Sebastián Piñera
by the El Reportero’s news services
On April 29 the Chihuahua state government called on all its fellow border states to boycott the 28th annual meeting with their US counterparts scheduled for September.
Already, Sonora has cancelled its annual bilateral meeting with the state government of Arizona to underline Mexican objections to a new law allowing state police to stop suspected undocumented immigrants and demand proof that they are in the U.S. legally.
The row is likely to color President Felipe Calderón’s forthcoming state visit to Washington on May 19-20. The Mexican senate has called on the government to come up with an action plan over the next 90 days to persuade Arizona to rescind the legislation.
Piñera’s honeymoon comes to an abrupt end in Chile
President Sebastián Piñera should by rights be enpjoying a fairly comfortable ride less than two months after taking office on March 11, but the honeymoon period traditionally extended to new heads of state has been denied him. This is not because of concerted opposition from the left-wing Concertación, which is still licking its wounds after losing its 20-year residency in the presidential palace of La Moneda, but rather because of open dissent from within the ranks of his own right-wing Coalición por el Cambio.
Presidential candidate in diplomatic row with Ecuador and Venezuela
Historically, Colombia-Venezuela bilateral relations have not been the best; but since 2005 tensions have escalated to extraordinary levels, with bellicose rhetoric becoming increasingly more frequent.
What is peculiar about the latest confrontation is that two elected officials, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, decided to respond to the comments made by a presidential hopeful – someone who at the moment has no position in the government – warning that he could create a future military conflict.
A decisive yearThis year, 2010, is a busy year for elections in the region. Brazil’s presidential and congressional elections dominate the calendar and the big question is whether President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva can transfer his popularity to his preferred successor, Dilma Rousseff.
The example of what has happened in Chile shows how difficult this is.
Chile elected Sebastián Piñera as its first democratically-chosen, rightwing president for 52 years in January. This was despite the 80 percent plus opinion poll approval ratings of the leftwing incumbent, Michelle Bachelet.
Hard to Trust Obama without Releasing Cuba Anti-terrorists
It is hard to trust US President Barack Obama without releasing the five Cuban anti-terrorists imprisoned in that country for over a decade, stated Sunday Cuban Parliament’’s President Ricardo Alarcon.
Does he believe he will convince us he represents a credible change when he dares not to release those innocent men, and keeps preventing terrorists from being tried? Alarcon wondered during a solidarity with Cuba meeting in Havana.
He also called to put an end to the suffering of Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, whom Washington has prevented from visiting their husbands Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, respectively.
Rene and Gerardo, along with Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, and Fernando Gonzalez were arrested in Miami in 1998 for monitoring anti-Cuban terrorist organizations in that US city and accused of many charges that were not substantiated nor proved during a biassed trial in Miami.
A U.N. legal body declared their incarceration and sentences as unfair and arbitrary and demanded their release.
Obama’s signature, with an order by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is enough to end with that situation, said Alarcon, and called the measure atrocious expression of medieval torture. (Latin News and Prensa Latina contributed to this report.)
