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Thursday, October 31, 2019
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Some Haitians want U.S. to weigh in on crisis. But Trump administration is focused elsewhere
JACQUELINE CHARLES AND NORA GÁMEZ TORRES. Miami Herald. OCTOBER 30, 2019
As Haiti continues to descend into chaos, with gangs dismembering the bodies of rivals, police protesting their own government and marchers setting businesses ablaze, Haitians on both sides of the crisis are looking to the United States to help solve their problem.
Those who support Haitian President Jovenel Moïse want the U.S. to send food, money and logistics support — which some have taken to mean the U.S. military — to help him deal with the crisis. Those in opposition want the U.S. to stop supporting him.
But the Trump administration appears to have little interest in getting involved in Haiti, where many banks and businesses, the schools and the courts remained shuttered Tuesday for the seventh week.
Washington’s lack of a clear policy on Haiti is not lost on Haitians or Haiti observers who, whether true or not, believe the U.S. is standing by Moïse because of his decision in January to break with a longtime ally, Venezuela and leader Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. does not appear to be doing anything to overtly support Moïse, but its lack of public criticism of the president and a series of recent decisions are being perceived by Haitians as a sign of diplomatic support. There was the invitation to Mar-a-Lago to Moïse to meet with Trump in March, the swift removal of armed U.S. mercenaries the month before and the periodic statements couched as support for elections and democratic values.
Short of removing Moïse, the opposition believes the Trump administration and others in the international community can send a signal that they will not interfere in the opposition’s mission to force his resignation and put a transition government in place.
During a visit to the U.S. State Department two weeks ago, Gary Bodeau, the president of the Lower Chamber of Deputies in Parliament, argued that the U.S. support of Moïse requires more than subtle diplomacy.
“They need to step up, otherwise he won’t survive,” Bodeau told the Miami Herald. “It can’t just be them saying, ‘I support Haiti. I support democracy.’ No, we have a political crisis, we have social issues, we have economic issues so they need to bring money to the table, which I don’t see. The U.S. support is not sustainable without help.”
Bodeau, who was also looking for statements from members of Congress in support of Moïse’s embattled administration, said he visited Washington at the request of fellow pro-government lawmakers in the lower chamber. In March, the lawmakers fired Prime Minister Jean Henry Céant after only six months, making the crisis worse. In August, they also blocked an attempt by opposition members to impeach Moïse.
Bodeau described Moïse as a U.S. ally. As proof, he cited Moïse’s decision to support the Trump administration on Venezuela and to have Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond serve as one of two vice chairs of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, which last month imposed new sanctions against members of Maduro’s regime.
“If you say you support the president, you need to put your hands in your pockets; give him help,” Bodeau said.
That was also the sentiment expressed by Edmond in an Oct. 11 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which he asked for “urgent humanitarian aid and logistics support” to distribute it.
Moïse, in a pre-taped interview with Radio Metropole on Monday, confirmed the request. Asked by the journalist if logistics support means foreign soldiers, the president implied there was nothing wrong with such an arrangement, responding: “I didn’t hear anyone say anything when ... the Americans came with aid during Hurricane Matthew. Did they come by themselves?”
During the interview, in which he adamantly defended a decision to arbitrarily cancel the electricity contracts of three private power providers, Moïse continued to reject calls for his resignation, renewed his calls for a dialogue and proposed a government of national unity. He also sought to cast himself as the people’s protector against “the system.”
Following the interview, Bodeau tweeted that in three interviews the president had failed to make any effort at dealing with the unrest. “The head of state has to listen to the people. ... The head of state @moisejovenel is not the only one on board.”
Hours after the tweet, Bodeau went further, indicating that he too may be ready to abandon the president’s ship. In an interview with Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper, Bodeau said “the departure of the president can be an option.”
A spokesperson with the U.S. Agency for International Development told the Herald that the agency is aware of Haiti’s humanitarian request and is “in close coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Haiti to determine the nature of any requests for additional USAID food assistance.”
