El Salvador's New Attorney General crusading against powerful, corrupt pols and gangs

Guatemala has the CICIG and Honduras now has MACCIH, but El Salvador has no international commission to assist its institutions in the fight against corruption and high-profile criminal cases.  Despite overwhelming popular opinion in favor of a such an entity (nearly 97 percent, according to one recent UCA poll), the Salvadoran government has steadfastly refused to consider such a body.  In fact, the FMLN secretary general, Medardo Gonzalez, told a crowd of supporters on May 1 that anyone who asks for such an entity should be considered "golpistas" who are only interested in destabilizing the government, according to a report in El Faro. 

The government’s proposition is that El Salvador has a strong enough judicial system to take care of its own problems, and it is beginning to look like they might be right. In the past few weeks, the new Attorney General, Douglas Melendez – elected by the Assembly as a compromise candidate earlier this year, and probably not expected to ruffle many feathers – has begun to prosecute an unprecedented number of high-profile cases, including:  

• Operación Jaque – the arrest of dozens of individuals involved in the financial network of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) gang (See post for Aug. 12)
• The Court of Accounts, El Salvador’s primary auditing body that has long been held by individuals close to the conservative PCN party, was investigated by the Attorney General, bringing to light 48 case files that were never acted upon and that would have resulted in $2.2 million in fines that could have benefited the state’s coffers, according to El Faro. 

But the news does not stop there.

On Monday night, Melendez’s immediate predecessor  as Attorney General – Luis Martinez – presented himself to the Attorney General’s office, only to be taken into police custody and charged with procedural fraud and "omission" in various cases related to Enrique Rais, a wealthy businessman who has deep connections to one of the strongmen of the ruling FMLN party, Jose Luis Merino (who is also the highest ranking FMLN representative in the Venezuelan-funded Alba Petroleos.)   Rais, his nephew, his lawyer and a former prosecutor from the Attorney General’s office were also taken into custody, while another 10 persons were the subject of arrest warrants.

Stories in  El Faro and Revista Factum provide extensive details and background, and both have long covered these cases.  For example, both have documented numerous trips whereby Martinez traveled abroad on Rais’ personal planes, which have been under investigation in the US by the DEA for involvement in drug trafficking.   In July, the usually quiet Government Ethics Tribunal fined Martinez $9000, noting that Martinez had buried cases brought against Rais, but prosecuted others wherein he was the victim, and encouraged the Fiscalia to investigate.  The crime of “failure to investigate” carries a potential jail term of five years.  Hector Silva Avalos, from Factum,  is currently being sued by Rais for defamation for reporting on Rais’ links to drug trafficking.

An even bigger case is in the making, however, as the Attorney General began to execute search warrants at numerous properties linked to former President Mauricio Funes, as well as his close colleagues Miguel Menendez (known as “Mecafe”) and Fune’s former Agriculture Minister, Pablo Ochoa.  Funes was already the subject of a civil suit for “illicit enrichment”, but these moves indicate the AG is building a criminal case as well. El Farohas all the details. 

Attorney General Melendez justified these moves based on indications that Funes was preparing to apply for political asylum in Nicaragua.  (Tweeting from Nicaragua, Funes says that is not the case, but has given contradictory information about his reason for being there – tourism or business? – according to a report in Confidencial, which also noted that a Guatemalan congressman under investigation for corruption in his country is also currently in Nicaragua.)  Menendez and Ochoa were originally part of the “friends of Mauricio” who supported his candidacy in 2009, and Menendez in particular benefited from numerous, uncompetitive contracts for private security services with the Funes administration, and was named head of the government-run International Convention Center (CIFCO).

Taken together, these cases alone demonstrate a more functional prosecutorial power than El Salvador has seen for many years.  Of course, the real test will depend on whether those prosecutions will ultimately be successful. And we can expect pushback from very powerful political and economic elites should these kind of cases continue to move forward. 

Additionally, the Attorney General would do well to be more aggressive in prosecuting cases of police abuses (including extrajudicial executions) as well as support transitional justice cases moving forward (such as the Mozote massacre), given the recent overturning of the amnesty law.  

In the meantime, it certainly raises the bar of expectations for future prosecutions.

When will Honduras have a Supreme Court? (And why it matters)

Ever since the 2009 coup in Honduras, the Supreme Court has played a starring role in some of the most important political controversies in that country, and this year is no exception. According to the Honduran Constitution, by January 25^th of this year, the Honduran Congress should have selected 15 members of the Honduran Supreme Court, to serve together for a seven-year term (2016-2023).  These 15 should be chosen from a slate of 45 candidates, presented by a nominating board with a diverse make-up of political actors.  However, up until now, and following what observers have referred to as a flawed process, the Honduran Congress has been able to agree only upon eight justices. The fourth session to attempt to complete the roster will be held today, and El Heraldo is reporting that is some likelihood they will come to an agreement on the remaining seven justices.

The reason for the delay has everything to do with electoral politics, and how much has changed since the 2009 coup, but particularly in the last two years since the congressional make-up evolved from an essentially two-party system (with power divided between Liberals and Nationals) into a multi-party system (with two major opposition parties, LIBRE – headed by former President Manuel Zelaya – and the Anti-Corruption Party, or PAC, headed by Salvador Nasralla).  In the 2013 elections, the Liberals and Nationals fell three votes shy of a 2/3 majority – the amount required to elect the Supreme Court -- for the first time since the early 1980s.  So when it came time for Congress to a vote on the 15 justices agreed upon between the Nationals and Liberals, they could not muster votes for the entire package.

Until now, the opposition parties have been firm in resisting the imposition of the remaining candidates, basically protesting two major issues: (1) the fact that all of the candidates are only from the two traditional parties and (2) that many are incompetent, at best, or corrupt, at worst.  LIBRE has refused to negotiate at all, whereas the PAC has agreed to sign off on six candidates they think are relatively good, and conceding one other that was nominated by the government, according to a report last week in La Tribuna.  The PAC also conditioned its support on two longstanding electoral reform demands:  to include the four major parties in an Executive Electoral Council that would supervise the overhaul of the electoral system, and that a second round in the presidential race be required.

But just how reasonable are those demands? On the first point, it’s worth noting that the current Supreme Electoral Tribunal is run by authorities from the Liberals and Nationals, despite the fact that LIBRE is now the second largest party, but those authorities were hastily and prematurely elected before the current, more diverse Congress assumed power.  And on the second point, in fact it is no different than what all of the political parties agreed to before the last elections, and that included the assent of then-president of the Congress, Juan Orlando Hernandez (who took office on the first round with 37% of the vote). (See further details in the most recent Congressional Research Service report.)

Nevertheless, the Liberals and Nationals only need three votes, and El Heraldo is reporting this morning that it seems they will have two votes each from the PAC and LIBRE parties, giving them a safe margin of victory by one vote.  If this turns out to be the case, you might be asking yourself, just what kind of shenanigans took place behind the scenes to get these two legislators to vote for the National/Liberal package of justices?  

Well, the answer may well be found in recent allegations -- surfaced by Radio Globo reporter David Romero Ellner (and cited yesterday by the invaluable Honduras Culture and Politics blog) – that the National Party has been funneling money to a trade association, which in turn has paid off legislators to support various National Party projects, including for their Supreme Court candidates.  While this is excellent fodder for the yet-to-be-installed MACCIH (international anti-corruption commission), it remains to be seen if these charges will get any traction from the Attorney General’s office.

