by the El Reportero’s news services
Felipe Calderón
Close to six years after launching a military-backed drive against Mexico’s drug gangs, themselves engaged in a savage turf war, with both developments having jointly claimed more than 40,000 lives, President Felipe Calderón has joined the ranks of those proposing what he calls ‘market alternatives’ to the ‘war on drugs’ — in other words, legalisation. He wants the consumer countries to start.
Latin America’s new economic vision
The US’s economic problems have undermined its distinctive spin on capitalism. In the US, the “bottom line” has long been seen as the be-all-and-end-all of economic activity. How the “bottom line” was achieved was much less important, as the Enron saga showed, than the size of the figures in it. There are, however, other ways to use the information markets offer.
Peru’s judicial reform starts at home
On Aug. 18 President Ollanta Humala outlined the focal point for judicial reform: attacking corruption in the judiciary.
“A corrupt judge is more dangerous than a criminal”, President Humala said on Aug. 18.
Corruption has long undermined the public standing of judges and the sentences they hand down; the judiciary has been often described as an institution where money buys results, and allegedly, the more money one pays the more ‘justice’ one gets.
Efficiency – the more technical, but less visible twin problem facing the judiciary – will nevertheless be an important component, if not the core focus.
Humala’s reforms are going with the grain of what senior judges, notably, César San Martin, the president of the supreme court, has been saying since he was appointed in January.
