The edition number 17 talks about the elections in India, Pakistan, Japan and Turkey, the Constitutional Assembly in Bolivia, the new Constitution in Venezuela and the situation in the Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, and others.


Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly makes headway
Colombia and the paramilitary, again
Peru – Allan Garcia’s popularity falls
New Constitution in Venezuela
USA – the origins of Bush’s stubbornness in relation to Iraq
Neo conservatives define US foreign policy
Parliamentary elections in Turkey
Tension lingers on in Lebanon
Iranian stalemate
The situation in Iraq
Israel and Palestine
Japan – despite electoral defeat, Abe clings to his office
Pakistan – General Musharraf and the general elections
India – the election of the new woman president
Negotiations at the WTO

Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly makes headway

There is reasonable consensus that the deadline by which the new Constitution of Bolivia is to be approved will have to be postponed, for the proceedings were not concluded by August 6, as initially established. This stemmed, mainly, from an interruption in the proceedings while a formula was found that would allow the approval of the most polemic aspects of the new Constitution. The new likely deadline is December 17. Read more in Periscope #5.

As yet, some 700 hundred bills have been submitted by the Constitution’s 31 working committees, all of which will have to be voted and filtered down so as to determine those items that will be decided by popular referendum, in keeping with the agreement made at the onset to overcome the stalemate that ensued after the assembly’s installation.

The most controversial themes –those that will surely require being submitted to a referendum– are, among others, the autonomy of the provinces, land and territory, and presidential elections.

The nationalization of oil and gas has enabled the Bolivian State to control today 20% of the country’s economy, thus boosting its revenues. Finding an adequate solution for the land and territory issue is also of fundamental importance both socially and economically. It is vital today to promote the agrarian reform and to broaden the people’s participation in the distribution of land, which is extremely concentrated in the hands of cattle raisers, soy growers and loggers.

The possibility of a presidential election is a proposal by the MAS, whose leaders see a risk for the continuity of the transformations in the country if Evo Morales is not allowed to run for a second term. Obviously, this is a theme upon which there is not the slightest chance of reaching any consensus with the opposition.

The question of provincial autonomy, in turn, is under great pressure by the right wing opposition that seeks the broadest possible arrangement, with the pro-independence movement in Santa Cruz de la Sierra making threats.

These pro-independence movements are now defending the thesis that those constitutional matters requiring submission to the referendum must not only obtain a nationwide majority but also a majority in every province, thus proposing yet another mechanism that will only generate another stalemate, given that the Constitution is national and not provincial.

Another recent decoy introduced to divert attention and keep filibustering regards changing the country’s capital from La Paz to Sucre. The latter is presently the country’s political and legal capital, concentrating the legislative and judiciary branches, while the Executive and the entire public administration are in La Paz.

This proposal aims to create a bargaining chip for the country’s political negotiation, even though the location of the capital of Bolivia also constitutes an economic issue. Read more at: http://www.prensa-latina.cu, www.alai.info and http://www.agenciapulsar.org.

Colombia and the paramilitary, again

Colombia’s Attorney General requested that the entire judicial process against the Colombian politicians charged with involvement with the paramilitary groups and drug dealers be concentrated in Bogotá. The decision was well received by human rights advocacy groups, even more so because the measure will help to preserve the physical integrity of the witnesses.

Today thirteen parliamentarians, six ex-parliamentarians, two former governors and one ex-minister are under arrest, while another parliamentarian, one ex-governor and one ex-minister are at large.

It has been rumored that the Supreme Court will ask President Álvaro Uribe to testify on the Ralito Agreement, which was signed in 2001 by 30 of his political followers and paramilitary group leaders and proposed to “refound our nation” and “establish a new social pact”, which some interpreted as an attempt to seize power.

Meanwhile, American mining company Drummond was found innocent in an American court of law of the charge of hiring paramilitary to kill trade union leaders who worked in the company. The prosecution will appeal the sentence.

It has become more difficult for Uribe to prove he was never involved with the paramilitary groups. Of all those previously mentioned in connection with the Ralito Agreement on which Uribe is to testify, only one is not part of his coalition of parties. Let’s wait and see how the events unfold. Read more at: http://www.latimes.com, http://lta.today.reuters.com and http://www.ipsnoticias.net.

Peru – Allan Garcia’s popularity falls

Peruvian President Allan Garcia seeks to implement a government program that differs in nothing from the neoliberal policies of former presidents, including overhauling the labor law, already extremely weakened by amendments introduced by Fujimori and a social pact on employment and wages, promptly rejected by trade unions owing to its wage-containment contents.