So why does all of this matter?  One can think of many reasons not to let the opposition into the hallowed chambers of the Supreme Court, but none more important than staving off any attempt to reverse the prior, illegal ruling by the current constitutional court made last year in favor of presidential re-election. (And that ruling could only come about because Congress had, in 2012, illegally dismissed four of the five justices on the constitutional court – the lone justice left untouched was later rewarded with the post of Attorney General, Oscar Chinchilla, who continues to this day.)   Prior to this vote, which it appears the opposition parties might lose, a year ago they had been successful in defeating the President’s attempt to raise the status of the new military police in the Constitution.  But there will be only so much they can do if the Supreme Court elected for the next seven years remains beholden to the two traditional parties. 

Mis-remembering USAID

In conversation with colleagues recently, various theories emerged as to what has happened to USAID over the years.  Too much of a contracting agency?  Too controlled by State?  Why has it lost so many professionals?

So I was left pondering how to explain USAID's "thinness", and started to refresh my memory about a few things that I'd once known.

 As it turns out, USAID changed considerably as a result of Al Gore. Yes. The whole "reinventing government" concept of the Clinton era led to a downsizing of staff, a perverse corollary of which was a thinning of evaluation and policy guidance. What I didn't find, but suspect, is that many of the USAID professionals who entered service in the 1970s or 80s left over time, phasing out their service by the 1990s or 2000s -- some quite naturally, due to generous pension plans (whereby USAID folks retire after 20 years, and start a second career -- I know someone in the foreign service younger than me who's planning on doing that in a couple of years, although now everyone only has 401ks, not pensions, so there are not the same incentives), some because of differences over changing policies, and some because of "reinventing government" downsizing.

 On the latter point, precisely when you might have gotten a whole new cadre of idealistic professionals under a Democratic administration, the opposite happened. By the time George W. Bush took office, his USAID Administrator, Andrew Natsios, noted that USAID had let its agricultural expertise and leadership melt away, devoting one billion dollars less to agriculture in 2002 than in 1985 (in 1985 dollars). USAID’s analytical capability in economics had suffered a similar fate, as USAID’s response to cuts in personnel funding had been to sacrifice technical expertise to preserve the jobs of managers.

And this the Clinton adminstration was quite proud of! Take this excerpt from a speech by Brian Atwood, Clinton's USAID administrator, in 1995:

No agency in government has worked more aggressively to embody the spirit of reinventing government than USAID. USAID is far leaner and more focussed than it was just 18 months ago. Eliminating USAID would send a devastating message to all federal employees -- reform is not important; doing your job well is not important; moving boxes around on an organizational chart is.

To begin our reform process, we offered the entire agency as a laboratory for Vice-President Gore's "Reinventing Government" effort. As a result, USAID has put sweeping changes in place. During the last year USAID has:   

•  Announced the close-out of 27 overseas missions over the next three years and established a timetable for how long the agency should be involved in countries in which it currently operates;
• Eliminated 90 organizational units in Washington; cut back 70 senior positions, and reduced total staff by over 1,000.
• Developed a new electronic acquisition and procurement planning system that replaces 65 different systems and will eliminate tons of paperwork and expedite contracting.
• Established interrelated goals around which financial and human resources are focused: encouraging broad-based economic growth; protecting the environment; building democracy; stabilizing world population growth and promoting human health; and providing humanitarian assistance and aiding post-crisis transitions.
• Completed an agency-wide reorganization and "right-sizing" effort to streamline the agency.
• Introduced reforms to open up USAID's procurement to the best expertise in America, whether that expertise is located in Seattle, Milwaukee or other places "outside the beltway."
• Reduced project design time by 75 percent and developed a framework to unify USAID's multiple personnel systems.

Our efforts are succeeding. So much so that a member of the Ferris Commission which President Bush appointed to review USAID in 1993, said "This is the most remarkable transformation of a government agency I have ever seen."

What the above citation does not make reference to, though, is the collateral gutting of the policy and evaluation function within USAID. This began to be reversed at the end of the Bush administration, and now is being supposedly being revamped under this administration. See this note from a 2004 review of USAID evaluation:

The Government Performance Review Act (GPRA) and the advent of re-engineering in 1993 were cited most often by those interviewed as the turning point for the demise of the evaluation function in the Agency. The fact that Agency guidance is inconsistent, providing guidance in the Automated Directives System (ADS) that only "recommends" each Strategic Objective be evaluated once during its lifetime but elsewhere stating that submission of evaluations is MANDATORY, allows already overburdened Missions whose staff is inadequately trained in evaluation techniques to either ignore the evaluation requirement, the submission requirement or both.

With the push for performance monitoring and management for results, at some point Agency decision makers became confused and began to equate performance monitoring with evaluation. Thus, USAID has come to its current state - a meagerly-staffed evaluation office in the Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination and multiple, uncoordinated, sometimes unsatisfactory Bureau and Mission attempts at evaluating, often with little knowledge of solid evaluation techniques and certainly without systematic submission to the Agency's central knowledge repository.

On the issue of the impact of State Department control of USAID, I don't have much direct personal experience, as this only took place in 2006 (and my last work as a USAID contractor was in Feb. 2007). (One should not confuse the increasing oversight by State of USAID in 2001 with this later policy move.) There, one of the main issues seems to be the changing focus to short-term priorities over more long-term development goals, as noted by the Foreign Affairs piece in late 2008 (and cited in this TNR piece):

...Atwood joined two other former USAID administrators--M. Peter McPherson (Reagan) and Andrew Natsios (Bush II)--in penning an article for Foreign Affairs that criticized the 2006 decision to bring USAID under State Department control. The former administrators argued that the agency was focusing too much on the short-term provision of emergency goods and services, and not enough on long-term development work. “[R]esources devoted to postconflict transitions,” they lamented, “now exceed development investments in peaceful nations.”

But frankly, I think the other historic problems with USAID noted above are more important in explaining the precariousness of USAID's overall mission.

Salvador snippets

Last week I interviewed El Faro's Carlos Dada, who published a lengthy story on the Romero case based on an exclusive interview with Alvaro Saravia.  It's long, but makes for a good read.  I think the interview adds some context.  It was published at the new Open Society Blog, which has some interesting stories, if I do say so myself.  Perhaps worthy of note is the commentary on the piece by the irrepressibly contrarian Paolo Luers, who questions the style in which Dada wrote the piece, saying that it's hard to know at times who's voice is represented in the text -- Saravia's? Dada's?  I think he raises some legitimate issues, but he could up just debating himself if El Faro doesn't respond.  Meanwhile, the issue of amnesty (or rather, whether to reverse the old post-peace accord amnesty decree) has been revived in a way that we haven't experienced in many years. More on that later, if I ever get caught up with other tasks at hand.

Also, on March 7, Freedom House's Countries at the Crossroads report, a survey of democratic governance in selected countries, was released. I authored the report on El Salvador.  Although it is dated 2010, it covers March 2005 to September 2009, which in the case of El Salvador is essentially the Tony Saca administration.  Although in most ways, El Salvador is much better off in terms of governance indicators than other Central American countries, there's one issue that brought it's overall score down -- the absence of a Transparency Law.  I personally think this issue is overrated, since most transparency laws in the region are not complied with at all, and institutions (like the IFAI in Mexico) find a way to subvert the intentions of the law.

Chavez vs. Chavez

I was drawn to the comparison of the two Chavez's in Josh's Hemispheric Brief yesterday, especially by the op-ed by Prof. Jeffrey Rubin, who has lead a research team looking at social movements in recent years with funding from OSI's Latin America Program.  In reading the two pieces, I think the main point of both -- the fundamental flaws of personality-driven politics -- is missed in the brief characterization above, which mostly highlights the positive aspects of both men.