A spokesperson with the State Department did not directly address the question of whether Moïse, who has hired a foreign security team, asked for U.S. military assistance. The spokesperson said the USAID’s Office of Food for Peace, which Haiti requested, works with organizations such as the U.N. World Food Program and other non-governmental organizations to get food to those in need.
But even the logistics of delivering aid is unclear. The U.N. announced earlier this month that it had been forced to suspend its food assistance program and cash transfers due to the ongoing violence.
The State Department spokesperson did confirm that the U.S. Navy medical ship Comfort is scheduled to conduct a port call in Haiti in the coming days. But the long planned mission is to provide medical, not military, assistance.
“The decision by the Moïse government to flip its position on Venezuela and side against Maduro and with the United States was strategically smart and bought some good will,” said Daniel Erikson, a former adviser for the Western Hemisphere at the State Department and special adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden in the White House. “But this should not be confused with a permanent alliance between the Trump administration and Moïse. One ironclad rule of Washington is that the White House does not want to find problems emanating from Haiti in its inbox.”
Last week during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on aid and U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean, U.S. Rep Andy Levin, D-Mich., broached the subject of Haiti. He asked Michael Kozak, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, if the administration’s lack of public statements on the crisis in Haiti and its “failing to defend good governance” had anything to do with Haiti’s stance on Venezuela.
Kozak, a seasoned diplomat who was involved in Haiti 25 years ago, responded: “I don’t think so.” But Levin didn’t appear convinced.
“It seems to be that the Trump administration is reverting to this horrible Cold War approach to Haiti,” Levin later told the Herald, referring to the days when the U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship because the father and son rulers opposed communism.
Though he has no love for Maduro, Levin said, “The U.S. should not base its policy on Haiti on how Haiti votes or what attitude they take on the Maduro regime.”
”People are protesting and we have to take that seriously,” he added.
The day after Levin’s questioning, and after the Herald’s inquiries about the U.S. stance on the Haiti crisis, the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince finally made its first public comments — more than six weeks after the latest round of protests began. In a tweet, the embassy urged Haiti’s various political actors to enter without delay or preconditions into a dialogue to form a functioning government.
Three days later, the embassy spoke out — again in a tweet. By now, images of chopped-up body parts, from warring gangs in Petite Rivière de l’Artibonite, were circulating on social media; the French and Canadian embassies in Port-au-Prince had been attacked with Molotov cocktails by demonstrators; and a U.S. flag had been burned in Cap-Haitien. Haiti’s foreign affairs ministry swiftly condemned the attacks, which included a man bludgeoned to death after he fired on a group of protesters. The killing was captured on video.
The mobilization by the opposition to oust Moïse also included hundreds of Haiti National Police officers, who defied internal regulations against demonstrations to join a more peaceful protest against the government to demand better working conditions and wages.
“These shootings, killings, arson, and destruction not only hurt Haitian citizens, but also add to Haiti’s economic and social instability and prolong the interruption of daily life for the Haitian people, particularly Haiti’s school children,” the embassy tweeted. “The apparent lack of urgency to resolve the extended political stalemate is increasingly worrisome, as is the growing negative impact on public security, the economy, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance, including food aid.”
Neither of the embassy tweets mentioned Moïse, and instead stressed the need for dialogue. However, with the opposition digging its heels in and the president’s own dialogue commission imploding following the resignation of several key members after he refused to negotiate on his five-year term, it’s unclear whether any dialogue can begin.
“No one is willing to make a compromise,” said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert and author of “Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy.”
“What I am afraid, though, is that this situation can easily degenerate into mass violence,” he added. ”At one point this may happen; people may start getting so angry that they start burning everything.”
Fatton said beyond the recent statements out of the U.S. Embassy, he isn’t sure any top Trump officials are even thinking about Haiti and its deteriorating political impasse.