The workers responded with a general strike on July 11 and a huge demonstration in Lima, where Garcia obtained most of the votes that guaranteed his victory in the second round against Ollanta Humala in 2006.

His popularity rating, which was until then tied with the index of those who are critical of the government, fell further, with Garcia starting to lose popularity among those who elected him, particularly in the capital Lima.

His pledges to solve a range of social issues as health and education by 2011, the end of his term, have not convinced anyone either. He has been striving to convince the Americans to approve the FTA, something the Democratic majority in Congress will hardly do. Read more at: http://www.economist.com, http://www.alai.info , http://www.prensa-latina.cu, http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=41647 and
http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=41649 .

New Constitution in Venezuela

The Venezuelan government has been promoting an internal discussion to once again modify the country’s Constitution in order to adjust it to its “Socialism for the 21st Century” project. Of the presently existent 350 articles, some 340 would be altered to change a series of economic and political concepts.

The economy will be more controlled by the State than before and the government even more centralized. There would even be the possibility of limitless presidential reelections, while in the case of governors and mayors the rule would remain as it is now.

Opposition to the reform, both from the traditional right wing parties and the leftist dissident parties that emerged after the attempt to absorb them into the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), is tremendous, for if it passes as Chávez is proposing any opposition will be cut off from the prospect of assuming power for a very long time.

In the meantime, the Committee’s work proceeds and one must await its position. Apparently, the modifications introduced will be submitted to the incumbent Congress, boycotted by the opposition in the last elections, since the government does not seem to be interested in calling a new National Constitutional Assembly. From all these signals, we are bound to see more polemic in Venezuela any time soon. Read more at: http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=41628 , http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=41415 and http://www.agenciacartamaior.com.br/.

USA – the origins of Bush’s stubbornness in relation to Iraq

Still using the justification that a report on progress of operations in Iraq will be released in September, the George W. Bush government continues to reject any suggestion for a timetable that would define the withdrawal of the North-American troops in Iraq.

The government presented an interim report in mid July composed of the adjectives “complex” and “challenge” to refer to the question of security in Iraqi territory. In spite of the government’s optimism and statement that the report proves there has been some progress, of the 18 political and military benchmarks mentioned, eight were considered satisfactory, eight unsatisfactory, and two of them had mixed results.

However, the eight unsatisfactory benchmarks are precisely those addressing crucial issues for the Iraqi policy and the viability of the Iraqi State in the American vision. These categories are a legislation that eliminates the power of the Baath Party, a strong reference for the followers of ex-President Saddam Hussein and the Sunni ethnicity in general; a legislation that guarantees a fair distribution of the income generated by the oil production, regardless of sector or ethnicity; organization of provincial elections; establishment of an efficacious program to disarm the militias; permission for the Iraqi army to engage the militias without political interference; assure that the Iraqi army and police forces will enforce the law; increase the number of Iraqi security forces capable of operating independently and the guarantee that the Iraqi political authorities will not interfere in the operations of Iraq’s security forces.

However, in the act of Congress that mandated that the White House present the report it is said that “the US strategy in Iraq must be contingent upon the progress of the Iraqi government in meeting the 18 benchmarks”. Also, even in the case of the benchmarks in which the American government admits there has been no progress, the report explicitly denies the need for a change in strategy.

Bush will resist until the end to pull out the American troops in Iraq and, while Washington discusses the alternatives for that country’s future, the US command in Iraq readies a 2-year action plan. The plan, which is being developed in secrecy, represents the strategy coordinated by General Petraeus and the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and recommends the restoration of security in Baghdad by July/August 2008. The so-called “sustainable security” is to be consolidated nationwide by July/August 2009, according to US officials who had access to the document.

The Joint Campaign Plan, which systematizes Bush’s new strategy for Iraq and builds on the arrival of the new troops in early 2007, meant a change in the previous strategy, which prioritized the transfer of the responsibility for security to the Iraqis.

Yet, the goals described in the document seem to be overly ambitious in light of the dimension of the challenge of taking on the fierce Sunni resistance, with all kinds of militias, and the little progress made by Iraqi leaders toward reconciling the country.

Neo conservatives define US foreign policy

Just as the US senate discusses the strategy for Iraq, the neo-conservatives (dubbed ‘neo-cons’) try to gain the support of the Republicans to Bush’s strategy of maintaining additional troops in Iraqi territory. The arguments used are, for one, that pulling out the 30,000 additional troops sent to Iraq early this year would be reckless, for they have not had enough time for action and, for another, that abandoning the battlefield now would be tantamount to admitting having lost the war.