In fact, Miriam Pawel, a journalist who's just written a book about Cesar Chavez,  laments his over-idealization -- as one suspects from the title and subtitle: "Not just to praise Cesar:  Cesar Chavez has been elevated to iconic status without his legacy having been critically examined". The main thrust of her piece is as follows:

The first half of the story has been widely told and Chavez's place in history justly celebrated. His birthday is already a holiday in California and several other states. But the David-versus-Goliath victories are only a piece of the Chavez story.

Chief among the lessons we should take from his life is that heroes are human, with real flaws. You follow them blindly at your own risk. The biggest regret that many who worked closely with Chavez now express is that they did not speak up for what they believed in when it might have mattered. They failed to fight to keep building a labor union when Chavez veered determinedly toward his vision of a communal movement for poor people, based on an ideology of sacrifice.

A second lesson is that the inspirational leaders who build movements are not necessarily suited to run organizations. Chavez was a brilliant strategist, most comfortable in the adversarial role he termed the "nonviolent Viet Cong." By contrast, he dismissed as "nonmissionary work" the day-to-day routine of administering a labor union, negotiating contracts and resolving grievances. He lacked the interest to focus on those more mundane issues -- or the will to delegate the work to others and relinquish control.

His insistence on absolute control demonstrates a third lesson: When you empower people, they may not choose to wield their power toward the goals you believe they should. Chavez was a risk-taker, and he taught others to take risks. But trusting workers to run their own union was one risk he adamantly refused to take. That cost farmworkers the best chance they ever had at building an effective and lasting union.

None of this appears in California's official curriculum, a selective and glowing account of Chavez's life, developed in conjunction with his heirs and adopted by the state Board of Education to fulfill the law that established Cesar Chavez Day.

And the money grafs of the Rubin piece similarly highlight the "lessons" of Hugo Chavez as failing to promote real democratic norms:

For Cesar Chavez to have succeeded in his dream of dignity and well-being for farmworkers, he would have needed to combine his visionary commitment to building a movement with attention to the day-to-day details of making a labor union work for its members. He would have had to set up procedures for debate and voting – a democracy inside the UFW movement. Farmworkers needed a progressive movement and democracy to be able to take on the interests of the powerful and sustain the gains for which they fought so hard.

The same is true for Hugo Chávez. To make good on his promises of dignity and well-being for poor Venezuelans, he needs to combine his movement with real commitment to democratic institutions and procedures before it’s too late. That means freeing the radio stations and newspapers to say what they want, bringing fairness and robust competition back to courts and elections, and keeping social movements mobilized and in the streets.

The movements behind Chávez, in turn, need to press for real change while insisting on the means to hold leaders accountable, not signing over their autonomy to one big, Chávez-led project. Venezuelans need not only a movement in the streets but the working, day-to-day practices of democracy to forge more humane alternatives to the brutal market economy that has devastated their country.

Perverse incentives for law enforcement, at home and abroad

With help from the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, the Washington Post today has a disturbing story today about ICE laying out perverse incentives for running up the numbers when it comes to deportations. Contrary to previous statements by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE chief John Morton that DHS would prioritize deportations of the most violent illegal immigrants, these reporters got their hands on some internal memos and spoke with anonymous employees detailing the new guidelines:

Since November, ICE field offices in Northern California, Dallas and
Chicago have issued new evaluation standards and work plans for enforcement agents who remove illegal immigrants from jails and prisons. In some cases, for example, the field offices are requiring that agents process an average of 40 to 60 cases a month to earn "excellent" ratings.

Such standards present a problem, said one San Francisco area agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal. Instead of taking a day to prepare a case against a legal resident with multiple convictions for serious crimes, agents may choose to process a drunk driver or nonviolent offender who agrees to leave the country voluntarily, because it will take only hours.

This reminds me of the numbers game that DEA and FBI agents working in Colombia are encouraged to play when working on extradition cases, as noted in a policy brief published last December by the Bogota-based Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (FIP). And their reporting was also based on interviews with former DEA and FBI agents:

“The DEA has statistical fever,” the same former DEA agent said. “You need to get those numbers.” By numbers he means arrests and extraditions. He added that during the reviews, his superiors would frequently ask him about why he did not have a higher number of arrests. “You won’t see it written down anywhere, but that’s what they care about,” the former DEA agent said, referring to the number of arrests.

A former FBI agent agreed with this assessment and said at times it applied to his agency as well, often for the budgetary reasons mentioned above. “Extradition of low level members of a drug trafficking organization, it’s a gimmee, it’s a bump in the stats. You got bodies. It doesn’t necessarily mean the investigation was particularly successful realistically speaking, but it looks good on paper. It looks good as far as the number of indictments and subsequent extraditions that came out of a particular case. Where again it’s easy. And if somebody happens to fall into that network that dragnet at the local level can be lumped into the conspiracy
they are. And the government agencies both in the host country and the US look all the more better for it. There’s a justification by numbers that needs to be demonstrated to hold on to whatever’s left of the counternarcotics portion of law enforcement’s budget because everything else is being diverted to national defense and counterterrorism.”

Honduras again, in Foreign Policy

Here are a few graphs from a good op-ed (if I do say so myself) published this week at foreignpolicy.com:

Although coup leaders and others question Zelaya's method and motives, this crisis has revealed that many Hondurans still want a significant reform of their country's Constitution. It was the United States' own handpicked negotiator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who called the Honduran Constitution "the worst in the world." With neither any clause for impeachment nor any recourse for amendment, Arias had the document dead to rights. And it is easy to imagine the events of June repeating themselves if serious debate over constitutional reform does not continue once the facade of democracy is restored. Indeed, it is just this sort of national conversation that the majority of Hondurans still seem to desire. Just one month ago, 54 percent of Honduran respondents told a U.S. polling firm that a constitutional assembly would now be the best way for resolving the current crisis.

In the end, the Honduran people themselves will need to decide what, if any, changes they want to make to their Constitution, and whether any such changes can be made through a piecemeal reform process or whether a constitutional assembly to rewrite the document altogether will ultimately be necessary. For now, however, the United States should publicly support such a conversation, beyond Sunday's vote. And most importantly, it should do its part to ensure an open political environment exists for doing so.

In other words, don't bless these elections and walk away. Instead, Washington should maintain its suspension of government-to-government assistance and not recognize the newly elected regime until there is a full restoration of civil liberties and steps are taken to prosecute human rights abuses. Next, the Obama team should work with the Organization of American States and other democracies -- the vast majority of which is reluctant to endorse these elections -- to find a way to bring Honduras back into the international community. For starters, if the new government is to recover any semblance of legitimacy, it will need to ensure that adequate conditions exist for a broad and pluralistic debate and dialogue, including with respect to any constitutional issues. Moreover, such a dialogue should be seen as responding to the legitimate rights and concerns of Honduran citizens, rather than being branded as treason, as is customary for the coup government today.

Supporting this next process may be the only way for the United States to retain a trace of goodwill among many rightfully frustrated Hondurans -- not to mention the rest of Latin America, disappointed that five months of hemispheric unity might end because of a hasty and ill-considered decision to recognize Sunday's elections.

George Vickers is the director of international operations at the Open Society Institute.

What do they take us for, stupid?