The White House did not reply to questions about Haiti and deferred to the State Department on the issue. Since January, the administration has been busy trying to deal with Venezuela, working on several rounds of sanctions against Maduro’s government and his closest ally, the Cuban government. At the same time, Trump’s aides have been negotiating immigration agreements with Mexico and several Central American nations. Haiti policy seems to have fallen through the cracks.
“I don’t think the United States is going to intervene unless it becomes absolutely clear that [Moïse] is no longer useful to them,” Fatton said. “And I don’t know at what point they reach that decision, because he clearly has lost essentially the support of every sector in society, whether it’s the private sector, the church, the police, the popular sectors, the vast majority of the population. I don’t know when they will say ‘Enough is enough,’ and they are going to tell him, ‘You should exit.’ ”
It is not unexpected that Haitians wish the United States would step in. The U.S. has a long history of becoming involved in Haitian affairs. And when it has not deposed its leaders, the U.S. has interfered by changing the course of elections.
In 1915, after Haitians went into the French embassy and dragged then Haiti-president Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out into the streets and dismembered him, U.S. Marines began a 19-year occupation of the country. In 1986, Washington sent a C-141 U.S. Air Force plane to take President-for-Life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and his family out of Haiti to France.
In 2004, the U.S. again sent in a plane to Haiti. This time it was to ferry then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his family out of Haiti via Antigua and Barbuda. Behind the scenes, U.S. officials persuaded Aristide to pack his bags and get on the plane in the midst of a bloody revolt. Aristide called it a kidnapping.
And in 2011, amid allegations of ballot fraud, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Port-au-Prince to tell President René Préval to remove his preferred presidential candidate, Jude Célestin, out of the election in favor of musician Michel Martelly in the second round.
This time around, Haiti’s opposition isn’t asking for an airplane — they want Moïse to stay in the country to stand trial on corruption allegations — and they want to lead their own transition, rather than have the U.S. take charge as it did in 2004 after dropping Aristide.
“Haitians have a love-hate relationship with the U.S. When the U.S. intervenes, they don’t like it, and when it doesn’t, they ask for it,” said Fatton. “It depends on whether you’re in the opposition or the government.”
But he’s not so sure this administration will pay attention to Haiti.
“Haiti doesn’t really matter to them unless you have boat people,” Fatton said. “Ultimately the ball is in the hands of Haitians. If they want to change the situation, they have to do it, and they have to do it on their own and not expect any significant assistance from the external community.”
Mexico among Top Countries Where Killers of Journalists Enjoy Impunity
EFE. October 29, 2019
NEW YORK – Mexico is one of the countries where the killers of journalists enjoy the most impunity, according to a ranking published Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
According to the New York-based organization, Mexico has not yet resolved the murders of 30 journalists, a number that is only exceeded by The Philippines, with 41 such cases.
The CPJ’s 2019 Global Impunity Index focuses on countries where journalists have been slain but their killers have not yet been brought to justice.
Next, with 25 unsolved murders of journalists, comes Somalia, which has headed the percentage impunity rankings prepared each year by the CPJ, an indicator that calculates the number of unresolved cases as a percentage of a country’s population.
Thus, with its more than 126 million people, the 30 unresolved murders of journalists put Mexico in seventh place in that percentage index.
Ahead of it, besides Somalia, are only Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, The Philippines and Afghanistan, all of which are countries experiencing ongoing armed conflicts.
Following Mexico on the list of the 13 worst countries in terms of impunity for the murders of journalists are Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Nigeria and India.
In its ongoing tally, the CPJ has examined the murders of journalists taking place between September 2009 and August 2019.
“The impunity we have witnessed in these countries year after year, and the knowledge that authorities take little action against those who attack the press, cripples the ability of journalists around the world to do their job,” said CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch in a statement.
“Democratic governments cannot stand silent in the face of impunity if they want to be seen as supporting press freedom. It is imperative that journalists and their families receive the justice they deserve, and that world leaders demand accountability,” Radsch added.
Over the past 10 years, 318 journalists have been killed around the world as a result of their profession and in about 86 percent of the cases those responsible have not been successfully prosecuted, the CPJ said.
