to constitute himself as the key to the second round. In his speech last night, he put his price: he sold himself to the highest bidder. Although everything appears to indicate that he will end up as an ally of Macri, one mustn't either rule out that he might offer himself to Scioli (he is anti-Kirchnerism, but it isn't so clear whether he might be anti-Scioli); or maybe he might not decide for either of the two in an explicit way thinking from here more on what could happen in four years.

6. Finally, it is always a key that brings with it the maximum difficulty at the time of explaining what happened in a electoral contest: it is that which we call the people. In Argentina, in these years, the social majority isn't by any means that which left from the crisis, from the playpen, from hungry and from misery. The change is change in all is fullness. And meanwhile what society thinks, demands, imagines, and votes for transforms. What a decade ago was a social demand, today (fortunately) is a naturalised right. The people want more; they have new questions, and it requires new responses. The popular and plebian can't at all be conceived as a static category. This is without doubt one of the fundamental axes of these future years in dispute, between the attempt of conservative restoration and the process of change that is in march.

These are some lines to understand what happened in this new map of Argentinian electoral politics after the elections. There isn't else left to do, but await the following electoral date to know who will be President from the 10th of December this year. From now, starts another campaign that had nothing to do with the previous one. Surely, the final outcome will depend more the Kirchnerist strategy than on what Macri can do. What Kirchnerism proposes and what Scioli decides to do will be the keys to what comes. But that is already another story.


- Alfredo Serrano Mancilla is the Director of the Strategic Centre of Latin American Geopolitics (CELAG).








[1] YPF, the initials of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales ; English: "Fiscal Oilfields ", is a vertically integrated Argentine energy company, engaged in the exploration and production of oil and gas, and the transportation, refining, and marketing of gas and petroleum products


[2] La Cámpora is an Argentine political youth organization supporting the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. It is named after former Peronist president Héctor José Cámpora.

Ana Elisa Osorio: “This is the worst crisis in the last 40 years” (translation)

“Voting for another option in the Process[1] that isn't the government isn't a betrayal”

Originally published at: http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/n275968.html

By: Carlos Carcione and Lucero Benítez - Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide) | Tuesday, 18/08/2015 10:59 AM | Printable version

As we announced in the interview carried out with Professor Héctor Navarro, in this submission we present an interview carried out with Ana Elisa Osorio. Doctor, Deputy of Latin American Parliament, ex-minister of President Chávez, ex-member of the national leadership of the PSUV[3]. Remembered for her valiant attitude confronting the coup d'etat in April 2002. Today in the struggle against corruption, she is part of the Platform for a Public and Citizen Audit against Embezzlement from the Nation.

How do you evaluate the current situation, from the point of view of the people that have been accompanying the revolutionary process?

Ana Elisa Osorio: We are currently passing through a difficult, complex situation, in which, that from my point of view there is a breakdown of the morale of the people in relations to principles.

In that sense, I believe that this is the worst crisis that we have dealt with in the last forty years. In previous crises nobody lost morale, nobody gave up losing morale faced with the difficult moments like the coup d'etat or the oil strike-sabotage. In contrast to previous crises, the people now don't feel supported in the difficulties. We have never reached the situation in which we are today. The government already seems less than what it was previously.

Of course there are aspects of this crisis that are objective, among them are the economic elements like inflation, like smuggling. But the other aspect of the crisis is more subjective, it is a crisis that hits morale and public sentiment.

The revolution remains in these moments only in the hearts and minds of the people. A people that, by the way, in the midst of all of this situation is confused.

Of course, not all the issues that influence the crisis are exogenous. The administration of foreign currency is a black box, for example. Also there are objective conditions for all the corrupt people in the government at the moment. There is currency flight, and also there are multiple exchange rates, that influence everything.

There are great shortages, and many of the achievements of the process have deteriorated a lot, above all in the area of food products, the food missions. In the area of health, there has been a mistaken direction of no having an orientation to primary healthcare, what they have made the hospitals do to themselves, they might collapse at the moment, or that we might have technology in the healthcare area that is being underutilised, because it wasn't planned at the level of the necessities of the people.

During these years there was a redistribution of the income that translated into important achievements. But in this moment I consider that we are going back to the situation before Chávez.

Based on this and returning to the issue of the elections, I see that in these upcoming elections for the National Assembly there is Chavista[4] discontent that doesn't want to vote for the government nor the MUD[5]. I see that there is “neither-nor” feeling that comes from the people that feel a betrayal of the Chávez model, and that because of that nowadays they are “neither-nor”.

