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Mexicans Deserve Substance Over Style in Presidential Race
Josefina Vázquez Mota won the nomination of the incumbent National Action Party (PAN) for Mexico’s upcoming presidential election. Most of the coverage in the international media today focuses on how she is the first woman to have a real shot at Los Pinos (the official residence of the president of Mexico). However, the real story should be what new ideas (if any) Vázquez Mota brings to the table. Unfortunately, there’s isn’t much to report.
The same can be said of the other two presidential contenders, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party.
Perhaps William Booth of the Washington Post sums it up best when he writes about the three choices Mexican voters face in July:
“The popular former mayor of Mexico City with a messianic self-regard [López Obrador]; a telegenic leading man who wrote a book but has been vague about which books he has read [Peña Nieto]; and a perky, gal-next-door type who does a lot of smiling but has been blank on specifics [Vázquez Mota].”
Mexico will face serious challenges in the next six years, not least of which is a crippling war on drugs that kills thousands of Mexicans every year, but also a sluggish economy due largely to the sclerotic effects of public and private monopolies in key industries. This presidential election should be more about substance and less about style.
A Brewing Institutional Crisis in Panama
Panama is in turmoil due to the efforts of President Ricardo Martinelli to resurrect a defunct specialized court within the Supreme Court that would allow him to pack that body and possibly pave the way for his reelection.
First, some context: The nine-Justice Panamanian Supreme Court is divided in four specialized courts dealing with specific areas of the law (civil, criminal, administrative and general government business). The first three specialized courts have 3 justices each, while the fourth one (dealing with general government business) is formed by the presidents of each of the three other specialized courts.
There used to be a Fifth Court dealing with constitutional issues. However, in 1999 Congress passed a law that abolished that body. Now, constitutional cases are dealt by the nine-Justice Supreme Court as a whole.
Last year the Supreme Court, whose chief justice is a close associate of Martinelli, ruled that the law abolishing the Fifth Court was illegal. This created a legal vacuum since nobody knows for sure whether that means that the old Fifth Court should be reinstated or a new one should be created.
Martinelli seized on the controversial ruling by the Supreme Court and introduced a bill in Congress that would create a Fifth Court. If approved, the new court would have three new justices (appointed by Martinelli) and would deal with constitutional issues, one of them being the constitutionality of presidential term limits. The Panamanian Constitution currently bars a sitting president from running for a consecutive term. The president has to step out for two terms before running again for office. Many in Panama fear that Martinelli’s ultimate goal with the Fifth Court is to get rid of term limits.
Let’s not forget that a similar ploy was recently used by Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to run for reelection despite the Constitution explicitly barring him from doing it. There, a friendly Supreme Court ruled that presidential term limits were unconstitutional and thus enabled Ortega to run again (and win the election).
Despite enjoying a large majority in Congress, where Martinelli has bought off many lawmakers, the opposition was able to filibuster the bill creating the Fifth Court. However, thanks to the nebulous ruling by the Supreme Court last year, Martinelli is now threatening with appointing the 3 new justices even without a law passed by Congress. A constitutional crisis seems inevitable.
A recent poll published by the daily La Prensa showed that 70 percent of Panamanians regarded Martinelli as “authoritarian” and 73 percent were concerned for the future of democracy their country. Amid strong criticism for his autocratic tendencies, for his attacks against freedom of speech, and for using tax audits to persecute his political opponents, the Fifth Court affair certainly shows that Ricardo Martinelli is the most dangerous man for democracy and rule of law in Central America after Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.
Another Pyrrhic Victory in Mexico’s Drug War
After months of not releasing official data on the number of drug-related killings, the Mexican government announced yesterday that in the first nine months of 2011, 12,903 people died in episodes of drug violence. The Mexican authorities, struggling to find a silver lining, noted positively that the figure reveals “a significant decrease” in the growth of the murder rate from previous years.