The recent desertion of some Republicans who had once been Bush loyalists has worried his administration’s strategists and the neo-cons. This is so because the opposition to the war has reached such a magnitude inside the legislature that the president can no longer ignore it.

Even members of the Bush administration seem to be split over the issue. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has pushed for implementing a gradual withdrawal of the troops in line with the recommendations made by the Iraq Study Group, in which he took part.

The White House, in turn, has spent, in the figure of Bush’s national security advisor Stephen Hadley, most of its time trying to prevent war supporters from moving to the other side, while Bush’s neo-con allies outside the administration have adopted a much tougher speech. One of them, the editor of the Weekly Standard, wrote that Senators Richard Lugar, George Voinovich, Pete Dominici and John Warner, four Republicans who recently declared themselves in favor of changes in the strategy regarding Iraq, were “Republicans attached to the pre 9/11 era, followers of opinions, not of leaders”.

In an editorial by the Wall Street Journal (available for subscribers only), the opinion is that “the division between Republicans will undermine US military efforts while they seek a bipartisan committee to discuss the issue, and will only ensure that the party will lose the November 2008 elections”.

The two “warnings” were made in the first half of July, when the senate was beginning the debates with regard to a bill regulating the use of the US$ 650 billion apportioned for the defense area in 2008.

On July 17, a great show was set up, with a session in the senate that lasted the whole night. TV programs showed plenty of images of beds being placed in the senate’s lobby, pizza delivery vans and extensive preparation for the voting.

Democrats were hoping that, by holding a night session, they would be able to put Iraq on the voting agenda of July 18. The fear was that the Republican senators would filibuster and render it impossible to vote any bills before the parliamentary August break.

The session allowed the voting on the following day of the bill proposing the withdrawal of the troops from Iraq up to 120 days after its passage, yet failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority in the senate.

The neo-cons are also concerned with another amendment, the product of the work of many Democrat and center-leaning Republican lawmakers, which provides for the adoption of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group as the centerpiece of the US official policy.

The recommendations –which include troop redeployment by March 2008, the establishment of US diplomatic relations with Syria and Iran, and an intensification in the efforts to establish two States to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict– are considered improper and reprobate by the neo-cons, especially Israel’s right wing Likud Party supporters, who launched their own campaign against the recommendations by the Iraq Study Group, before the report had even been published.

The neo-conservatives are part of a political movement in the United States with roots in the anti-Communism of the Cold War era and the reaction against the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In synthesis, they are for an aggressive and unilateral US foreign policy and believe themselves to be the elites that protect democracy.

The links between the neo-cons and the Likud date back to a 1996 report prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister at the time, by a group led by Richard Perle, a neo-con lobbyist who worked for the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations in the defense area.

The Clean Break report, as it is known, brought a change in the strategy used to address Israel’s security problems in the Middle East, emphasizing Western values, and advocating a more aggressive policy in contrast with the diplomatic position adopted after the Oslo accords. Read more.

The report was very criticized for supporting the advance of right wing Zionism and is to date seen as a US-Israel neo-conservative manifesto with proposals that, according to journalist Jason Vest, represent a “mini-Cold War in the Middle East, advocating the use of mercenary armies to overthrow regimes, destabilize and contain the region”. Read more.

In spite of the attempt by the Israeli government to put in practice the study’s recommendations, pressure from the Bill Clinton administration and the international sphere at the time compelled Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians.

Nonetheless, in the United States many of the members of the team that wrote the report ended up in key positions in Washington and were responsible for planning the war in Iraq. In their vision, based on the recommendations in the Clean Break report, the chaos wrought by the war would produce a pro USA and pro Israel government. Besides Iraq, those who wrote the report were also concerned about Syria and Iran.

Eleven years after it was conceived, the Clean Break strategy seems to be guiding the foreign policies of the US and Israel in the Bush and Cheney era. Many of the initiatives listed there were implemented, such as removing Saddam from power, shelving the formula “land for peace” to settle the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the attack against the Hezbollah in Lebanon, all with disastrous outcomes.

Still the neo-cons continue to defend a potential confrontation with Iran, under the vision that the obstacles created by the invasion of Iraq are not the product of their misguided policies but rather stem from their having thought small and having failed to raise the war to a regional context, leaving open the possibility that Iraq is not the end but the beginning of a process.