The polls say that we are losing, and it would be terrible that the right might achieve the majority in the National Assembly given that it can get rid everything that remains of the revolutionary process. Therefore there must be a policy for those who don't want to turn out to vote.

Who benefits from the situation of the dollar?

AEO: There is bad management and corruption of the public funds and the foreign currency that enters the country, around which different actors are connected.

On the one hand there is a corrupt national bourgeoisie that doesn't produce anything, and that has its counterpart, that are the people that are in the organisations that have do the negotiations for the awarding of foreign currency to that sector, like CENCOEX[6].

If that counterpart didn't exist inside of those organisations, everything that is happening wouldn't be happening. When we ask ourselves to whom and how the currency is handed over, we see that there is a great degree of complicity inside those organisations. But the issue of corruption related to foreign currency goes both ways, on one side by those who request the dollars and on the other side by those who award them.

That has led us to the situation we are in currently of bankruptcy due to a bad administration of the foreign currency coming from the oil income, not due to a crisis like that of the coup d’etat on the 11th April or that of the oil strike.

Returning to the electoral theme, what do you think about the elimination of direct voting for the representatives of Venezuela to Parlatino?

AEO: It surprised us all the change announced in the previous months with respect to the method of selecting the deputies to Parlatino. In that sense, it might mean that in contrast to what some say, the treaty that Venezuela signed about Parlatino isn't violated, careful with this. Nevertheless, it is important to know that in Venezuela we were pioneers in electing our representatives to this organisation, in the framework of protagonist and participative democracy expressed in our Constitution.

The measure brings the discontent of all the deputies to Parlatino, but not all of them have made statements in that respect. The opposition have said it and I have said it myself. The rest haven't expressed it due to a question misunderstood discipline. I'm not saying that I don't believe in discipline, because I firmly do believe in it, the question is in that that fact represents a step backward for protagonist and participative democracy.

To the contrary of what has been decided here, at the moment there other countries in which that move to selecting by popular vote the representatives to Parlatino, like in Boliva and Ecuador.

And about the recent ruling of the CNE[7] that demands gender equality for all the lists of candidates?

AEO: The CNE on other occasions had named that resolution, and this year it has done it, only that from my point of view, it has done it at a bad time, that is to say, after the primary elections have happened, and after many candidatures have been defined.

I agree with the question of parity. The CNE makes a positive discrimination, as the representation of women to the National Assembly is very small. Due to which it is necessary, in the sense of making that women project themselves further into the spaces of public life, further than their domestic sphere of existence, in the community.

What I believe is incorrect about this measure is doing it at the wrong time. And that it is applied only to the small parties, and not to the big ones like MUD or PSUV. In both sectors there are more men than women as candidates.

Then, the CNE is permissive with them and not with the rest? It represents a discriminatory and anti-democratic fact. These decisions of the CNE at the wrong time, aren’t in of keeping with a trajectory with respect to what it has meant and done in the past.

What is the policy to get the neither-nor people to participate electorally?

AEO: I believe that one option is looking to the coordination among all the so-called small parties of the process, if there was a third party or third option that emerges from the revolution, like that, from my point of view, is the solution.

On something I insist, and it is that the way isn't abstention. I believe in joining to other parties of the process, and in the invalid vote as an alternative.

It also must be clear that voting for another option in the process that isn't the government isn't betrayal. It is the high government that betrays Chávez, when they don't contain the problems when they have a solution.

We live in a society that it becoming sick, and it isn't solving in a strong way the things, that isn't by the way of force, it is with a coherent government.

In Venezuela we had far exceeded the “every man for himself” mentality, a situation that we are lamentably returning to...

Definitively, we need a leadership that helps to reverse this situation.




[1] The Bolivarian revolutionary process

[2] Latin American Parliament (Parlatino), is a regional, permanent organization composed by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that was created in 1964. It is a consultative assembly similar to the early European Parliament.[1] Currently the institution is being considered to become the legislative organ of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

[3] United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the main party of government supporting the revolutionary process

[4] People that are supportive of policies and politics of Hugo Chávez

[5] Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (Democratic Unity Roundtable; MUD), the electoral coalition of right-wing Venezuelan opposition parties.

[6] National Bureau for Exterior Commerce that issues foreign currency for trade.