This tactic is similar to Washington’s creative accounting when it comes to spending “cuts:” spending continues to increase, but at a smaller percentage than previously planned. Thus, spending has been “cut.” Similarly, the number of people killed in Mexico’s drug war continued to rise in 2011, but at a lower pace than 2010. Thus, the murder rate has declined. Moreover, the 11 percent increase in murders in 2011 follows a record setting number in 2010.
* BBC estimate.
Source: Mexico’s Federal Attorney General’s office.
According to an estimate from the BBC, the total number of drug deaths in 2011 is approximately 16,700. That means over 51,000 people have been killed in Mexico since president Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels in December 2006. And the number may be higher.
As Mexico’s former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda said last November at the Cato conference “Ending the Global War on Drugs,” the number killed in Mexico’s war on drugs will soon equal the number of U.S. deaths in Vietnam. And let’s remember that Mexico’s population is a third of the United States’ and the Vietnam conflict lasted twice as long as Calderón’s drug offensive.
The main worry for 2012 is not that drug killings stabilize at a high rate—although that would be terrible—but that violence engulfs other areas of the country that have remained relatively peaceful, such as Mexico City. If that happens, Mexican authorities will find it even more difficult to identify “victories” in their war against cartels.
Feds Palling Around With Mexican Cartels
Two years ago the Washington Post reported that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency brought dangerous Mexican drug traffickers to the U.S. who, while continuing their criminal activities in Mexico and the U.S., also served as informants to the federal authorities in their war on drugs.
In June, Operation Fast and Furious came to light where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed suspicious straw-purchasers of firearms to buy weapons in the U.S. and smuggle them into Mexico. The purpose was to track the guns all the way to the ultimate buyer—a Mexican drug trafficking organization. Overall, the ATF facilitated the purchase of hundreds of guns by Mexican cartels. Many were later found in crime scenes in Mexico, including one where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was assassinated.
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been laundering millions of dollars for Mexican cartels. The goal of the undercover mission is to follow the money all the way up to the top ranks of the criminal organizations. However, as the NYT notes, “So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels’ operations and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain.”
So there we have it: in the name of the war on drugs, the federal government has provided safe havens to Mexican drug traffickers, facilitated their purchase of powerful firearms, and has even laundered millions of dollars for the cartels.
After spending millions of dollars toward fighting the drug war in Mexico, the United States has little to show for its efforts. It seems Washington is becoming more desperate each year to produce new leads and results. These three incidents display a stunning lack of foresight and borders on the federal government aiding the Mexican drug cartels, with little to show in return. The unintended consequences of these programs aimed at dismantling the cartels would be laughable were it not for the thousands that have died in Mexico’s drug related violence.
It is time for the United States to rethink the war on drugs and consider policies that will successfully undermine the Mexican drug cartels.
Should Guatemala’s New President Follow Mexico’s Strategy?
Last week I visited Guatemala, where the new president-elect, Otto Pérez Molina, has promised to deploy the army to fight organized crime. Pérez Molina—himself a former army general—even said that he will follow Felipe Calderón’s lead in declaring an all out war against drug cartels. He should think twice about that strategy.
Let’s look at what happened to Mexico’s murder rate when Felipe Calderón came to power in December 2006 and launched a military offensive against drug cartels. The murder rate in that country, measured as the number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, had been experiencing a steady decline since the mid-nineties. However, it skyrocketed after the army went into the streets, unleashing unprecedented violence as the cartels fought back and escalated their vicious infighting.
One clear phenomenon in Mexico is that, instead of placating violence, the deployment of the army helped to magnify it. The reason is that, even when the army could claim victory by killing or arresting a drug kingpin or dismembering a gang, it would only create a vacuum that other cartels would try to fill—violently. Mexico’s highly fractious criminal spectrum, with at least seven significant drug cartels vying for control of territory, is to some extent the result of the government’s war against organized crime.