Read more: Eric Alterman, a journalist with The Nation, made a list of the corporate media companies and some other spheres under the control of the neo-cons in the US:

Commentary
The Weekly Standard Most of the do National Review
Half of The New Republic
City Journal
The New Criterion
The Washington Times
Insight
The New York Post
The New York Sun The Wall Street Journal editorial
60% of the Washington Post columnists
Biweekly columns in the New York Times
The whole of Fox News
The greater part of MSNBC network
Part of CNN
A rising portion of public network PBS

And think-tanks and other spheres of influence:

American Enterprise Institute
Heritage Foundation
Hoover Institution
Project for the New American Century
US National Security Council
US Department of Defense
Parts of the World Bank and the US ambassador’s office to the UN
A considerable part of the State Department
Vice-president Dick Cheney’s entire staff
And an unknown percentage of what is politely known as “the president’s brains”.

Other sources: Center for Media & Democracy, IPS news agency has a special newsletter and blog by IPS journalist and Washington correspondent Jim Lobe.

Parliamentary elections in Turkey

The parliamentary elections in Turkey, held last July 22, as expected, gave a great victory to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of right wing Justice and Development Party (AKP), preaching for more conservative Islamic usages and customs.

Results of the parliamentary elections in Turkey, 2007

Source: http://www.parties-and-elections.de/

With the 47% obtained in the polls –a much more favorable result than the 34.3 percent obtained in 2002–, the party reaffirms its place in the Turkish political setting as one of the most powerful in the history of the country.

Despite Erdogan’s statement that “democracy had passed an extremely important test”, the country is still polarized. In the same speech, Turkey’s prime minister guaranteed to his opponents, the advocates of secularism, that the dispute for the presidency of the country would be settled without tensions.

Yet, if we are to judge from the AKP’s latest actions, it is a long shot to imagine how the tensions that precipitated the holding of parliamentary elections will simply go away.

Last April the party tried to appoint Foreign Relations Minister Abdullah Gül, a pro Islam party member, to the Turkish presidency. The immediate rejection by parliament of the choice made by Erdogan and the AKP prompted elections originally due in November to be brought forward.

Turkey’s elite views the Turkish presidency as the exclusive realm of secularism, in a direct reference to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first Turkish president (1923 to 1938), who introduced the separation between State and religion. Far from being a symbolic figure, the president has veto powers to deter any action that might represent a threat to the republic’s secularism.

Erdogan has reiterated that he will make concessions with regard to the choice of the new president, yet he is reticent as to how and if he will run the risk of prolonging the confrontation with the secularists, who have the support of the army.

Besides the presidency, the new government will have to face other challenges. The Kurd question is far from a political solution. The AKP government has been under intense pressure by the Turkish army to allow troops to enter in northern Iraq to prevent the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from establishing an independent state in the region along Turkey’s southeast borders.

Nonetheless, so far Erdogan has resisted authorizing a full-scale military operation in Iraq, weighing the risk that such a move would jeopardize negotiations with the European Union and bring about further distancing from the United States.

Compounding the problem, independent Kurdish politicians –supported by the Democratic Society Party (DTP), founded to seek to guarantee more rights for Kurds living in Turkey– resurfaced for the elections, after a 10-year hiatus. The DTP won 23 of the 550 seats of the Turkish parliament. However, Kurdish politicians are expected to converge to the party when the new parliament convenes.

Another factor contributing to aggravate the highly complex situation of the Kurds was the election to parliament of members of the ultra right party National Action (MHP). Dubbed the “Turkish neo-Nazis” by their political adversaries, the MHP received 14.3% of the votes, and will thus occupy 71 seats in parliament.

In 2002, the party had failed to elect a single representative. Pundits attribute the MHP’s growth in popularity to a perception that the AKP has not been tough enough to stop Kurdish militants from organizing in the south of the country.

Given the new political balance of power inside the Turkish parliament, the government is bound to be pressured to come to grips with the Kurd issue. Yet, Erdogan and his AKP’s greatest challenge will be to attain a certain harmony between the contradictory and conflicting ideological sectors of Turkey’s elite. The vast majority of the country is Muslim, but the conflict presents itself as a fight between those in favor of an Islamic government and the so-called “secularists”.

As we could perceive from the result of the elections, Turkish society is divided. Read more at: http://www.turkishpolitix.com/ , http://www.economist.com/ and http://www.tni.org/.