[7] Venezuelan National Electoral Council

The OLP, a new law of vagrants and miscreants? Coincidences of today's government with the governments of yesteryear. (translation)

Originally published at:
http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a212457.html

By: Zuleika Matamoros | Monday, 17/08/2015 01:12 PM | Printable version

And as someone who arrived without being invited we know the Operation of Liberation and Protection of the People (OLP). Among its first “actions” the “operation” in the mistreated and forgotten Cota 905 leaving a toll of 14 deaths and hundreds detained will remain in the memory, as will too the attack in the San Vicente neighbourhood in the state of Aragua or in the Panamericana[1]. The confusion and the amazement were the impressions of those of us that found out via the news broadcast of such actions. Above all those of us who live in the barriers and that suffer from the issue of insecurity in much smaller measure than the scourge of the violence associated with crime as a consequence of poverty.

The OLP presents us, by its methods, as a former law of vagrants and miscreants because it is directed exclusively at the people of the poor neighbourhoods, at the poor, a those eternally excluded, at those of us who have less opportunities. Will it be possible to end violence and insecurity if it doesn't attack the big drug traffickers who, like everywhere else in the world, flaunt their relationships with the local and international bourgeoisie, businesspeople, bankers, military and high government officials? Will it be able to get rid of the “bachaqueros”[2] or the street vendors while big articulated trucks cross the border with total impunity and that are escorted by high military officials from the accounts of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants affirm that are in macrobachaqueo? Will it be able to end common crime if the example that today's Political Leadership gives is the same that the bourgeoisie of always: corruption, impunity and abuse of power? Will we be able to get rid of malandraje[3], if it doesn't attack the corrupt people that took for themselves, and are still taking for themselves, the dollars of the nation, some as businesspeople and others as functionaries of the “revolution” and that have allowed Venezuela to be ruined and indebted?

The policy of “Lead to the underworld”

Social violence is a scourge that attacks the most vulnerable sectors of society. The neighbourhoods in which the working masses, whether they might be in the formal sector or not, live are those which suffer with particular intensity the phenomenon of social violence; especially that which manifests itself through crime. The door of the Morgue is full of poor people demanding justice without much hope of getting it.

The “answer” to insecurity and violence on behalf of those that have held Power has been for decades the same: seeing crime as a strictly individual problem and not social. The OLP acts against the “criminals of the poor neighbourhoods”, against the “bachaqueros”, against the students of public high schools and not against those who have put us in this profound crisis of grand proportions, for them there doesn't exist a possible OLP. They took 259 billion dollars from the nation (which highlights the embezzlement from CADIVI), they don't import the supplies necessary for production, they do disgusting business with the food of the people, they don't change the productive model because it attacks their interests; they generate poverty, hunger and misery and try to get rid of the consequences through repression and not the causes.

In the areas which are inhabited by those of us who live only by our work we suffer from criminal violence, institutional violence and violence from the bodies “of security” of the State today personified by the OLP. In the poorer neighbourhoods we live the forget, the indifference, the apathy, the crime, the exclusion, the need and today we relive, through the OLP, the terror, the mistreatment, the fear, the indignation, impotence.

Sometimes we wonder if by robbing a banker or an industrialist (a sector that has plundered the resources of our country, the resources of the people and that in their criminal accumulation of Capital leaves us with hospitals without supplies, with schools with major problems, with starvation wages), you could assassinate or execute the persons that committed a minor crime like the robbery of one of their cars is (like the recent case of Poliaragua[4]). It isn't my intention to justify one crime in relation to another, but is the life of the common (poor) criminal worth less than one of the trucks of a “smart-looking industrialist”? In the specific case of Aragua it was 4 lives for the truck of an industrialist.

Is the undercover implementation of the death penalty that criminalises poverty and tries to make you see as “just” those whose have filled their pockets not only through the exploitation but through embezzlement from the nation, that at the end of accounts is the embezzlement from the people, and their rights and that takes them to the abyss of exclusion and poverty.

Preventing a popular uprising?

Contradictorily those who today are in government and call themselves “the children of Chávez”, forget that they are there precisely because the people rose up against the disgrace that the governments of the “Pact of Punto Fijo”[5] were. Because not only were we excluded, without opportunities, but we were also those to whom they used to apply the law of vagrants and miscreants. That is to say that the same people that turned you into the excluded, used to make you into a criminal. So, one of the things that connected us to Chávez is that he precisely gave us the sensation that that wouldn't happen again, because in the first place he arrived with the firm intention of settling the social debt and because one of his first signs was precisely the stark criticism that he used to make to such an shameful law, precisely for criminalising poverty, abolished a little before his arrival to the presidency. We recovered together with Chávez our identity, we felt represented by him and we knew that his relationship with the people was the product of the respect for our struggles waged against the exploitative and repressive State.