Still, Mexico’s murder rate in 2010 (21.5 killings per 100,000 inhabitants) is about half that of Guatemala (41.4 murders per 100,000 inhabitants). There are two reasons why things could get much worse in Guatemala: First, the army is ill-prepared to fight the powerful Mexican cartels that already have a presence in that country. After the peace accord of 1996, the size of the Guatemalan army went from 50,000 troops to only 16,000. If the cartels have put up a fight to the better-equipped Mexican army, one can only wonder what would happen to its smaller and poorer Guatemalan equivalent. Second, even if the army is successful in weakening the cartels, the same vacuum phenomenon that takes place in Mexico would happen in Guatemala. So far, Mexico’s two most powerful cartels, Sinaloa and Los Zetas, control different parts of Guatemala’s territory, but they haven’t engaged each other in that country yet. That could change if the army strikes a significant blow to one of them, giving an opportunity to the rival.
Guatemalans elected Otto Pérez Molina for his promise to fight crime with an iron fist. However, his strategy could certainly backfire, leaving Guatemalans much worse off than they already are.
Juan Manuel Santos calls for a discussion on the legalization of cocaine
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ explicit—though lukewarm—support for the legalization of marijuana and other soft drugs. This weekend, in an interview with The Observer, Santos was blunter in saying that, “I would talk about legalising marijuana and more than just marijuana… I might consider legalising cocaine if there is a world consensus because this drug has affected us most here in Colombia.”
Once again, Santos emphasized the need for a global debate on prohibition and new approaches to drug policy. As The Guardian points out:
“It is difficult to overestimate the symbolic importance of a Colombian president entering the debate with such force, given the central role drugs have played in his country’s recent bloody history. Santos is all too aware of the symbolism and of the role he is playing.”
Tomorrow Cato will host a major conference on how to end the global war on drugs. The event will be live streamed from our website at www.cato.org/live beginning at 9:05am ET.
Secretary General of the OAS Praises Nicaragua’s Election
Yesterday’s presidential election in Nicaragua that resulted in the reelection of Daniel Ortega was marred by widespread accounts of fraud and voter intimidation. Observers from the European Union called the process “less than transparent.” And election monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS) say they were prevented from visiting polling stations. Not to mention that Ortega’s candidacy was blatantly illegal: Nicaragua’s Constitution prevents a president from running for a consecutive term. By manipulating the country’s Supreme Court and Electoral Council, Ortega ran and won anyway.
However, according to José Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the OAS, “In Nicaragua democracy and peace moved forward.” [in Spanish]
Insulza has a record of keeping silent or tacitly supporting the region’s autocratic regimes as they violate democratic institutions and human rights. Do we need further proof that José Miguel Insulza is a pawn of Hugo Chávez and his authoritarian allies in Latin America?
President Obama: The Enthusiastic Drug Warrior
When Barack Obama became president, many people expected a new approach to drug policy. While running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said during a campaign event that he favored marijuana decriminalization. And the appointment of Gil Kerlikowske, then chief of the Seattle Police Department as “Drug Czar,” gave many people hope given Seattle’s emphasis on harm reduction policies instead of prosecution for drug offenses. In fact, one of Kerlikowske’s first acts as Drug Czar was to call an end to the term “War on Drugs.”
How people change. Today the New York Times has a story on how the Obama administration has deployed D.E.A. commando-style squads to Central America and the Caribbean to fight drugs cartels. These units were first created in the Bush administration to fight drug traffickers in Afghanistan linked with the Taliban. But in what is definitely an escalation of U.S. involvement in the region, the Obama administration has deployed these commandos 15 times to countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Dominican Republic, and Haiti.
As the New York Times piece rightly points out, the deployment of D.E.A. squads in Central America and the Caribbean is “blurring the line between law enforcement and military activities, fusing elements of the ‘war on drugs’ with the ‘war on terrorism.’ So much for calling an end to “the war on drugs.” If anything, this development shows that President Obama is an enthusiastic drug warrior.