Tension lingers on in Lebanon

The Lebanese army, albeit with some difficulty, has managed to virtually destroy the Fatah al-Islam militia that arose in the traditional Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, near the city of Tripoli, north of the capital Beirut.

The militia is made up of a group of Sunnis who, at first, were thought to be connected to the Al Qaeda or, according to the press, financed by Syria. However, according to witnesses living inside the refugee camp, as reported by journalist Simon Hersh of The New Yorker magazine, the group is supported by the Sunni faction of the Lebanese government, namely by the son of former minister Rafik Hariri, who is a member of parliament today.

The initial objective would be to create a militia capable of standing up to the Hezbollah, something that they did not prove to be from what we saw. When Rariri (the son) gave up the plan, he suspended the group’s money line. They then robbed the family’s bank, prompting first the police and later the army to fight them, which was when they became internationally known.

At the election held on August 5 to fill in the seats of two MP’s also murdered this year, the main political rival groups in Lebanon were all tied.

One of the vacant seats was filled by Mohammad Itani, a former mayor of Beirut and a follower of the incumbent prime minister, Fuad Siniora. The other one was occupied by Kamil Khoury, a partisan of Christian General Michel Aoun, an opponent of the Siniora government, who defeated another Christian, Amin Gemayel, a traditional politician in the country and father to one of the murdered MPs. Read more at http://www.thenation.com/,
http://www.ipsnews.net/ and http://www.economist.com/.

Iranian stalemate

In spite of the agreement reached by the government of Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) allowing the agency’s inspections of the country’s nuclear installations to resume, the US and the European Union did not lower their guards and upheld the political and economic sanctions they began to impose last April.

Moreover, the Bush administration sustains the biased version that the Iranians are interfering in the conflict in Iraq as one of the militias’ arms suppliers. In spite of two diplomatic meetings between Americans and Iranians in Baghdad, Bush’s version has gained some credibility at home.

Thus, apart from becoming more vocal, Bush has just closed a deal to sell weapons to moderate Arab countries – Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia– worth US$ 20 billion and a military program to support Israel, which might come up to US$ 40 billion.

The initiative, besides producing new imbalances in the region, is yet another provocation against Syria and Iran in the hope that the two countries will react and justify an American attack.

Though well prepared militarily, Syria has maintained its apparently “phlegmatic” attitude. Iran proceeds with its nuclear programme, but has also intensified repressive actions against the adversaries of the regime, particularly those seeking more openness and democratic participation. Read more at: http://www.ipsnews.net/, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/, http://news.xinhuanet.com/, http://www.npr.org/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/.

The situation in Iraq

In addition to the chronic violence and constant violations of human rights going on ever since Iraq was invaded four years ago, British NGO Oxfam has just released a report that demonstrates the gravity of the social situation in that country in the aftermath of the occupation by the US and its allies.

Among the data released are the findings that 43% of the population lives below the poverty line, 15% of the Iraqis do not eat regularly, 70% do not have drinking water, and 20% of the children are undernourished.

The situation was serious before the war because of the economic sanctions imposed against the Saddam Hussein government after the end of the first Gulf War. Child malnutrition was at 19%, and 50% of the population had no access to drinking water in 2003.

Today, approximately eight million of a total population of 27.5 million need some form of emergency relief, including the two million people displaced from their homes and regions that took refuge in neighboring countries, namely Syria and Jordan.

The country’s basic services are in shambles and international help has subsided. In fact, part of the aid disappears due to the widespread corruption of the government controlled by the United States, which however does not control it from this perspective.

What has occurred and is still occurring in Iraq is an unjustified crime against humanity, however authoritarian the Saddam Hussein regime was. As stated by Iranian activist Emadeddin Baghi in reference to the international pressure placed on the Iranian government, of which he is a dissident: “Democracy cannot be exported. It must blossom from the people themselves. That’s why I defend the strengthening of civil society and that’s what the world should support”.

To make matters worse for the country, there are signs that oil exploration in the country will be privatized, along with the refining, which would definitively rule out any prospect that the country will be able to recover in the medium term, even in the hypothesis of a pullout of the foreign troops. Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/ and http://www.upi.com/.

Israel and Palestine

The Israeli government tried by all means to capitalize on the schism between the Fattah and the Hamas. Today the latter governs the Gaza Strip, while the Fattah is hegemonic on the West Bank. The most recent events were the freeing of 225 Palestinians of the approximately 5,000 serving sentences in Israeli prisons and the negotiations toward a meeting between Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The American government promised to hold preliminary talks to set a summit meeting in the coming November. Bush’s initiative, however, is viewed with skepticism since his strategy has been to incite the conflict and Olmert, with his popularity ratings always at a low, has little domestic support to offer anything in exchange for peace.