It's quite the indicator of just how mediocre the State Department has been that they think they can bluff their way through the various mixed signals they're responsible for. From Tyler Bridge's story posted yesterday in the Miami Herald:

The U.S. State Department helped broker a deal that called for the Honduran Congress to vote on whether to allow Zelaya to finish his term. But once Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon made televised comments last week that seemed to remove pressure from Washington, Honduras' Congress has made no plans to vote on whether to enact the agreement.

Shannon said last week that the deal meant that the Obama administration would accept the outcome of the Nov. 29 presidential and congressional elections, regardless of whether Zelaya was back in power.

... Shannon made his comments last week to CNN en Español. State Department spokesman Charles Luoma Overstreet in an e-mail to McClatchy questioned the widespread interpretation of what Shannon said and sent a transcript of the interview that left out the relevant quotes. The actual transcript shows Shannon twice confirming that the U.S. would respect the outcome of the elections no matter whether Zelaya were restored.

A senior State Department official declined to discuss Shannon's statements Monday, saying instead, ``What we're trying to do is get the parties to follow the accord. . . . If the accord is not implemented fully, that will affect international perceptions.''

Needless to say, this may be the first election anywhere, anytime, in which the legitimacy of a highly dubious electoral scenario is validated ex ante by the U.S. government.

Why the Guaymuras Accord is a lost cause, and other Saturday morning musings

Even if the parties were to go back to the negotiating table, it is quite clear that the Honduran Congress will not agree to reverse their June 28 acceptance of Zelaya's resignation letter (that's right - that would be the letter with the fake Zelaya signature) anytime soon. As I argued yesterday, that's a clear precondition for moving forward with the unity government.

Lucia Newman, Aljazeera International's Latin America editor (and a respected former CNN correspondent and past winner of Maria Cabot Moors prize) noted Thursday:

"There is a lot that has not been worked out; the most important point is whether or not [Zelaya] the deposed president will be returned to power [before elections scheduled for November 29]. I can tell you that the way the numbers look, it does not look good for Zelaya."

And Tim Padgett has a quote from Pepe Lobo in the piece he filed yesterday for Time that demonstrates how hard it will be to push this back:

"Micheletti and Zelaya made a pact, and as long as that pact is carried out the world has to recognize the elections as valid," he says. "So at this point, what does it matter which of them is in office when the election is held?" Lobo also knows that as long as the vote is sanctioned by the U.S., from whom Honduras gets the lion's share of its trade and aid, he needn't lose too much sleep over the fact that the rest of the world will probably still refuse to recognize his election if Zelaya is not restored.

Other random readings this morning include the New York Times editorial , which has so many errors of fact and misinterpretation it's almost not worth reading. Rosemary Joyce laughs and cries at the State Department spokesperson's attempt to explain the inexplicable and defend the indefensible. For my money, the best editorials are always to be found in the Los Angeles Times, as in this Thursday editorial.

In addition to OAS Secretary General Insulza's strong comments yesterday about the need to restore Zelaya, only Bloomberg (also consistently reliable source of information) appears to report on the call by the foreign ministers of the Rio Group (a group of 23 Latin American and some Caribbean countries that notably does not include the U.S. or Canada, but does include key US allies such as Colombia, Mexico and Peru) that Zelaya's restitution is "imperative" and an "indispensable requirement."

Will Stibbens, Al Jazeera International's Washington Bureau Chief (and former Latin America regional editor of the the Associated Press Television Network) has a worthwhile editorial proclaiming the Honduran "oligarchy" to be the clear winners of this process so far. As for Zelaya:

After a bold and deft campaign to regain power, and with the prize within his grasp, he committed a critical, strategic blunder.

Zelaya believed that it would be enough to sacrifice his social project, and the mass movement that backed it, to convince his political enemies to restore him to the presidency.

His representatives signed an agreement that categorically forbids the convening of a national constituent assembly, or any other form of popular referendum on the constitution, but without a written guarantee of a return to power for Zelaya.

That was left up to the congress, who appear poised, in the face of US indifference, to deny him even this hollow victory.

As for other winners and losers, Stibbens continues:

What could have been a diplomatic victory for Washington, is now looking like another example of its clumsiness, which will end up exacerbating ideological divisions. If the agreement does collapse there will be repercussions, and collateral damage, throughout the region.

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who from the start condemned the negotiating track led by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias as a trap, will be vindicated.

Rethinking the Honduran Deal

Where to start in commenting on Honduras? The Economist piece cited in Josh's news summary today was on the money in its skepticism of the deal. Many of the rest of us, naively thinking that the Administration knew what it was doing when it declared victory with the Accord, were wrong. There was so much "constructive ambiguity" to how this deal would play out that there were far too many loopholes. I thought that the Administration (and Shannon) would not have touted an accord if they didn't think Zelaya would not be restored to power, if they didn't think that there were the votes in Congress to do this.

That's clearly the argument that Shannon used to persuade Zelaya to sign this. Indeed, on Friday, October 30th, the day after the accord, Shannon responded to the question about whether we might reach Nov. 29th elections with Micheletti still in power:

There is not a timeline for the congress to take a decision and the negotiators were very clear on this. In fact, last night, Mr. Zelaya’s chief negotiator came out and said that the commission could not impose a timeline on the congress because it was an independent institution. But there is a political dynamic here and a political imperative for the congress to move quickly on this decision. It’s just not something that can be ignored in the short term.

Granted, we all knew that there was no timeline, but statements like this plus reports from those close to Zelaya, indicated that there was reason to think that something would happen in Congress very quickly. That the National Party would see it in its interests to vote to return Zelaya to a basically powerless, caretaker post for a couple of months.

My own reaction to the accord was too much influenced by the often-times synchronized nature of accords -- if one side does one thing, the other side responds. Like Zelaya, I looked at the accord and saw Nov. 5 as D-Day -- because why would Zelaya supporters deem to integrate a government of national unity and reconciliation if Zelaya were not restored to power? (Zelaya took logic that a step further -- the swearing in of a new and legitimate cabinet requires a legitimate president, i.e., Zelaya, to do the job.)

Clearly we were not alone in this interpretation. In recent days, Lagos was clear that the return of Zelaya had to be part of the solution. On Tuesday, OAS Secretary General Insulza said: "La única salida de paz es restablecer al Presidente (Manuel) Zelaya por el escaso tiempo que le queda en la presidencia.... "Yo espero que [el congreso] lo hagan pronto. No creo que lo vayan a hacer hoy día, pero lo ideal sería que lo hicieran ya."

The accord just doesn't make sense from Zelaya's perspective unless he expected to be restored by Nov. 5th. It makes sense that Zelaya would not want to legitimate a "unity government" by sending hisrepresentatives to participate before he was restored to power.

And now that they are not there, the only way he would (and should) accept being restored to power is to redesign the entire cabinet. And what are the chances of that happening? I realize this would be largely symbolic, as his own presidency would have been at this point, but such symbolism is incredibly important -- the symbolism of allowing a country to throw out a president, and getting away with it by simply holding elections and moving on.

We started getting inklings of a far different interpretation of what we could expect to happen when Tom Shannon was quoted on CNN en Espanol a couple of days ago. (By the way, was that really the appropriate venue to finally be crystal clear about the US position?). In that 6-minute interview, Shannon clarified that Zelaya's return to power had nothing to do with the "unity government" or the elections -- that elections could happen without Zelaya's return, and the US would be okay with that.

"Officially, whatever happens in this process, the United States will recognize what happens on the 29th?" the CNN reporter asked Shannon (my translation). "Si - exactamente," replied Shannon.

