Costa Rica has elected its first woman president, with the former vice president Laura Chinchilla winning a landslide victory as exit polls were counted this morning.
Chinchilla garnered nearly half the vote at 47 per cent, while opposition candidates Otton Solis from Citizen Action and Otto Guevara from the Libertarian Movement mustered just over a fifth of the electorate each, at 25 and 21 per cent respectively. The outcome sends a resounding message that Costa Rica’s pro-business policies are here to stay, no matter how many leftist governments succeed in winning over the rest of Latin America.
Chinchilla will continue the reign of Costa Rica’s centrist right National Liberation party when she takes office in May, becoming Latin America’s fifth-ever female president. The social conservative who opposes gay marriage and abortion campaigned on the platform of maintaining incumbent president Oscar Arias’s free market policies, which the country’s business community is celebrating as a victory for continued stability in a tumultuous region.
Costa Rica has been hailed as the “Switzerland of the Americas” with one of the most prosperous and stable economies in Latin America. The country abandoned its military completely in 1949, avoiding the region’s cold war conflicts, and has since invested heavily in tourism and environmental sustainability.
In recent years Costa Rica has unanimously embraced the neoliberal right. As the Christian Science Monitor, CSM, notes, out of the four main competitors for the presidency only one was leftward leaning. Libertarian candidate Guevara, who surged in the polls, called for the privatization of Costa Rica’s popular public health system, while the once flourishing leftist party Citizen Action barely won 24 per cent of the vote after losing the last election in 2006 by only two percentage points.
So why has Costa Rica so successfully left the Left behind?
Part of the reason can be pinned down to the popularity of outgoing president Oscar Arias, a Nobel laureate winner who ushered in the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA, and gained acclaim for his role in brokering the political standoff following the coup in neighbouring Honduras.
And the growth in popularity of Harvard-trained attorney Guevara, who intended on replacing the local currency with US dollars, certainly stole a fair share of the vote away from Solis. Many saw Guevara as an alternative to the traditional parties, but his success at the polls only served to weaken the opposition against Chinchilla.
Other analysts say that the rule of the right comes down to the fact that Costa Rica has never been ideologically motivated; the far-left in countries like Nicaragua and El Salvador has never taken hold in Costa Rica.
As the previous Costa Rican vice president under Arias, Kevin Casas-Zamora, told the CSM: “For most voters, the decision is between more traditional options and emerging ones. It’s the established politics versus those who are critical of the current administration. You can’t see Costa Rican politics through the lens of left and right.”
And as the Huffington Post points out, “Costa Ricans are reluctant to shake up the status quo when the country maintains relatively high salaries, the longest life expectancy in Latin America and near-universal literacy”.
But not everyone is happy with the outcome. According to the Guardian one candidate, Luis Fishman, ran under the slogan that of all the presidential hopefuls, he was the “lesser evil”.
Critics say that Chinchilla’s policies will encourage economic development above the needs of the nation’s ecosystem and workers. Environmentalists oppose the president-elect’s promotion of open-pit mining, while labour unions dislike her pro-US trade policies. Having failed to secure a majority in Congress, Chinchilla will have to take a more conciliatory approach in her economic and energy policies.
But while some say that Chinchilla is in for a difficult ride, there is no doubt that she has a clear mandate to govern the country as she sees fit. And as all indicators suggest, for Costa Rica, this means more of the same.
Posted February 8, 2010 at 3:52 pm. Add a comment
If there was any chance that the IMF’s one-size-fits-all policy toward developing nations has changed over the past 30 years, the emergency loan granted to Haiti has buried all hope under the rubble.
The IMF agreed last week to lend Haiti up to US $114 million after the seven magnitude earthquake devastated the small Caribbean country last month. While theoretically the IMF says debt relief will follow, historically loans granted by the international financial institution have always come at a hefty price.
Developing nations are forced to comply with a three-pronged prescription before they are granted much-needed assistance: privatisation, liberalisation, and public spending cuts.
The IMF has made such demands on the Haitian government in the past, bringing the country’s economy to ruin long before the earthquake hit. In 1995 the Fund forced Haiti to cut tariffs on rice from 35 percent to 3 percent, leading to a massive influx of cheap rice from the US. Having once been a net exporter of rice, Haiti now imports 75 per cent of its rice from America.
Meanwhile USAID invested extensively in Haiti, though none of the money went toward developing the country’s infrastructure. Instead the non-profit organization injected food aid into the country, ensuring Haiti’s long term dependence on foreign hand outs rather than agricultural self-sufficiency.
Already owing a debt of $US 165 million to the IMF, Haiti has been forced to raise electricity tariffs and freeze public-sector wages. Many predict that Haiti’s current debt conditions will continue to apply to the new loan.