Some of these governments actually welcome greater U.S. involvement in fighting the increasingly vicious drug cartels. After all, they have even less institutional capacity than Mexico to fight these powerful criminal organizations. However, as professor Bruce Bagley of the University of Miami points out, the strategy could backfire:
“It could lead to a nationalist backlash in the countries involved. If an American is killed, the administration and the D.E.A. could get mired in Congressional oversight hearings. Taking out kingpins could fragment the organization and lead to more violence. And it won’t permanently stop trafficking unless a country also has capable institutions, which often don’t exist in Central America.”
Professor Bagley will be speaking about the effects of the war on drugs in Central America at our conference, “Ending the Global War on Drugs,” which will take place next Tuesday November 15 here in Washington. You can register to attend the event here.
Colombian President Backs Drug Legalization
One of the worse kept secrets in Latin America is that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos believes in drug legalization. Back in the 1990s he co-signed an open letter to then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calling for an end to the war on drugs. And, since assuming office last year, Santos has hinted on several occasions that a new approach is needed in drug policy.
Earlier this week, Santos finally came out supporting the legalization of soft drugs, such as marijuana. In an interview published by Metro World News, Santos said that he favors legalization “provided everyone does it at the same time.” However, Santos balked at the idea of being the first sitting president to propose this in an international forum, citing mostly political reasons: “I would be crucified if I took the first step,” he said.
Despite Santos’s lukewarm endorsement of drug legalization, he adds his voice to the growing number of Latin American leaders calling for ending prohibition. Cato will host a big conference on November 15 on ending the international war on drugs, featuring some of the leading voices in the region on this issue: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil, Jorge Castañeda, former Minister of Foreign Relations of Mexico, former Colombian Senator Enrique Gómez Hurtado, and Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, Uruguay’s current Speaker of the House of Deputies. You can see the full program of the event and register here.
María Corina Machado: A Breath of Fresh Air in Venezuela
Yesterday I wrote that the opposition in Venezuela seems determined to maintain the economic model installed by Hugo Chávez that fosters people’s dependency on government. I should’ve written “most of the opposition,” since there is a remarkable exception in the field of presidential candidates: Congresswoman María Corina Machado.
At a rally yesterday in a working class neighborhood of Caracas, and surrounded by unlicensed street vendors, female small business owners and young followers, Machado launched her political platform called “People’s Capitalism,” under which, she said, “Venezuela will leave behind the entitlement model in order to build true prosperity for its citizens.” This is a breath of fresh air from the usual Venezuelan political discourse that stresses the government’s central role in redistributing the country’s oil riches. In fact, just the use of the word “capitalism” is extremely daring in a nation where free market ideas have been consistently disparaged by President Chávez and his acolytes for over a decade.
In her speech, Machado attacked socialism as a model that perpetuates poverty by demeaning people and creating dependency. She explained that her platform is based on trust in the creative capacity of the individual. As for the role of government, Machado said that it must provide the legal framework that stimulates entrepreneurship and eliminates regulatory obstacles so that people in the informal economy—such as the vendors she was addressing—can join the formal economy. She also offered a strong defense of private property by saying that “if you can’t own the fruit of your labor, then you don’t own your labor and thus you aren’t free.”
Despite being elected to the National Assembly last year with the greatest number of votes in all Venezuela, Machado is a long shot to win the nomination for the Coalition for Democratic Unity. However, her commitment to free market ideas is a welcome departure from the other opposition candidates who seem interested in perpetuating Venezuela’s entitlement culture.
Machado spoke at a Cato Policy Forum two years ago on the failure of social policy in Venezuela. She also recorded a podcast for us on Hugo Chávez’s crackdown on political dissent.
The Opposition in Venezuela Doesn’t Get It
Venezuela is in full campaign mode as six candidates vie for the nomination of the Coalition for Democratic Unity (MUD is its Spanish acronym), the opposition movement that will nominate a single candidate to face Hugo Chávez in the October 2012 presidential election. The MUD primary will take place on February 12.