At the same time, we now know that there were, in fact, incentives for the State Department's position. Indeed, The Hill reported last night that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) released the hold on Shannon and Valenzuela's nominations, noting:

Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary [of Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom] Shannon have assured me that the U.S. will recognize the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. I take our administration at their word that they will now side with the Honduran people and end their focus on the disgraced Zelaya.

Today we have word that, no sooner had DeMint's hold been lifted on Shannon, than was another one placed by Senator George Lemieux (newly appointed Florida Republican to replace Mel Martinez). According an email circulating from DC advocacy groups, he has done so "at the behest of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which is still furious over Secretary Shannon's impeccable handling of the Cuba OAS resolution earlier this year."

What's clear now is that this wasn't the great deal it was hyped up to be -- rather, it was a high-stakes poker game, and Zelaya got snookered. The US didn't "broker" or mediate this deal. All it did was weigh in one specific point about what the process would be to potentially return Zelaya to power -- i.e., send it to Congress, not the Supreme Court. Most all the other points were hardly different than what had been agreed upon weeks, if not months, ago.

Now that the Guaymuras Accord has failed, it's the US government with egg on its face. The State Department's defines sucess as the mere fact that it had persuaded everyone to come to an agreement about the rules of this poker game. Who wins or loses would be beside the point -- and so it's time to declare victory and move on. In its hasty zeal to reach an agreement, and end a diplomatic headache, the State Department has given us "diplomacy on the cheap" (as one former US diplomat referred to it a few weeks ago) and a fundamentally worse situation.

Why? The Economist (and one has to credit Michael Reid here) called it right when it predicted what would happen if Congress delayed:

...the united front against the coup in the outside world may buckle. The United States, which has already reopened its visa office in Tegucigalpa, the capital, appears willing to recognise the elections whether or not Congress votes to restore Mr Zelaya. But most of Latin America is unlikely to follow suit unless Mr Zelaya is reinstated before the ballot—especially since the head of the electoral tribunal says that anyone calling for a boycott will be jailed.

In addition to the ALBA countries, I think you can add Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile to the list of countries who do not recognize these elections, for starters. So hemispheric unity was shortlived, and the OAS will be more divided than before. Something else will have to budge to change this situation, as I rather doubt the US will be able to muster the two-thirds' vote needed to remove Honduras' suspension from the OAS. This is successful US diplomacy?

And the consequences of this for Honduras? Again, the Economist:

The army, having submitted to civilian authority for the past decade or more, has re-emerged as a political actor. An old-established two-party system is giving way to a far more polarising class divide. And the rule of law has been circumvented by both sides. “This is the repetition of 100 years of Honduran history,” says Mr Díaz Arrivillaga. “It’s the same ghosts: stopping communism, selective violations of human rights, constitutional breaches, and agreements among elites and caudillos sponsored by the United States. It’s nothing new.” In one of the poorest countries in the region, that lack of novelty is all the more depressing.

I fear we're in for months, if not years, of continued social and political conflict and unrest.

Taking Stock of Barack on foreign policy

An editor at The National Interest reviews Obama's foreign policy views critically, but ends up with a good measure of respect:

Perhaps the best compliment to Senator Barack Obama and the relative integrity of his record is the distortion of his statements by his political opponents. From President Bush to former President Bill Clinton, Obama’s detractors have either mischaracterized or put considerable spin on his positions on key areas, such as Iraq, Pakistan and Iran. This could well be because Obama is at a substantive advantage vis-à-vis his Democratic and Republican challengers, given his publicly stated foresight on the Iraq War. And while Obama’s positions on important foreign-policy issues have not always been static (even to some degree on the Iraq War), Obama has demonstrated a willingness to acknowledge his prior position. Obama has therefore not resorted to that dark art of politics, alchemizing one’s prior positions in order to avoid acknowledging misjudgments or contradictions.

...Obama’s record is not free of vacillation or disconnect, but in broad strokes it seems to reflect logical cohesiveness and a tendency to stake politically risky positions in forthright terms—such as his stated willingness to meet with the Iranian leader. It is perhaps for this reason that his opponents prefer to recast his past positions, rather than reckon fairly with his record and proposals.

Stayin' Alive in Venezuela

The January 5th edition of the Wall Street Journal pays attention to some of Chavez's more pragmatic, post-referendum moves. I love the fact that, in addition to lifting some price controls, they're also busy importing food from the U.S. to make up for shortages (last para below):

"We have decided to open ourselves up to attend to street-level problems, like garbage and shortages, because we believe that you can't theorize about socialism if the people don't see government in action," said Jesse Chacon, the new government spokesman, during a press conference Friday to announce the cabinet changes.

Most observers believe Mr. Chávez's new strategy doesn't mean an end to his grand ambitions to remake Venezuela into a utopian society as well as stay in power for good to make that vision a reality. Instead, the moves signal that his own political survival may be more important to Mr. Chávez than any ideological blueprint.

"Chavez is not rigid ideologically," says Gilbert Merkx, a Latin American specialist and director at Duke University's Center for International Studies. "He is very improvisational and has a floating ideology that allows him to reinvent himself."

Not that anyone believes Mr. Chávez is about to become a believer in free markets. In a research note, the investment bank Goldman Sachs said it had "yet to detect signs that going forward the heterodox policy orientation will be reverted or moderated."

It is also far from clear that Mr. Chávez's new team is up to the task of rectifying Venezuela's growing list of economic problems. For one, many of the new cabinet members are recycled from previous posts or other spots in the government and don't bring fresh ideas. The new finance minister, Rafael Isea, was previously vice finance minister for endogenous development. The newly named planning minister wrote a book called "Capitalism is Bad Business: Principles for Socialists."

In attacking the problem of food shortages, Mr. Chávez eased a price control on one kind of milk, but most of his solutions involve greater government intervention. Houston-based logistics managers for state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA were diverted from their usual jobs in recent months and charged with buying up tons of food from the U.S. for delivery to Caracas, where they are offered to the poor at one-day outdoor markets run by the government. "We're learning on the fly," a PDVSA worker reached by telephone said of his new mission.

Latell on Cuba

In an opinion piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, former national intelligence officer for Latin America Brian Latell predicts a gradual economic opening in Cuba -- along the lines of a Vietnamese or Chinese model -- with Raul's ascendancy. But on governance he says it's a matter of different styles more than anything else:

Raúl's style guarantees that Cuba will be governed differently. He'll rule more collegially than his brother, consulting trusted subordinates and delegating more. During the interregnum he has worked with officials of different generations and pedigrees, even promoting one long-time archrival to create a united front after his brother's initial withdrawal.

On his watch, Raúl has broken some previously sacred crockery as well. He has admitted that Cuba's many problems are systemic. In his disarmingly accurate view, it is not the American embargo or "imperialism" that are the cause of problems on the island, as his brother always insisted, but rather the regime's own mistakes and mindsets. He has called on Cubans, especially the youth, to "debate fearlessly" and help devise solutions for the failures. Candid discussions at the grassroots level have proliferated.

Yet like his brother, Raúl has no intention of opening Cuba to free political speech or participation. While the number of Cubans willing to voice their discontent publicly is on the increase, so too is the brutality of government reprisals against would-be leaders of the dissident movement. By acknowledging state failures, Raúl is playing with fire, and if the lid is going to be kept on, those challenging the regime have to pay a price.

