by the El Reportero’s news services
Adolfo Zaldívar
Adolfo Zaldívar, a lagging presidential candidate, withdrew on Sept. 14, from the presidential election. Zaldívar’s last minute withdrawal leaves five candidates in the race for the presidency. Nominations closed on Sept. 14 and the campaign starts, officially, today (Sept. 15).
The first round of the presidential election and the entire congressional election is on Dec. 13. The elections are shaping up as the closest since democracy was restored after the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990. Since then, the centre-left, quadripartite Concertación de Partidos por la Democracía has ruled the country.
Bachelet moves to end Pinochet-era copper funding for military
Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet sent a bill to congress this week calling time on an entrenched feature inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship: the appropriation for the military of 10 percent of copper export earnings.
The timing of the move is astute. It serves a dual purpose.
On the domestic front, it should boost Eduardo Frei, the presidential candidate for the ruling Concertación, who is lagging in the polls with just three months until general elections.
Resistance announces new protests in Honduras
The National Front against the coup d’état in Honduras announced that today they they will continue the protests in demand of restitution of the constitutional order and the return of President Manuel Zelaya.
The demonstrations of this Wednesday continue the multitudinous marches of yesterday around the country for independence day and constitute the 81st consecutive day against the military coup of last June 28.
The general coordinator of the Front, Juan Barahona, said yesterday that the protests will continue up to achieving the call to a national constituent assembly for the refoundation of the country.
In a proclamation read by Barahona before a multitude assembled in the Central Park of Tegucigalpa, the Front underlined that the new Magna Carta that should approve must “settel the bases of the real independence of the nation.”
Our Homeland is in a nonviolent insurrection against the usurper regime that assaulted with weapon the institutions of the State on June 28, underlines the text. (Latin Press).
Peruvian government after threads Abimael Guzmán’s book
The lawyer of the veteran chief of Luminous Footpath (Sendero Luminoso), Abimael Guzmán, is today on the verge of being processed judicially for the crime of apology of terrorism, after the presentation of a self-critical book of his imprisoned client.
The complaint was announced by the minister of Justice, Aurelio Pastor, and comprises both to the defender, Alfredo Crespo, and to Camen Hualla, for this one to have read in the launching of the book a letter of Elena Iparraguirre, also senderista leader and partner of Guzmán.
The text, “By hand and letter”, was presented last Friday and it reproduces manuscripts of Guzmán with part of his memoirs and a self-critical evaluation of the armed actions initiated by the Senderismo in May, 1980.
The activity of the group began to decline with the apprehension of Guzmán on Sept. 12, 1992, and at present it only produces a limited group of remnants that desobeys the boss’s order to leave the arms struggle.
The split, repudiated by Guzmán, has caused in less than one year, more year 50 casualties, mainly military, in a rural territory of the center of the country.
The book of Guzmán ratifi es his differences with the remnants, on having raised a conciliation from which the State admits that there was a political war and approves an amnesty both for those up in arms, and for military men condemned for violations of human rights.
