BY JUAN CRISTÓBAL NAGEL-JUNE 17, 2016
Leopoldo López, one of the leaders of Venezuela’s opposition, is Latin America’s most famous political prisoner. During his two and a half years in jail, his jailers have locked him away in isolation, taken away his books, and
sprayed him with human feces. His wife and mother have been subjected to humiliating
cavity searches during visits. No international humanitarian organizations have been allowed to see him.
So one can only imagine López’s surprise when, earlier this month, his warden announced an unexpected visitor: former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez.Zapatero came to López with a startling offer: if he ended his campaign against the government, he could have his freedom. (López politely declined.)
A few weeks earlier, thousands of miles to the south, Argentine president Mauricio Macri had
announced the candidacy of his foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, for the position of Secretary General of the United Nations.
Strange as it may seem, the two events — Zapatero’s offer to López and Malcorra’s U.N. bid — are intimately connected. The story underscores how Argentina’s new president — once seen as a vocal supporter of Venezuela’s opposition — is changing his tune, abandoning his principles in exchange for diplomatic victories.
In his campaign for the presidency, Macri had emphasized that, unlike his predecessor and rival, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, he was no friend to the ruling
chavista regime in Caracas. Instead, he promised to challenge Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on his violations of human rights and his suppression of the opposition. He even invited López’s wife to Buenos Aires to
celebrate his electoral victory.
The hopes of Venezuela’s opposition were heightened still further when Macri
tapped the experienced Malcorra — who had served for four years as Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s chief of staff — for the post of foreign minister. As a fixture in international diplomatic circles, she was considered a heavyweight who had access to heads of state the world over. Venezuela’s opposition believed her experience would lend gravitas to their cause.
But since then it has become clear that
Malcorra has other goals in her sights, and none involve Venezuela’s dissidents. Taking advantage of a consensus that the next Secretary General should be a woman, and sensing an opening, she has thrown her hat into the ring. But to make her campaign viable, she has decided to cut a deal with Venezuela’s hapless
chavista president.
Malcorra has two main rivals for the Secretary General role. One is Irina Bokova, the Bulgarian head of UNESCO, the U.N. agency in charge of education and culture. Bokova is
a strong candidate because many feel the job should go to an Eastern European, a region that has never held the post. Another strong contender is Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, a part of the world that also has never held the top U.N. post. Clark is the current head of the U.N. Development Program, where she is seen as a successful reformer.
Both Bokova and Clark have support in the Security Council, which must recommend a candidate to the General Assembly for a vote. The former is supported by Russia, and the latter by New Zealand (currently a Security Council member). But the lack of consensus has provided the well-liked Malcorra with her opening.
That is where Venezuela comes in. The country is in its second year as a member of the Security Council, and it has close relations with both Russia and China. Since April, Malcorra has conducted a series of meetings with the Venezuelan foreign minister and with Maduro himself. According to veteran
Miami Herald reporter
Casto Ocando and
other sources, she has made a deal with the regime: Venezuela will do everything in its power to promote her candidacy. In exchange, Argentina will block efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) to punish Venezuela for its
human rights record.
Malcorra quickly went to work. Even as the Secretary General of the OAS
waged a war of words with Maduro over Venezuela’s sad state of affairs — chief among them, the government’s efforts to
stifle the opposition — Argentina started blocking the OAS’s efforts to approve a hefty
reportcriticizing Venezuela for violating the region’s Interamerican Democratic Charter.
Instead, Argentina argued, the Venezuelan regime should engage in
dialoguewith the opposition to find a way out of the country’s severe economic and political
crisis. The opposition believes the proposed talks are just a way of giving Maduro breathing room while accomplishing nothing of substance. But Malcorra appears to have little sympathy for the dissidents’ longstanding attempts to challenge his disastrous and oppressive rule — not when there’s a Secretary General position for the taking. And, as it turns out, it was Malcorra who got former Spanish President Zapatero to visit Caracas to broker the talks, with the Maduro administration’s enthusiastic approval. That is how Zapatero ended up visiting López in his cell.