He also wonders about how he will navigate the relationship with Chavez, the dependency on whom has nearly reached levels similar to that of the Soviet Union:

And there is Hugo Chávez. Unlike Fidel, Raúl has no personal rapport with the mercurial Venezuelan president, and surely no desire to be subordinated to another narcissistic potentate just as he is finally close to escaping his brother's grip. But Cuba has become highly dependent economically on Venezuela. The value of the Chávez dole, mostly oil, reached between $3 billion and $4 billion last year, approaching the amounts once provided by the Soviet Union. Raúl would be loath to provoke the Venezuelan. Without his support, the Cuban economy would soon plunge into deep recession.

There is no way to know how skillfully Raúl Castro will lead and deal with inevitable crises once his brother is gone. He clearly wants to begin rectifying economic problems but knows that, for some time at least, he cannot broadly repudiate his brother's legacy. A powerful backlash could come from fidelista hard-liners in the leadership -- and perhaps from Mr. Chávez. In the end, however, it is the gamble Raúl will have to take.

Transparency in the Venezuelan Referendum

There are many things to say about the voting process that just took place in Venezuela this past week, but this post will focus on only one important issue: the reliability and credibility of the actual voting process administered by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), which I think we can safely assume is 100% staffed with Chavistas.

It is first important to note that, from the 2004 referendum (when only 4% of the voting tables were audited, meaning the electronic tally was compared to the paper receipt) to the 2006 presidential elections (when some 30% were audited), to the December 2 referendum on the constitutional reforms (where some 54% of the voting tables were audited), the CNE has increasingly become more transparent in its operations in order to gain the confidence of a very skeptical citizenry.

Yet two days after the referendum, many people still feel that the numbers were tampered with, and that negotiations were held with Chavez so that the actual higher margin would not make Chavez look so bad. One group, for example, claimed today that the real vote was something like 58% for the NO, and 42% for the SI. Even though the opposition leader Manuel Rosales accepted the results in last year's December 2006 presidential election as valid -- did so again today -- rumors and desconfianza persist.

So what can the CNE do about it? One diplomat told me yesterday (Monday) that the CNE should publish the results of every voting table on the internet, so that people could check the results. This would go a long way to creating greater confidence in the electoral system.

Well, in fact, as of today, the CNE has done just that -- published the preliminary results of the votes that had been counted by Sunday night night (some 90% of all tables, with some voting stations that did not use voting machines coming in later, as well as votes from abroad). You can find the results here: http://www.cne.gov.ve/divulgacion_referendo_reforma/ (The voting results of the December 2006 presidential elections are equally disaggregated and available online, in case someone wants to do further analysis of political tendencies.) The most credible member of the CNE, Vicente Diaz, gave a press conference today in which he called upon everyone to access their website, and check the results for themselves.

You might ask, what does this prove? Let me run through the steps of tallying votes, at least in one voting center in Caracas which I observed, and it will become apparent that the Venezuelan electoral process allows for unprecedented transparency and for broad citizen participation in the verification of election results.

1. At the end of the day, the members of each mesa (which in this case included one representative each of the SI and NO, along with the official supervisors) were present while electronic paper receipts were printed out. Anyone who wanted to could be present, the results are read aloud, and copies were made for the CNE as well as for others who wished to have one.
2. Depending on the size of the voting center, 1-5 tables were audited through a random selection process carried out in each voting center. The auditoria process means that the box that contains the receipts of each vote (which is deposited in a sealed box after each electronic vote) is opened and counted manually, and a public tally is made to make sure that the paper receipts match the electronic printout.
3. Once all of this is finished, the electronic numbers are transmitted electronically to the CNE, which does the final tally.

As you can see, this process allows for all sides (as well as extraneous individuals and observers) to verify the vote count of every single mesa. One can often walk away with an actual electronic copy of the voting results from each voting center, which is amply checked because of the auditing process. Now that the CNE has produced these initial results, which represents most all of the centers that used electronic voting machines, then anyone can go online and verify whether the numbers were tampered with.

This really is an amazing degree of transparency, if you ask me, and I'd like to know if there's any precedent for this anywhere else in the world. Given that the students and opposition political parties mounted a vigorous effort to monitor the results of the referendum, if they do not come forward now with firm proof of results tampering, then perhaps the Venezuelan people will finally be able to get past this issue, a step that will be key to further stimulate electoral turnout in the future.

That's the basic story. Of course, there were irregularities -- for example, some machines broke down and were not repaired, and paper ballots were not always immediately available as a backup -- but the respected domestic monitoring group, Ojo Electoral, which monitored a sample of 400 mesas, noted that there were only "isolated incidents" in an otherwise normal process.

I was able to note in one polling place where I witnessed the final vote count in Caracas (one that went 2-to-1 in favor of the NO) the professionalism and openness of the CNE workers who tried to resolve these problems. For example, here's a video I took of how they dealt with what happened when a machine failed to give the final tally:

And here's a young CNE official explaining (in English) what is to be done if a machine breaks down during the day, which happened alot:

Here's another video, that was taken during the reading of the electronic tally:

And another one that looks at how the paper audit is done:

In this last one, notice how I try to show that several people in the room are doing their own tallies as each individual vote is counted:

Random points on Sunday's referendum

Yesterday's march in favor of a NO vote on the constitutional reforms was reported by AP to be more than 100,000 strong, but interestingly the pro-government venezuelanalysis.com website reported "several hundred thousand" persons demonstrated. One person told me this was the biggest opposition rally since the ill-fated April 11, 2002 march during the coup period. The opposition clearly has a sense of momentum going into Sunday's vote, with a strong push against abstentionism emerging.

In the few conversations I've had so far of those who follow this closely, however, they are still cautious about how this will all turn out:

• One cannot underestimate the capacity of the government to get out the vote for their position, as they've done in the past. Current estimates of 60% participation (those who will "definitely" vote) are still much lower than the December 2006 presidential elections, which had 74% participation with Chavez getting 7.4 million votes (about half of all eligible voters). The opposition has a lot of energy behind it, but no systematic get-out-the-vote campaign. The polls indicate that any additions of newly decided voters will tilt the current toss-up towards the NO, but just how many people will turn out remains to be seen.
  
• The opposition is more prepared and organized to monitor and defend the results of the referendum than they have been in the past, but -- I'm not sure this extends to rural areas, which is where the government will be able to mobilize people overwhelmingly. One person mentioned voting tables that had gone 100% for Chavez in the past (indicating either a capacity for mobilization or an unfettered capacity for tinkering with the numbers in these areas.)
• One person mentioned that there is often a secret vote for Chavez among middle and upper-middle class voters, who essentially vote their pocketbook (since they're doing quite well). I haven't heard of anyone who's really studied voting patterns, but this should be easily verifiable after the fact.
  

Stay tuned.

Washington Post weighs in on WOLA drug claims

Several weeks ago, a story from AP found found Justice Department and GAO findings contrasted with the claims by drug czar John Walters of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that the "unprecedented" recent spike in cocaine prices was evidence that US drug policy was working.

Now, Michael Dobbs, who writes "The Fact Checker" blog at the Washington Post website, has weighed in, spurred on by WOLA's recent press release challenging Walters' triumphant rhetoric. While Dobbs ended up saying the verdict on the facts is pending (and asking readers to provide other views), he finds that there is great skepticism on both sides of the aisle in Congress over ONDCP's methodology.

