by the El Reportero’s news services
Alvaro Uribe
Colombia’s electoral campaign for presidential elections on May 30 officially got underway last week, but voters are none the wiser as to who will be contesting them.
Until the constitutional court decides whether or not President Alvaro Uribe is able to stand for a second re-election, his prospective rivals have not even bothered to pull together electoral manifestoes.
The uncertainty surrounding Uribe means that rather less attention has been paid to the congressional elections due to be held on March 14. The deadline for candidates to register for these elections was Feb. 2. The signs are that parapolitics (the term coined to denote collusion between politicians and paramilitaries), which so discredited the present congress, has not been purged from political life.
The Cubanisation of Venezuela
On Feb. 4, President Hugo Chávez commemorated the 18th anniversary of his failed coup attempt against the former president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, with a defiant call to battle, as the Caracas metropolitan police again dispersed opposition students with tear gas and water cannon. Chávez is in provocative pre-electoral mode, though it is unclear what his next move will be.
His most wild-eyed opponents claim that he is preparing to declare an ‘autogolpe’ and cancel this year’s scheduled legislative elections. We would argue that given his near total control over the main state institutions, including the army, he has no need to do so. Furthermore the opposition has the habit of tripping itself up, without any input from Chávez.
In other Venezuela’s news:
After more ‘pre-war’ tirades Hugo Chávez, says he’s considering talks with Obam
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez continued to raise the temperature of what has been described as a ‘pre-war’ situation, accusing the US of violating Venezuelan airspace with aircraft flying from Curaçao, and Colombia of preparing to launch an incursion on the pretext of attacking a guerrilla camp inside Venezuela.
He then went on to accuse the US of using the earthquake in Haiti as cover for a military occupation of that country. Then came a sudden change of tack: an announcement that he was ‘evaluating’ an offer of talks by US president Barack Obama.
Congress reconvenes amid uncertainty
On Feb. 1 congress reconvened for its second session since the mid-term elections in July 2009. The current short session (which ends before Easter) looks as though it will confirm President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa as a lameduck. The opposition-controlled congress has signaled that it will not approve many of Calderón’s ambitious political reform suggestions. The consensus in congress, and among political commentators, is that the reforms, far from strengthening the legislature as Calderón claimed, will weaken it…