At the same time, it would be very difficult for the Palestinian National Authority to cede in any of its historical claims such as a return to the pre 1967 borders, the end of the Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem as the capital. The colonies occupy roughly 5% of the West Bank, but are spread all over the territory. It is rumored that the new president of Israel, Shimon Peres, is trying to broker a deal with regard to this contentious item.

Abbas said he was optimistic after talks were held. After all, today he is the one most pressed for results that could justify the dissolution of the Palestinian government in which the Hamas has a majority. Israel and the US will most certainly take advantage of that.

Japan – despite electoral defeat, Abe clings to his office

Prime minister of Japan Shinzo Abe set up a precedent by insisting on not resigning his post after his party was defeated by a wide margin in the elections for the Senate that occurred on July 29.

Half of the 242 seats were up for grabs in the election that left Abe’s party, the right wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and its ally, the Komeito (Renewal) party, with only 103 seats. The loss of 30 senators for a party that has governed Japan since 1955, when it was created, had tremendous political impact on the country.

Oppositionist Democratic Party of Japan (social democratic) grew from 81 to 112 seats, elected an opposition president, Satsuki Eda, and as of now may obstruct the legislative agenda.

Nonetheless, the choice of the prime minister is made in the lower house, where the government still has a majority. There are discreet backstage movements to convince Abe to step down and enable the LDP to appoint a new minister with the daunting task of averting an electoral defeat in the next parliamentary elections.

Other past prime ministers in the same situation resigned their posts. However, Shinzo Abe, the successor of Junichiro Koizumi since September 2006, dismissed calls by the opposition and many Japanese newspaper editorials for him to review his position and call general elections. In response to the pressures, Abe declared he decided to stay in the post because the country could not afford a political void now, yet promised to reshuffle his cabinet.

According to some analyses, although economic performance has improved after many years of stagnation, the electoral defeat may be viewed as a reaction of the electorate to Abe’s having focused primarily on transforming Japan into a more assertive country in the international arena and on overhauling the Constitution, while allowing the day-to-day management, especially of the economy, to be tainted by corruption scandals.

Since his inauguration, the fruit of a multi-partisan deal and not of an electoral process, Abe used the parliamentary majority aligned with the government to pass bills that fostered the dissemination of patriotism in schools and the need to revise the pacifist Constitution of Japan to improve the country’s military status.

Many of his ministers had disastrous performances. The first of a series of events to stain the image of the government was the loss of 50 million personal records of the national pension fund system, practically the records of all Japanese retirees and pensioners, with very inconvenient consequences for all of them.

Next, minister of agriculture Toshikatsu Matsuoka, under investigation in a case of electoral donations, committed suicide. Minister of labour, health and social welfare Hakuo Yanagisawa caused great embarrassment by describing the role of women in society as that of “a baby-making machine”, while minister of the defense Fumio Kyuma resigned her post after justifying the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that took place in 1945.

Given the likelihood of the opposition to delay or obstruct any new item on the parliamentary agenda, Abe and his party is bound to face many hardships to rebuild his reputation, scarred as it is by the corruption scandals and by the inefficacy in the stewardship of the world’s second largest economy, which on the other hand will also make it more difficult to promote the neoliberal reforms planned by the government in the economic area.

Also defeated in the election was former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori. With his dual citizenship, Japanese and Peruvian, he ran for the senate by another right wing party, the New People’s Party, founded in 2005 by LDP dissidents.

Under house arrest in Chile, Fujimori hoped that his victory would help him to avoid being extradited to Lima, as requested by the Peruvian government, a situation still pending a final ruling. However, his campaign obtained little attention in Japan, with the former Peruvian president receiving only seven thousand votes from the approximately 100 million Japanese voters. Read more.

Pakistan – General Musharraf and the general elections

The mandate of the president, General Pervez Musharraf, of parliament and of the provincial legislatures of Pakistan end next October and the general’s reelection campaign chose as its strategy to confront the Islamic terrorists.

“We are in direct confrontation with the extremist forces. It’s moderates against extremists”, stated Musharraf in response to a series of attacks against the Pakistani army in the North-West Frontier province. The general also stated that he is a candidate to reelection, a choice that will be made indirectly through an electoral college, but does not plan to leave the command of the Armed Forces, justifying his decision by arguing that a strictly civilian government would never be able to rein in the extremists.