As Richard Kim writes in the Nation: “In the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.”
Charities say that new loans will bring Haiti’s total debts close to the $US1.3 billion level the country was at five years ago, when it qualified for the cancellation of $US 1.2 billion. Even before factoring in the most recent loans, Haiti still owes $US 891 million, of which $US 429 million is due to the Inter-American Development Bank.
Haiti is scheduled to make $10 million in payments to the bank next year, and to date there has been no agreement among the international community on debt relief.
The United Nations’ trade and development body Unctad told the Observer: “Considering the large direct costs of the earthquake, in the absence of further international action a new debt crisis is all but assured.”
Britain and the US support the IMF stance on cash first, debt-relief later. The IMF says that it could not issue a grant because of the lengthy waiting process, while a loan would fit the emergency time-scale. Few have questioned the IMF’s logic, as debt repayments are low on the priority list while people are still being pulled from the rubble.
But in reality, this quick-fix loan is likely to lead to long-term debt bondage. Haiti is not due to make any repayments to the IMF for two years, leaving plenty of time for political will to fade as Haiti drifts away from the media spotlight.
Posted February 1, 2010 at 5:57 pm. 1 comment
The death toll has reached 200,000. Rotting corpses line the streets of Port-au Prince, and survivors fight for scraps amid the squalor- But only 100 miles away on Labadee beach thousands of cruise-goers are sunning themselves, drinking martinis, and playing water-polo. The bitter fruits of capitalist enterprise have rarely been portrayed so profoundly.
The chief executive of the Royal Caribbean cruise line Adam Goldstein has justified continuing cruise schedules as planned, despite the devastation left by the earthquake that hit Haiti last week.
He told the Guardian:
“My view is this: it isn’t better to replace a visit to Labadee (or for that matter, to stay on the ship while it’s docked in Labadee) with a visit to another destination for a vacation because being on the island and generating economic activity helps with relief.
“The north is going to bear a good part of the burden of the agony of the south, and the more economic support there is to the north, the better able the north will be to bear this burden.”
Indeed Mr. Goldstein, why bother sending aid at all when the market does such a better job at it? The wealth will simply trickle down to the dying Haitains via coins collected in the Styrofoam donation cup resting by the till of Labadee’s high-end resort bar.
In fact it is a wonder aid agencies are sending out their lot to toil in the hot sun pulling people out of rubble at all, when they could just as easily pull up a sun chair on the beach. According to Goldstein, “people enjoying themselves in Labadee helps with relief”, so why aren’t we all out parasailing?
But as easy as it is to demonize a company promoting holiday packages to a secluded paradise securely fenced off from the hell on earth next door, Royal Caribbean is not the first entrepreneurial business to take advantage of a major natural disaster. As Naomi Klein notes in her book, The Shock Doctrine, only days after the Asian tsunami hit the Sri Lankan government began a policy of clearing the debris-strewn beaches to build hotel resorts. As the Marriot and Hilton moved in, inhabitants from the country’s fishing villages were forced behind buffer zones.
Long before the emergency relief trucks drove in, Haiti was a devastated country. The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere has zealously followed the prescriptions of the Washington Consensus, and despite Goldstein’s assertions, free market economics has done little to alleviate the destitution of millions. Up to 80 per cent of the population live under the poverty line, with 54 per cent in abject poverty.
Haiti’s owes a whopping US$1.5 billion to foreign creditors. Last year the government paid US$79 million to service its debt, while the country received less than half that amount for schools, health and transport.
Adam Smith and Adam Goldstein share a common philosophy, one that has traditionally failed to serve the world’s poor. The invisible hand of the market will not save Haiti. And it will certainly not replace the hands distributing food, water, and medical supplies directly in the hands of the people.
Posted January 19, 2010 at 6:12 pm. 1 comment
As an international journalist with a stake in the news, it’s hardly surprising that I spend a scary amount of time scouring the world pages of news sites, watching Al Jazeera, and flicking through the international sections of national newspapers.
But what is more surprising (and scarier) is that this places me firmly in a box outside the realm of most Americans. As media owners and analysts are keen to point out, local stories receive much more attention in the US than world news. Even war is “a local story”, says John Maxwell Hamilton, the author of Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting. Americans care about what happens to their boys abroad, and their ability to locate Iraq on a map has little bearing on viewer numbers.
Of course this trend is not without its exceptions. The earthquake in Haiti received a torrent of media coverage, and most Americans have joined the rest of the world in watching with horror as the tragedy unfolds. But even a disaster on such a mass scale has not shaken some Americans’ insular view of the world.
