Monday, June 05, 2006

Chavez' Government expresses desire to control Internet at OAS meeting The Miami Herald is reporting that in the draft of the final resolution of the OAS meeting in Dominican Republic, Venezuela indicated that the Internet was a "valuable contribution" it "lamented" that it could be used to promote negative stereotypes of individuals and vulnerable groups. I guess they mean Chavez and his movement and us bloggers in reverse order. As to calling the Internet just a "valuable contribution", this shows what the revolution thinks of technology, the Internet is a bigger revolution than Chavez', but they find the lack of control counter to Chavez' autocratic style. They would love to control people like me that tell you the truth and their lies, but, for now, they simply can't....Hopefully, this will remain that way. We will keep an eye for more information on the details of Venezuela's position. 8:38:04 PM    comment []

Leading opposition candidates reach agreement on unified candidacy The three leading opposition candidates in the polls Julio Borges, Teodoro Petkoff and Manuel Rosales (who has yet to announce), announced today that they will find a way of choosing one of the three as a united opposition candidate before July 31st. If they don't, they will all participate in the Sumate primary. They will create an independent commission to try to find this consensus going forward. At the same time, they will integrate all three campaign commands to create a joint proposal and a "governability" agreement for the new Government. They said that they do not reject a primary offhand, but would prefer a mechanism that shows there is indeed unit of purpose in their goals. They also announced that they will not accept any conditions for the December election that in any way worsens the conditions for the vote used in December 2005. This means that the use of fingerprint machines is unacceptable. They also asked for the CNE to consider both proposals to audit the electoral registry. I believe this is a positive announcement in the sense that it shows that their conversations have indeed have been focused in leading to a consensus and unity. I still feel that primaries would get the people excited and get them out of their doldrums, which is badly needed at this time. At the same time, it does show a lot of goodwill and maturity to attempt to reach that difficult decision by a consensual mechanism, so they can spend their time showing the people what a mess this country is in. 8:18:43 PM    comment []

Peru: Between a rock and a hard place So Peru has made its choice. Given the possibility of picking between a leftist, militaristic, autocratic and nationalistic populist and a leftist, populist, charismatic, incompetent manager, they chose the latter. In some sense, they chose democracy and stability over the lack of freedom and instability. Garcia was responsible for pushing Peru over the economic brink in the 80's. He saved his party from oblivion then and he did it again yesterday. Humala on the other hand offered an unknown economic path and the shadow of Cha¡vez and Morales hung over his election. Both Garcia and Humala have many similarities to Hugo Chávez. Both are populists who have little idea about economics and both lack a true economic plan. Where Garcia has Chavez' charisma and ability to mobilize crowds, Humala has Chavez' militaristic-nationalist and autocratic streak. Thus, the two together would be almost be a Chavez clone, which shows that people like some of the same features that I find so undesirable. The main question now is whether Garcia learned anything from his first Presidency. This will be very important in determining his success. In his first presidency Garcia appointed a good first team to his Cabinet, who quickly were replaced by part apparatchik and friends over time. This team was the one that innovated time and time again on economic policy, leading to the well known disaster in Peru's economy. Can it be different this time? It is very hard to tell. While Garci­a is likely to try to be different, there will be lots of pressure from his party APRA to involve party people in the Government. If Garcia can limit this, he will have a higher probability of success. In some sense, both Fujimori and Toledo were more successful, precisely because having no political parties behind them they had to staff the Government with professionals, which have run ministries and other offices much more efficiently than ever before. Maybe Garcia will do like Carlos Andres Perez did in 1989 and do a complete turnaround from his first presidency. In terms of the region, Garcia represents a huge counterbalance to Chavez. Chavez is unlikely to stop picking fights with him, which in turn will make Garcia more popular with his countrymen. This will put Humala in a tough position, since it will force him not to participate in the controversies to keep his distance to Chavez, but at the same time he needs to keep a high profile. Peruvians will also look towards Bolivia to judge whether they made a mistake or not in leaning towards Garcia. The performance of Morales will be key to a possible Humala charge in the future. If Morales' Government encounters problems, it will reflect badly on Humala, as long as Garci­a is not doing even worse. For now, Peruvians made a choice between a rock and a hard place. Hopefully Garcia will do what is best, will surround himself with competent people and push his country forward both economically and socially. That is all we can hope for now. 7:33:18 PM    comment []