Dobbs also publishes a graph from a RAND report commissioned by the ONDCP, which finds a long-term decline in cocaine prices:

Dobb comments:

The most striking point in this graph is the long-term downward trend in retail cocaine prices, despite all the efforts at interdiction undertaken by successive U.S. administrations. By eyeballing the chart, you can see that there were significant price spikes in 1982, 1990, 1994, and 2000, which are
comparable to the recent increase. Each spike was followed by another sharp decline, as producers responded to the higher prices. Compared to historical levels, cocaine prices are still very low, particularly if you factor in inflation.

The RAND data is not strictly comparable to the latest DEA data as it measures the retail slice of the market, rather than average purchase prices. (RAND data for other slices of the market show similar peaks and troughs.) But it certainly suggests that policy-makers should be more cautious in using terms
like "unprecedented."

... One of the principal authors of the RAND study, Peter Reuter, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, said he was troubled by the way the DEA and ONDCP (the drug czar's office) kept changing its statistical methodology. "I don't understand why they don't run the series the same way (as RAND), just to remove any doubts that the data is solid. It would be much more convincing if they did that."

The ONDCP has its own blog, Pushing Back: Making the Drug Problem Smaller, which a week ago offered a rebuttal of WOLA's critique. However, ONDCP was obviously looking for a more definitive pat on the back from Dobbs than what they received, when they wrote:

On a more optimistic note, WOLA apparently sent their press release claim to the Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, who runs a "Fact Checker" feature for the paper. At Dobbs' request, we have provided the full data story correcting
the record about WOLA's claims, showing why their assertions are off the mark. We look forward to a fair accounting of the situation.

CAFTA and the Administration's contradictory positions on sovereignty

Daphne Eviatar, a contributing editor to American Lawyer and a 2005 Alicia Patterson Fellow, has a piece in today's Washington Post Outlook on a provision of CAFTA that that allows for " 'investor-state arbitration' provisions [that] actually hand foreign businesses powerful rights that trump the interests or desires of local citizens." It's worth quoting at length:

How can a multinational corporation that objects to local environmental, health or safety regulations sue a national government? That license is provided under NAFTA. Once CAFTA is signed, it will provide the same right. In each case, a provision of the agreement allows a foreign corporation to sue a national government for money damages if it believes that the actions of the federal, state or local government in a given country are discriminatory, violate international law or can be considered -- directly or indirectly -- an expropriation of the company's investment. If complying with an environmental regulation makes a project no longer worth the cost, a company can claim that its investment has been expropriated by the state.

Whether the company is in the right won't be decided by an independent judge, however. Rather, it will be decided by a panel of three private international arbitrators chosen by the parties involved. These arbitrators are often corporate lawyers, who, in another suit, could be representing the investor. Affected citizens are not parties to the case. The government's right to protect the water supply in Guatemala, then, could be decided by British or American lawyers, for instance.

Eviatar then quotes some credible legal sources about a similar issue that came up in NAFTA:

Still, many legal experts argue that the provisions violate state and national sovereignty: They allow foreign investors to make an end-run around the federal courts, which usually rule on the legitimacy of public laws. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote after NAFTA's adoption: "Article III of our Constitution reserves to federal courts the power to decide cases and controversies, and the U.S. Congress may not delegate to another tribunal 'the essential attributes of judicial power.' Whether our Congress has done so with respect to tribunals created by different treaties and agreements is a critical question." John Echeverria, executive director of Georgetown University's Environmental Law and Policy Institute, puts it more starkly: "Congress is virtually sleepwalking through a revolutionary, and likely highly destructive, alteration of the American constitutional system of government."

Finally, she underscores the hypocrisy of the Bush administration position on the issue:

These arbitration provisions also highlight the inconsistency of the Bush administration's approach to sovereignty under international law. According to many legal experts (including lawyers now bringing these claims), the significance of investor-state arbitration provisions, which wasn't clear at the time NAFTA was enacted under the Clinton administration, in the last few years has become so. The Bush administration has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases and the treaty creating the International Criminal Court on the grounds that these treaties threaten U.S. sovereignty. But when it came time to push for Congressional support of CAFTA and other trade pacts that compromise U.S. sovereignty for the benefit of big business, the administration's concerns about the integrity of our legislative and judicial system had disappeared.

Well said.

CAFTA--Was it worth it?

Last night I got a rather exuberant email from Chicago outlining for anti-CAFTA activists all the reasons they should be proud of their work. Unusual for a group who lost a vote by such a small margin, and who one otherwise might expect to be demoralized.

But reading today's Wall Street Journal, indeed there may be substance to their glee. If the page one story in today's WSJ is on the mark, for example, and the "CAFTA vote clouds prospects for other trade deals," then the Bush administration should be worried.

...the trade fight has also become increasingly partisan for its own sake, with Democrats voting as much to gain approval from domestic interests and labor groups as out of principled objections to the details of an agreement.

That clouds prospects for future trade deals, especially if the Republican margin shrinks in the 2006 elections. The all-important fast-track authority -- which gives the U.S. president the power to negotiate trade deals that Congress either accepts or rejects without amendment -- is up for renewal in 2007.

...For Latin American governments mulling their own free-trade pacts with the U.S., the Cafta cliffhanger raised an unsettling question: If the tiny, ardently pro-U.S. economies of Central America can barely get a deal, what can we expect? That may make Latin leaders less willing to expend political capital at home to win approval for trade deals that grant greater access for U.S. goods. While individual countries like Panama will continue to seek bilateral pacts with the U.S., the Bush administration's already troubled plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas faces an increasingly uncertain future.

Elsewhere in their paper (another two news stories, and one editorial bemoaning the Democratic posture), reporters note the US' declining influence in the region, CAFTA notwithstanding:

Washington's reluctant approval of a deal that was widely seen in Latin America as tilted in the U.S.'s favor is likely to aggravate the decline of U.S. influence in the region, which feels it has an uneven relationship with the world's sole superpower.

Finally, the Journal continues it's excellent coverage of Republican "arm-twisting" (yes, a phrase they do use) to get the oh-so-slim CAFTA victory.

Time will tell whether it was worth it to the Bush administration to elevate CAFTA to such a primordial place on its policy agenda. To read the reporters of the WSJ, one would think they already have an opinion about that.

Update: Reading through a round of friendly bloggers (something I have little time for of late), I see that Boz comes up with another interesting unintended consequence of a CAFTA victory (something he supports, albeit with reservations). I noted yesterday that Central American elites will be held accountable for any failure (likely, in my opinion) of CAFTA to produce lots of new jobs. Boz sees gold for Chavez as well:

The bad news for bill's supporters is, in the short term (1-3 years) the passage of CAFTA may actually benefit Chavez. CAFTA becomes Chavez's whipping boy, a gringo economic policy he can point to when development doesn't come immediately or some people lose out in the new free trade deal. Chavez doesn't care whether it's true or not. The Venezuelan regime is a master of public relations and they will find a way to turn CAFTA against us in the media. This isn't an argument against CAFTA, but it is something to be prepared for.

CAFTA as Trojan Horse

The best coverage today comes from the Wall Street Journal, which details some of the last-minute vote-buying/bargaining from the Administration:

Republican leaders secured at least five votes for Cafta by agreeing to bring separate legislation to the floor that would allow the U.S. to impose duties on exports from China and others designated as nonmarket economies by the Commerce Department. The measure, approved yesterday in the House by a 255-168 vote, was castigated as "a sham" by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and faces uncertain prospects in the Senate.

Another five votes, and perhaps more, came after the administration cut deals to assuage textile-industry concerns, such as fears that the pact would create incentives for Central American producers to use inexpensive Asian-made yarn and fabric instead of U.S.-made materials. Even with the changes, opposition remained among lawmakers from textile-producing states.