One Facebook user, Jack Finnegan, had this to say about America’s aid shipments to Haitian earthquake victims:
“Why is it always us? Let China help or Japan we have enough problems. People lose their houses everyday…if we keep giving it all away we will be a lost, broke country talking about when we used to be prosperous. There is a time to help but, there is also a time to get your house in order. Guess what time it is.”
It would be unfair to leave it at that. Finnegan’s comment received an avalanche of criticism, the most noteworthy coming from New Yorker Sarah Pratt:
“So we can’t care about a natural disaster that killed 100,000 people if it not on US soil? We all care about fellow Americans safety and financial stability in these hard times. But we are all people on this earth. Borders created by ourselves shouldn’t change that.”
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman argues that Americans are interested in foreign news, at least as much as anyone else. But knowledge of world affairs is much more limited than it should be, and the domestic media takes a fair share of the blame.
On Thursday, Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan show hosted a debate on the decline of foreign journalism in America. Speaking on the programme, Goodman pointed out that the media’s failure to report on world news has meant that “we [Americans] don’t even see the effects of our actions in other countries”. Goodman claims that greater emphasis on world affairs would impact the nation’s view on war and racial or religious intolerance. “When people learn about other countries, it’s harder to be belligerent against them,” she explains.
Today the country is facing a black hole where international coverage used to be, and it is not just viewer polls that are leading this scourge either. Publications and broadcasters are struggling to make journalism pay, and costly foreign correspondents are the first cutback. World news is shrinking fast, and the US media is leading the race to the bottom.
Two freelance journalist colleagues of mine have confirmed this dreary turn of events; American newspapers have told them they are no longer accepting freelance work on their foreign desks.
But Hamilition points outs that foreign journalism is not dead, just transformed-through online media. The internet age has seen a blossoming of foreign news reported from all corners of the globe by anyone with a mobile phone or a camera. As evidenced by the ‘twitter revolution’ following the Iranian elections, online citizen journalism is wielding unprecedented power.
This does not solve the problem for journalists per se, as most of still rely on the age old formula of payment for services rendered. But it does mean there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If we could just start charging a road tax on it, there may be hope yet.
Posted January 17, 2010 at 7:43 am. Add a comment
The Guardian investigation into Iran’s involvement in the kidnapping of five British nationals in May 2007 has opened Pandora’s Box on the Iranian issue. The Guardian revealed over the Christmas holidays-in light of the release of hostage Peter Moore-that evidence suggests the kidnapping was carried out by members of the special Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The British foreign office denies the charge, saying there is no evidence to suggest that the hostages were taken across the Iraq-Iran border. However, head of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus told the Guardian that Peter Moore, Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell, Alec Maclachlan and Alan McMenemy were held in Iran for some of their captivity.
The revelation is not an easy pill for the British government to swallow. Admittance to Iran’s involvement in the attack would force the UK to act on the information, and possibly sever ties to the Iranian regime. This move would prove disastrous for Britain’s hope to play a key role alongside the US in the stalled nuclear negotiations. And put aptly in a Guardian podcast, it would “take Britain out of the game”, a dreary prospect for a nation set on proving it still has worth in the international arena.
The UK foreign office certainly seems keen to push this skeleton back in the closet; after all, the timing could not be worse. As Britain returns to the Iraq Inquiry following a holiday recession period, the incident hammers another nail in the coffin for the UK’s blundering decision to invade Iraq on America’s coattails. Not only did Britain entangle itself in an illegal war, it also strengthened Iranian Shi’ite influence on its neighbour.
This is not to say that the problem should be resolved by military action against Iran. Another Middle East conflict is the last thing needed for Britain, the US, and its allies. Not only would it be hugely unpopular, but potentially devastating for all nations still mired in the grip of the financial crisis. And there is nothing to suggest that this is where we are heading. But the question remains about whether Britain should cut diplomatic ties with the Iranian government. In light of the growing civil unrest in the country and the suppression of opposition supporters by the Iranian leadership, drawing a line in the sand would at least demonstrate a sign of courage and resolve over the issue.
Although snubbing Tehran may not be the wisest strategy. Ahmadinejad’s administration is bent on exploiting its tensions with the West in a bid to shore up domestic support. A move against the Iranians may just be the clincher needed to cement the government’s position. It is clear that the UK has dug itself into a chasm, and there is little the country can do to pull itself out again. There is no doubt that more causalities will follow from this dangerous game. And there is even less likelihood that the UK will learn from its mistakes. But the Guardian investigation has upped the ante, and this time it may be harder to sweep the truth under the table.
Posted January 8, 2010 at 11:14 am. Add a comment