Moreover, Musharraf has downplayed the possibility that his action might hamper the establishment of a democratic government, refusing to declare a state of emergency in the country and promising general elections for early 2008.

He is yet another one in the long succession of generals that has been ruling the country since 1947, when the Pakistan, together with India, obtained its independence from England. At first the colony was dismembered in two States, and then in three when the former Eastern Pakistan, with the support of India, declared independence in 1971 and became Bangladesh.

Opposition parties doubt that the election, under the auspices of the general’s military regime, will be free and exempt from frauds. In addition, they warn of the danger that Musharraf’s reaction to the attacks against the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in early July, might be to use them to justify prolonging the regime and the violence. Army actions at the time killed 102 people, by official records. According to conspiracy theorists, such violent reaction was designed with the intent precisely of strengthening his role as defender.

One of Musharraf’s problems is his close ties with the United States, which regard him as a key player in the war against terror, given Pakistan’s common borders with Afghanistan. In 2004, Pakistan was declared the US’s greatest ally outside NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Yet, despite the support he has received from Washington since the 9/11 attacks, lately America has been criticizing him for not having been able to neutralize Taliban and Al-Qaeda operations in Pakistani territory, especially in Baluchistan and the North-East Frontier Province. Read more.

Since the mosque episode, strikes against military targets have escalated. Violence has also escalated in the province of North Waziristan, where pro Taliban militias suspended a 10-month truce with the government, under claims that the authorities had violated the pact.

The end of this accord is seen as a great blow to General Musharraf’s strategy for Pakistan’s tribal regions. The accord established that the army would withdraw from the area surrounding Miran Shah and hand control over to the tribal leaders who, in return, were to guarantee that Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Waziristan would not enter in Afghanistan.

Some 600 Pakistani soldiers have died in the border operations, generating resentment against the general among the civilian population and the Armed Forces. Counter to the orientation of his military command, the general announced the deployment of two more infantry divisions in the regions, for security reasons only since he keeps stating that he intends to renegotiate the terms of the truce with the militias.

The alliance with the United States is not the only cause of the general’s political problems. He has been under pressure by a growing opposition movement created after his attempt to remove the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and by a serious humanitarian crisis afflicting the region of Baluchistan, where floods are affecting the lives of 2.2 million people.

On July 17, terrorist attacks resumed in the capital Islamabad during a march led by Justice Chaudhry, killing 16 people and wounding 40. No group claimed the attack and the target remains unclear, but the result was to further deepen the country’s disorder.

In the meantime, Justice Chaudhry was reinstated as the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice by decision of the court itself. In a recent court-ruling, Chaudhry also contributed with his swing vote with the release from prison of another of Musharraf’s adversaries, Javed Hashmi, the leader of the conservative Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA) party.

The general is hoping to unite the country around the fight against the extremists, with the support of the United States. But his refusal to quit the command of the armed forces is criticized by many as illegal and his decision to seek his reelection from the incumbent electoral college (where he has a majority), instead of waiting for next year’s general elections, is deemed a risky step.

In his quest for legitimacy to govern, Musharraf will have to build alliances with secular politicians, notably with Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who is now exiled in London. Aware of that, the general seized the opportunity during a visit to the United Arab Emirates to meet with Bhutto and try to reach a political deal with her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Benazir Bhutto has been exiled in Europe since 1998 to escape charges of corruption (which have just voided), after her government collapsed in the early 1990s. She declared that she would support the general for another five-year presidential term if she were given permission to take part in the coming elections, expectations being that she will win.

Though having assured for years that he would never strike a deal with Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif, another former minister living in exile after being ousted from power by Musharraf, the meeting at Abu Dhabi shows that the general realizes how vulnerable his position is, which makes a deal with Benazir even more plausible. Read more at: http://africa.reuters.com/ and http://www.time.com/.

India – the election of the new woman president

On July 25 Pratibha Devisingh Patil was inaugurated as the first woman to be elected president of India, the world’s most populous democracy. In spite of the fact that the post is of lesser importance than the post of prime minister, also occupied by another woman, Indira Gandhi in 1966, the election does have political and symbolic weight.

Patil’s party, the Indian National Congress, headed the federal coalition United Progressive Alliance, which obtained support in every region of the country, winning two-thirds of the seats for the Electoral College and defeating incumbent Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat in the election held on July 19, results announced two days later.

Patil is a lawyer, aged 72, who comes from the western province of Maharashtra. She received the slash from President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, whose five-year term finished on July 24.