Of those, 31 of the murders took place in Mexico, where there has only been one conviction in all those cases, the organization said.
Mexico’s impunity indicator has not stopped getting worse over time, with drug trafficking cartels frequently targeting the press, the CPJ emphasized.
So far this year, Mexico has been the country where the most journalists have been killed, with 11 deaths and five other cases in which it was confirmed that the motive for the attack was the target’s profession, the organization said.
Meanwhile, in 2018, Colombia was the only country that managed to move off the CPJ list after the death in a security operation of Walter Patricio Arizala, alias “Gaucho,” the head of the Oliver Sinisterra front, who had been accused of kidnapping and later killing two journalists working for the Ecuadorian daily El Comercio and their driver.
Mexican Economy Barely Grew in Third Quarter
Anthony Harrup. Wall Street Journal. October 30, 2019
MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s economic activity expanded modestly in the third quarter amid weakness in industrial production and a slowdown in services, keeping the economy on track this year for its weakest performance in a decade.
Gross domestic product, a measure of output of goods and services, expanded 0.1% in seasonally adjusted terms from the second quarter, the National Statistics Institute said Wednesday.
Industrial production shrank 0.1%, services were unchanged and agricultural production grew 3.5%.
It was the first quarter this year in which the economy showed any growth, after GDP contracted in the first quarter and was flat in the second.
GDP was down 0.4% from the third quarter of 2018.
In the first nine months of the year, GDP was flat compared with the same period of 2018. The lack of growth leaves the economy on track for its worst showing since the recession of 2009.
The slowdown, amid declines in both public and private investment, poses a challenge for the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his first year in office as he seeks to increase social spending while keeping a lid on budget deficits.
“It’s clear that the economy is very weak and that services—which previously had been the strong point in the economy—are now faltering,” Capital Economics chief emerging-markets economist William Jackson said in a note. “Although we think the economy will strengthen in the coming quarters, these data reinforce our downbeat view.”
Revised third-quarter GDP numbers are due on Nov. 25.
The spectre of IMF in Ecuador
VIJAY PRASHAD. Front Line. October 29, 2019
Everything about Ecuador President Lenin Moreno’s speech on October 1 appeared to be anachronistic. There he was, a smile on his face, offering his people an end to fuel subsidies for this energy-rich country and massive cuts in public workers’ benefits and wages. This, he said, was the price to be paid by the Ecuadorean people for a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The next day, the IMF described Moreno’s package as one that would “protect the poor and most vulnerable” and “generate jobs in a more competitive economy”.
Few Ecuadoreans believed either Moreno or the IMF. It appeared that once more the people were being asked to tighten their belts so that the country’s oligarchy and international creditors could emerge from the crisis unscathed. No wonder that the trade unions (the United Workers Front, FUT), the students, and most importantly, the indigenous organisation (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE) came out onto the streets to protest against Moreno and the IMF on October 3. They said they would go on an indefinite general strike as long as Moreno and the IMF continued to push the austerity agenda. For weeks now, Ecuador has been in crisis, with the momentum no longer in the hands of Moreno or the IMF; the streets are in charge, and Moreno appears less and less confident of remaining the country’s President.
It was this fragility that led Moreno to declare a state of emergency on October 4, on the second day of the protests. The Constitution allows the President to sustain this emergency for 60 days. Nonetheless, the declaration of emergency did not stop the protests. They continue unabated. Matters became so difficult for Moreno that he relocated his government from Quito to the city of Guayaquil. The protests, like a wave, crashed on the Carondelet Palace and the National Assembly. He ran from the anger, only to return days later when his armed forces had beaten back the protests for the moment.
Moreno has been trying to curry favour with the United States in order to secure both the IMF loan and political cover for the unrest that would necessarily follow. As a gift to the U.S., Moreno had WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and he called for the arrest of the Swedish Internet activist Ola Bini. Moreno’s government backed away from prosecuting Chevron, the multinational U.S. energy corporation, for creating an “Amazon Chernobyl” in Ecuador. Moreno appeared willing to do anything to please the U.S. and get the IMF deal.