After 13 years of socialist rule that has crippled Venezuela’s economy, and even created shortages of fuel in the oil-rich South American nation, one would expect the opposition candidates to signal a bold U-turn from the failed big-government policies of Hugo Chávez. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Let’s look, for example, at Primero Justicia (Justice First), the party whose candidate, Henrique Capriles Rodonsky, is leading in the polls. Capriles doesn’t say much about the economic model he favors. His statements are limited to generalities such as “the only thing I’m obsessed about is that Venezuela has progress.” As governor of the state of Miranda, Capriles likes to compare his approach to that of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva: decent macroeconomic stewardship complemented by generous social programs.
However, Primero Justicia’s platform seems to be a little more specific in its views on the role of government in society. It claims to support a “social-humanist state” that stands between the “social bureaucratic state that provides inefficient social services in a monopolist way and the minimalist neo-liberal state that gives up on its social responsibilities.” As for the economic model that Primero Justicia favors, the platform says that it “stands against the socialist planned economy and … the [classical] liberal tendencies that turn the market into a dogma.” In simple terms, Primero Justicia sees itself as a Third Way alternative between Hugo Chávez’s “Socialism of the 21st Century” and what it claims to be the “neo-liberal dogma.”
I believe that Venezuela needs a decisive rupture from the failed big-government policies of the past, and not just a lighter version of socialism. Nonetheless, a modern social democratic party is certainly a far better alternative for the country than Hugo Chávez. Unfortunately, on the campaign trail Primero Justicia’s officials seem eager to out-compete Chávez in promising more government handouts to Venezuelans. For example, the daily El Universal published a statement [in Spanish] yesterday from Primero Justicia’s chairman Julio Borges where he lambasted Chávez for not spending enough on social programs. He said that his party would use oil revenues to create a Social Security Fund that would give pensions “to all Venezuelans, regardless of whether they had formal employment or not, and even to housewives.”
Any observer of Venezuela’s modern history would say, “Here we go again.” For many decades, Venezuelan politicians, either in government or in the opposition, have seen the government (and particularly oil revenues) as an infinite source of wealth that simply needs to be distributed among all Venezuelans. As Borges previously stated, “every family would have 1.6 billion bolivares [approximately $375,000] if oil resources were distributed fairly.”
Henrique Capriles will formally launch his presidential candidacy tomorrow. Venezuelans have other pressing concerns besides the economy that will play a major role in next year’s election, such as the staggering rise in crime (Venezuela stands now as the most violent country in South America) and the steady erosion of civil and political freedoms. However, Capriles is ill-advised in thinking that he can beat Chávez by playing the populist card of offering yet more government handouts to Venezuelans.
Venezuelans deserve a real alternative to Chávez. They deserve not only a candidate that promises a return to democratic rule of law, but also someone who pledges to break their dependency on government. The election in October 2012 should be something more than choosing a distributor-in-chief at Miraflores Palace.
Interesting Quotes from the National Drug Threat Assessment Report
Do you need further proof that the war on drug is a failure? Then just read the 2011 National Drug Threat Assessment report recently published by the Justice Department. Here are some interesting quotes:
- The abuse of several major illicit drugs, including heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine, appears to be increasing, especially among the young. [pag. 1]
- The overall availability of illicit drugs in the United States is increasing. Heroin, marijuana, MDMA [ecstasy], and methamphetamine are readily available, and their availability appears to be increasing in some markets. [pag. 24]
- An estimated 8.7 percent of Americans aged 12 or older—or 21.8 million individuals—were current illicit drug users in 2009, a statistically significant increase from 8.0 percent in 2008. [pag. 1]
- Major Mexican-based TCOs [trasnational criminal organizations] and their associates are solidifying their dominance of the U.S. wholesale drug trade and will maintain their reign for the foreseeable future. [pag. 7]
- Mexican-based TCOs were operating in more than a thousand U.S. cities during 2009 and 2010 [last year’s report put the figure at 270 cities]. [pag. 8]
You can read the full report here.
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