Today, in the midst of a profound crisis that has us not only making humiliating queues, but immersed each time further in a poverty that advances in an accelerated manner, the Government's response is repression. In the market queues to get food we see today officials of the GNB[6] or of the PNB[7], that besides mocking the people by letting in their little friends without lining up or taking themselves the products in large quantities, they are quick to arrest anyone that gets angry and dares to protest in a loud voice. What exposes itself is that the OLP is the form that the State has found to avoid that discontent turns into the “shake-up” that we are still waiting for Maduro to make. These conditions that we are passing through today demonstrate to us that the Government hasn't had the capacity to answer our needs. Our purchasing power is totally destroyed, the feeling is of ungovernability.

The “fashion”of the high officials together with the big businesspeople that enrich themselves with the dollars handed over by the government at the preferential price[8] is to try to manipulate us; some with the inane argument of “Economic War” and “infiltrated paramilitarism”. A dangerous breeding ground for xenophobia; the others with the blatant lie “that they need more dollars to produce and import” when in more than a decade they haven't produced anything and they have made disproportionate importation and speculative practice a big business.

The contradictory and sadly paradoxical thing is that the same government that has given that prerogative to the bourgeoisie and that has let them act without control because they are part of the same business, tries today to repress the people that suffer the consequences of that perverse and mafia-style action and are those who have sustained them as Political Leadership. They have forgotten about Chávez the anticapitalist, about Chávez the rebel, about the Chávez that said “Here you can smell sulphur”, about the Chávez that said “I put all my money on the workers “ that gave birth to this Bolivarian People in struggle, because we are sick and tired of the Adeco[9] and Copeyano[10] governments of yesterday and is due to this that we are outraged when the present government for whom we casted our votes to continue on the path of transformation, of the transition to socialism, today appears more like “them” than “us”.

The hypocrisy of the opposition of the Right

Today we listen to an opposition that criticises the OLP in a stark way, in its grim dispute for the votes “of the poor that is angry and could abstain”.

They are the same people that have been mistaken as always because in truth they believe that the people have a short memory, they overlook the fact that we were the ones that recognised that same “Law of vagrants and miscreants” that was the legal subterfuge that criminalised poverty for 58 years and that remained in the collective memory as the violations of the rights to liberty, to life, as raids without judicial orders, as executions, as assassinations and was the legal shortcut that they used for decades to deprive revolutionary political leaders of liberty. This law was maintained in force by the same people that today try to manipulate us lifting the fake banner of “human rights”.

It is the criminalisation of poverty, devised by the governments of Pact of Punto Fijo who are the true miscreants that deserve to be in prison for the crimes they committed. They are the same slackers that have lived from the theft and embezzlement from the nation. Only citing one example, we have Ledezma[11], who filled with grief for the families in the Caracas slums, as well as the families of the prisoners of the Retén de Catia[12] and for the mothers of students while he used to fill his pockets with the money of the people.

The painful thing of all this is that the government with its implementation of the OLP appears that tries to act in the same way that the high officials of the Venezuela of the Fourth Republic. It appears that agrees with that premise that says “that to make serve the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past”. They dare to qualify as a scourge the “bachaqueros” who are products of a crisis for which they are responsible.

It would seem, the high command of the “revolutionary” government has lost all reflection with relation to those that live only through their labour, to the excluded, in short with the fundamental base that sustains this revolutionary process...

...Our dead, our people and our revolution don't deserve it...



For analysis of the OLP check out this interview

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11489






[1] A roadside community that was raided by the OLP in July, 2015


[2] People that hoard government-subsidized products (i.e. corn flower, toilet paper, etc.) and resell them at exorbitant black market rates


[3] Thugs


[4] A case in which the State pólice of Aragua were implicated in extra-judicial killing of car thieves


[5] Pact of Punto Fijo was agreed between representatives of Venezuela's three main political parties in 1958: Acción Democrática, COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática. The pact bound the parties to limit Venezuela’s political system to an exclusive competition between two parties and the distribution of power between the two main political parties.


[6] National Bolivarian Guard


[7] National Bolivarian Police Force


[8] Venezuela currently has different Exchange rates for the U.S. dollar with those used for necessary imports being the cheapest.


[9] Acción Democrática party


[10] Copei - Independent Political Electoral Organization Committee, is a social christian party.


[11] Venezuelan opposition Mayor and longtime rightwing politician, Antonio Ledezma


[12] a Caracas prison