CONAIE called for negotiations with the government as a sign of good faith. As a precondition, CONAIE asked Moreno to dismiss some of his Cabinet Ministers (including his Minister of Defence), take responsibility for the deaths during this unrest and repeal the gas subsidies decree. When Moreno appeared ready to talk, CONAIE struck the demand for the return of the subsidies. But the streets did not respond well. The protests intensified, as did the repression. There is no guarantee that any deal will be possible as long as the IMF-imposed austerity programme remains in place.
IMF riots
A few days before Moreno’s announcement, Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva was appointed the new head of the IMF. She came to the IMF from the World Bank, where she had made a name for herself as a major fund-raiser for the bank. Its assets have increased substantially. When she took the helm, she said, “It is a huge responsibility to be at the helm of the IMF at a time when global economic growth continues to disappoint, trade tensions persist, and debt is at historically high levels.” She said that the IMF’s “immediate priority” would be to build up the resources for countries so that they are “ready to cope with downturns”. The IMF has forecast that world output will grow by a mere 3.2 per cent this year, lower than the 3.8 per cent in 2017 and the 3.6 per cent in 2018. A crisis in the financial markets is long expected. All this means that the IMF under Kristalina Georgieva will have to be prepared for major problems from a host of countries.
These problems are already before her. Ecuador’s unrest is an early canary in the coal mine. That the IMF went for an orthodox austerity programme with Ecuador suggests that few lessons have been learned from the past. When the IMF created the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the 1980s as a response to the Third World debt crisis, it produced a decade of unrest that took its name from the Fund, the IMF Riots. Neither Moreno nor the IMF is willing to roll back their proposals. These are not to be brought before the National Assembly or to the electorate. The niceties of Brexit—a referendum, a parliamentary debate, a media firestorm—are not to be granted to countries like Ecuador. The IMF comes with its medicine; Ecuadorians are expected to swallow it or be held down while it is being administered.
South of Ecuador, in Argentina, the IMF is also embroiled in crisis. It had provided the government of Mauricio Macri with the largest bailout in its history—$57 billion. Neither does Argentina have the funds to service this debt nor do the Argentinian people have the patience to give Macri a second term. He will likely lose the elections in late October. The likely removal of Macri and the political chaos around Moreno suggest that the IMF has failed in its two largest interventions in South America. The ballot and the riot have embarrassed Kristalina Georgieva even before she has had a chance to put her mark on the IMF.
Kristalina Georgieva came to the IMF with a commitment to tackle the climate catastrophe. She said that she would find the tools to involve the organisation in this arena. But the IMF is merely a lending agency. It does not have the mandate to demand policy changes to tackle budgetary problems faced by countries although this is precisely what the austerity programmes that emerged out of the SAPs produced. Cutting subsidies on fuel is not a good way to enter the climate change debate. This is not so much an environmental policy as fiscal austerity. The IMF, Kristalina Georgieva will find, cannot put a green cloak over its demand for budget cuts.
It is worthwhile to recall that a rise in fuel prices in France led to the yellow vest (gilets jaunes) protests. The protests in Ecuador now are both part of that yellow vest dynamic and part of the broader anti-austerity drive that runs across the world. More and more people are unwilling to buckle down to austerity so as to allow their creditors to be paid off. It will not do to dismiss this anger and try to paint it as a dynamic that is against a new environmentally conscious world economy. The indigenous protesters in Ecuador, for instance, are perfectly prepared for a new economic dispensation that is friendly to the environment; but they are not prepared to starve for it.
Moreno sat with the representatives of the streets on October 13, two weeks into the protests. He has now room to manoeuvre. He withdrew the decree that enforced the end of the subsidies. A wave of calm came over Ecuador, but this is not permanent. Moreno will have to return to the IMF and sell his withdrawal. He is caught between the people on the one side and the IMF on the other. Popular struggle put too much pressure on him and he had to withdraw the decree. But what will the IMF say?
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