Even their accompanying graphic was snyde, or at least used it to illustrate how all of this is much ado about very little. It's worth going back about 10 days to another WSJ analysis piece, entitled "CAFTA No Cure-All for Central America," to grasp why this CAFTA may not do much for the region. That article ends with the following prognosis, and makes the radical suggestion that perhaps free movement of labor (which is what we have already in a rather de facto way, and which is what is really helping Central American economies) is what might work best:

But Cafta's immediate economic benefits are so "nebulous" says the economist Carl Ross, a Bear Stearns analyst, that he says he can't incorporate them into his forecasts for the region.

When it comes to promoting regional security through economic growth, the Europeans, looking for deeper economic integration, have adopted another model. The European Union offers its poorest entrants free trade coupled with development assistance, free movement of labor and other measures designed to lift nations out of poverty.

When such poor nations as Ireland and Spain were admitted to the EU, they received funding aimed at boosting competitiveness and their workers were able to work elsewhere in wealthy Europe. Today, Ireland has one of the world's fastest growing economies and is competing on solid footing in high technology. The disposable income of Spanish families has risen by nearly 40% since 1998, estimates by Spain's La Caixa bank show.

Cafta's limited trade openings are unlikely to produce such dramatic gains.

Finally, today's WSJ piece provides more explicit details about Administration lobbying:

In a day of high-level lobbying, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the rounds to argue that Cafta would help heal old divisions in the region and foster stability. Late last night, Mr. Cheney camped out in an office just off the House floor, and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez worked the halls.

Wait a minute -- CAFTA will "help heal old divisions" in the region?

NOT. CAFTA has already provided a useful political foil for the left, and now that the region's elites have it, they'll have to accept the political consequences should that reported 300,000 job gain in the region prove elusive. That can only help the left and other opposition forces. Which I doubt the Bush administration will be too happy about.

Talking sense on CAFTA

Okay, so he doesn't really delve into the issues, but this is a nice bit from today's op-ed from one of Maine's two Congressmen, Michael Michaud.

At the end of the day, opponents of CAFTA have not asked for no trade deal at all, but merely for a simple renegotiation of the treaty in order to fix glaring problems and promote trade that is fair to workers on both sides. So far, the administration has refused.

How could such a bad deal for our workers pass? In recent days, the administration has authorized House leaders to secure votes with whatever is at hand, from extra funding for individual members' districts in the highway and energy bills to the still incomplete annual appropriations bills. Members are being asked to trade away their votes for a trade agreement that only promises to trade away American jobs.

Two years ago, this tactic worked to pass the deeply flawed Medicare bill by one vote - leadership held open a 15-minute vote for three hours while they twisted arms in order to ensure its passage. It is expected that the CAFTA vote will be more of the same.

Is this the way that the people's House should look after the best interests of our nation? What message does this send the American people and our work force? And why must these votes always be held in the dark of night? While working Americans sleep, their jobs are traded away in a Capitol Hill back room.

Why a paltry anti-war movement might be a good thing

Various polls show public sentiment on US policy in Iraq waning. Gallup, for example, says that 6 out of every 10 Americans favor a partial or full withdrawal of troops. Harold Meyerson explains why, unlike the Vietnam war era -- when there were similar numbers in public polls -- this time public opinion might count:

These figures already match the polling in the middle and late years of the war in Vietnam -- even though that war was fought with vastly higher casualties and a conscript army. In a series of polls taken in November and December of 1969, the Gallup Organization found that 49 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal of U.S. forces and 78 percent believed that the Nixon administration's rate of withdrawal was "too slow." But there was one other crucial finding: 77 percent disapproved of the antiwar demonstrations, which were then at their height.

That disapproval was key to Nixon's political strategy. He didn't so much defend the war as attack its critics, making common cause with what he termed the "silent majority" against a mainstream movement with a large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe. When Nixon won reelection in a landslide, it was clear that the strategy had worked -- and it has been fundamental Republican strategy ever since. Though the public sides with the Democrats on more key issues than it does with Republicans, it's Republicans who have won more elections, in good measure because the GOP has raised its ad hominem attacks on Democrats' character and patriotism to a science.

Which is why, however perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration, and why the Republicans are reduced to trying to turn Dick Durbin, who criticized our policies at Guantanamo Bay, into some enemy of the people. The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits.

Unable to distract people from his own performance, Bush is tanking in the polls. And with congressional Democrats at least partly muting their opposition to an open-ended occupation, it's Bush's fellow Republicans -- most prominently, North Carolina's Walter Jones -- who are now calling our policy into question.

The lesson here for liberals and Democrats is not that they should shun oppositional politics -- after all, they confronted Bush head-on over Social Security and prevailed. My hunch is that candidates in the 2006 elections -- not to mention, 2008 -- who call for putting a date on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be rewarded at the ballot box. But it will probably help such candidates, and certainly confound the Bushites, if antiwar activists forget about the streets and focus on the polls.

Cows for Cuba

I guess I need to brush up on my U.S.-Cuba policy, as an article that appeared the last Friday in the Portland Press Herald surprised me with the breadth of trade being "freely" planned with Cuba.

Cuban delegation in search of heifers at Maine farms
By CLARKE CANFIELD, Associated Press

Maine cattle farmers will be showing off their herds when a contingent of Cuban officials visits a dozen farms in the coming four days in search of heifers to bring back to the Caribbean nation.

The delegation is scheduled to visit farms in southern, central and coastal Maine in a trip that begins today and continues through Monday.

The trade mission will provide Cuba with much-needed cows, while giving Maine farmers new markets for their cattle. The Cuban officials are also scheduled to meet with Maine potato and apple growers to discuss deals to buy those products later this year.

"There's a big demand for heifers in Cuba, and a lot of farmers are willing to get involved because down the road it could lead to future sales," said Maine Agriculture Commissioner Robert Spear.

The Cuban delegation includes government officials who specialize in imports, agriculture and veterinary medicine. They have already toured dairy farms in Pennsylvania and Vermont in hopes of buying several hundred heifers, young cows that have not yet borne a calf.

Officials said the cows have been selling for around $1,900 each.

For farmers such as Steve Keene at the family owned Conant Farm in Canton, a Cuban market for cattle helps diversify the farm and protect it in times of depressed milk prices. Keene said the Cubans are buying cows that are three to five months pregnant that will be shipped to Cuba, where they will later give birth.

"This will help us down the road because supply and demand will keep the prices at a good level for us," Keene said.

The trade agreement for Maine cattle is part of a bigger plan to sell other products to Cuba as well. On Sunday, the Cuban officials are scheduled to meet with apple and potato growers, said Doyle Marchant, owner of Cedar Spring Agricultural Co. in North Yarmouth, who organized trips of Maine delegations to visit Cuba in December and again in April.

"They need dairy products. The Cuban people, being in excess of 11.6 million people, are a protein-deficient society," Marchant said. "They don't have enough of anything as it relates to food, as it relates to pharmaceuticals and so forth." Food, agricultural products and medical supplies are the only items exempt from the 43-year-old U.S. trade embargo with Cuba.

Marchant said Cuban officials have signed contracts to buy apples and dairy products, and letters of intent for potatoes and lumber. Expanded trade will benefit both Maine and Cuba, he said.

"I'd rather see potatoes going to Cuba than see for-sale signs going up in front of potato farms," he said.

It's worth noting that Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Mexicans and other Latin Americans work in the lumber and apple industries (many illegally).