by the El Reportero’s news services
Daniel Ortega
The ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) on Feb. 26 declared President Daniel Ortega its presidential candidate ahead of the 6 November 2011 elections. Ortega’s bid for the presidency is unconstitutional and the most glaring example to date of the lack of constitutional checks and balances in Nicaragua. The domestic and international response to his efforts to perpetuate himself in power could prove critical for democracy in the region.
Arab revolutions raise questions about democracy and autocracy
Seismic historical shifts in North Africa and the Middle East are being felt in Latin America.
The differing reactions to uprisings in Egypt and Libya, depending upon whether the despot in question has ‘imperialist’ links to the US, Hosni Mubarak, or dim and distant ‘revolutionary’ credentials, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, have exposed some rank hypocrisy in Cuba and Nicaragua. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, who has made a habit of courting unsavoury dictators, including Gaddafi, has astutely decided to keep his own counsel on Libya. It is probably not coincidental, however, that hunger striking students should have chosen this moment to pressure the Venezuelan government to release ‘political prisoners’, or that both the US and the Organization of American States (OAS) are now raising concerns about the shortcomings of Venezuelan democracy.
What the Arab revolutions mean for Latin America
Latin America, which has longstanding links to the Arab world, is likely to play a major political role in the international community’s reaction to the revolutions in the Arab world. Latin America is also likely to benefit, economically, from the unrest in the Arab world, as international oil companies, especially, switch from looking for oil in places like Libya, Algeria and Egypt which now seem deeply unstable. Politically the unrest in the Arab world gives Latin America a platform to demonstrate its democratic, environmental and human rights credentials.
Traditionally countries in Latin America have been reluctant to take principled positions on unrest in other countries, largely because they did not welcome other countries commenting on, or worse investigating, what was happening inside their own countries.
Military given indefinite role in combating organised crime
There is no end in sight to the use of the armed forces in combating organised crime in El Salvador. That uncompromising message might have been expected from the lips of any previous president in El Salvador’s history but instead it came from the mouth of President Mauricio Funes, the country’s first left-wing head of state. Speaking in late January during a military promotion ceremony, Funes said he would use the armed forces “indefinitely” with the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC). He said the battle against organised crime did not have “deadlines” but rather “objectives”.
His state security strategy is very similar to that being carried out by the centre-left President of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, where the military had also retreated from public life after a long civil war but is now playing an increasingly active role.