Sources have
confirmed the content of Zapatero’s message: Maduro’s government was willing to free its political prisoners from jail (keeping them under house arrest) and to make a few other minor concessions. In exchange, the opposition would withdraw its outstanding petition to hold a recall referendum against the deeply unpopular Maduro.
López promptly
declined Zapatero’s offer,
describing the recall referendum on Twitter as non-negotiable. His stance was echoed by Henrique Capriles, the opposition’s other main leader and the main force behind the recall effort.
Most shocking of all was the
realization that the initiative came from an Argentine government many Venezuelan dissidents had believed to be their ally. The spat even prompted Capriles to travel to Buenos Aires to meet with Macri, with
little discernible result. Neither Malcorra nor Macri seem swayed.
This controversy shows that the Venezuelan opposition continues to find itself alone in its battles with a regime that controls nearly all the levers of power. The lengths to which Latin America’s power brokers will go to advance their agendas is one of the reasons Nicolás Maduro remains in power. Once again, an important regional player has chosen to look away from the plight of the Venezuelan people.
The disastrous policies of Maduro (and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez) have plunged Venezuela into a humanitarian crisis.
Reports of people going hungry or dying from lack of medicine are growing; incidents of looting are multiplying. The country is on the brink of chaos, and there’s no sign that the government plans to change course. Just recently, Maduro announced that food will no longer be distributed to supermarkets, but rather directly by his political operatives. Only his supporters will
get handouts, promising to make a volatile situation all the more unstable.
But this does not seem to matter to Malcorra. Venezuela’s agony is just another unsolvable problem, and its opposition just another pawn in her quest for worldwide diplomatic recognition.
If she becomes Secretary General, one can only hope she will take a moment to pull the Venezuelan people from underneath the bus she threw them under. Perhaps, once she is in power, she will spare a thought for the imprisoned López, languishing in his cell thousands of miles from the U.N. headquarters.
On June 9, riot police prepared to confront students of the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas who were demanding a referendum on removing President Nicolás Maduro.
Photo Credit: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
2016-06-17
(Lanka-e-News -17.June.2016, 10.35) Defense secretary Karunasena Hettiarachi whose actions are diametrically opposed to good governance and who ignored the 29 foreign tours done by Yoshitha Rajapakse without the knowledge of the Navy to allow him go scot free , has deemed it right to punish a State witness Lieutenant Commodore K.C.Welegedera by barring his promotions for four years via the military court for travelling abroad just once without informing the Navy.
A new agreement would be signed shortly between the government and Chinese investor in the US$ 1.4 billion Colombo Port City Project, devoid of the land ownership clause, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in Colombo yesterday.
17/06/2016
1. Mahendran has acted against the principals of good governance, which were the main selling points of the current administration. He was either directly or indirectly responsible for two controversial Treasury Bond auctions. In one instance, on 27 February 2015, there was an irregularity of Rs 6 billion and on the other there was an irregularity of Rs 7 billion.
( June 17, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Attorney General (AG) instructed the CID Director to take legal action against former Additional Magistrate Thilina Gamage to produce him before a court for allegedly possessing a baby elephant without a valid licence.
2016-06-17
Ismail Halasa toiled hard to provide his family with a home. From his work in the construction industry of the United Arab Emirates, he managed to save enough for a house in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. Tall and spacious, the house accommodated several generations — until Israel bombed it in 2014.
BY TOMMY WILKES-Fri Jun 17, 2016
16th June 2016
Reuters in Rio de Janeiro-Friday 17 June 2016
On the eve of the World Refugee day in 2016 let us remind ourselves that if misfortune occurs all of us can become refugees. As Benjamin Zephaniah, the refugee poet, has written: “We can all be refugees; Nobody is safe; All it takes is mad leader; or no rain to bring forth food. We can all be refugees; we can all be told to go; we can be hated by someone for being someone”.