The presidential office is mainly ceremonial, yet is the highest post according to the Indian Constitution. The president heads the armed forces and may oversee the establishment of a new government in case parliament does not reach a consensus. Former President Kalam played a central role by inviting the Congress Party and its allies to set up a new cabinet in 2004, after the general elections produced inconclusive results, i.e., no party with a majority.

Carefully chosen by her party’s leader, Sonia Gandhi, Patil had the support of the United Progressive Alliance, its Communist allies and the Bahujan Samaj party, which rules the country’s most populous province, Uttar Pradesh.

Governor of the western province of Rajasthan since November 2004 until her nomination to the presidential election, Patil was not regarded as a high profile leader of the ruling party. Her previous post had been as secretary of the province where she was born, Maharashtra, in charge of social programs and civilian supply. Before that, she had served in other provincial and federal offices as a member of the Congress Party.

The only polemic surrounding her election is that, usually, the presidential candidate is chosen by consensus of the main political parties. Patil, however, was nominated by the ruling government coalition, controlled by her party, yet with the strong opposition of the Bharatiya Janata (BJP), a right wing, nationalist party.

At least for the early days of her term of office, Patil is to be weighed against her predecessor. Kalam was very popular, perhaps due to the fact that he was not a career politician before taking over the presidency. Kalam is a nuclear physicist.

The choice for a candidate aligned with the Congress Party has been interpreted as a Sonia Gandhi’s lack of confidence in the future of the party in the next election, though Patil’s victory surely raised the morale.

According to some analysts, the government will try to carry out some reforms, though there is little chance that they will actually be implemented. The few attempts made by the government to approve some measures were barred by the opposition. Nevertheless, as long as the economy stays strong (forecasts for this year signal an 8-percent growth rate), the government will not run the risk of creating unnecessary opposition.

Amid the election and the counting, on July 20 Indian and American diplomats concluded the details of an agreement opposed by government coalition’s Communist Party of India – Marxist. Bilateral talks produced a nuclear cooperation agreement whereby the US would supply nuclear fuel to India in exchange for restrictions on the Indian nuclear weapons program. A draft of the agreement will be discussed in Parliament in August, which will certainly spur discussions inside the government. Read more at: http://www.ipsnews.net/, http://www.tni.org/ and http://www.congress.org.in/ .

Negotiations at the WTO

Exactly three years ago, the WTO tried to close the Doha Round begun in 2001. In July 2004, the decision was made to narrow down the agenda to four themes: agriculture, non-agricultural market access (NAMA), services and trade facilitating measures. This new agenda was the result of well-succeeded initiatives by the G – 20 a few months before, during the ill-fated Cancun Ministerial Summit.

Yet, this decision generated an insoluble equation with at least four variables. The US and the developing countries want the European Union to cut its subsidies on exports of agricultural products and open its market to imports of such goods; the EU and the developing countries want the US to reduce its own farm subsidies and, lastly the US and the EU want the developing countries to promote deep cuts on its NAMA tariffs.

Besides, there are other minor, though not less important, details such as the percentages of sensitive products that would remain outside the agreement and the question of protecting food security and domestic agricultural output.

The preliminary agreement drafts presented by the chairs of two working groups at the WTO, agriculture and NAMAs, propose a moderate reduction of agricultural subsidies by the developed countries and equal moderate access to the European agricultural market, while with regard to the NAMAs the proposal is that developing countries radically cut tariffs (60%) on industrialized goods.

Actually, whatever is decided upon shall be equally applied to all parties, since both the developing countries’ foreign tariffs and farming subsidies and the developed countries’ industrial goods tariffs are low. Therefore, developing countries would have to cede more since the developed countries’ industry is already prepared for international competition.

It is yet again the same repeat, with the developed countries wanting it all in exchange for nothing. The difference is that now the developing countries started to say no. At an informal meeting held in June in Potsdam, Germany, soon after the G-8 meeting, Brazil and India left the table when they realized the other side would make no concessions. It might have been a mere symbolic gesture, but it had never occurred before.

The drafts mentioned are to be discussed in September, after the northern hemisphere’s summer vacations, but will hardly lead to an agreement. Brazil hinted at cutting tariffs on NAMAs by up to 50%, quite a figure given our industry. On the other hand, it is hard to reach a balanced agreement on products of quite different a nature, as is the case with NAMAs and agricultural products. We must bear in mind that gains stemming from a mature industry are long term, while gains from exporting agricultural products always depend on the climate and on the local and international contexts.