Coup in Tegucigalpa. A choice between two evils.

Yesterday, still in his pajamas and from an airport in Costa Rica, (former?) Honduran President Manuel Zelaya gave an improvised press conference. Hours before, he had been deposed by members of the Honduran Armed Forces and flown to San José. A coup d'état had taken place in Tegucigalpa.

The reason why President Zelaya was "kidnapped" (in his own words) and sent to Costa Rica was that he had been more than adamant in his desire to ask the Honduran people in a referendum whether they wanted a Constitutional Assembly to draft a new constitution for their country. However, at the heart of this initiative was Mr. Zelaya's even greater desire to stay in power for four more years: his term ends next January and the current constitution limits the President to one term only.

The operation that ended in Mr. Zelaya's deposition by force was backed by Honduras' Congress, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the Electoral Authority and of course, the Armed Forces. In the past few weeks the President had become involved in a political and juridical battle with the opponents of his referendum, all of whom maintained that the initiative could not go on, because it was illegal. After the chief of the Armed Forces, Romeo Vásquez, refused to help Zelaya coordinate the vote, citing its illegality, the President fired him. The Supreme Court, backed by the Attorney General, ruled that General Vásquez could not be fired for that reason, and ordered that he be reintegrated to his position. With a my way or the highway attitude, Mr. Zelaya went himself, followed by 2,000-odd supporters, to get all the ballot papers at the Air Force base where they were stored. He was going to have his referendum (which he had rebaptized as an "opinion poll") anyway. On Sunday morning, when the vote was supposed to occur, members of the Armed Forces entered the presidential house and, gun in hand, made him leave the country.

Latin American and other world governments have condemned the removal of Mr. Zelaya from power. Especially forceful has been the response from President Hugo Chávez, an ally of Mr. Zelaya, who told his other regional allies to meet in Nicaragua in order to find a way to restore Mr. Zelaya to the presidency. So far, the presidents of the countries that form Chavez's socialist block have declared that their countries will set up trade sanctions against Honduras.

In the meantime, the Honduran Congress has named a new civilian president, who seems to be in full command of the Armed Forces, but that nobody has recognized internationally. To this point, his chances of getting any legitimacy outside of his country look very dim.

So why did this happen and what can we expect now? President Zelaya was not deposed only because he wanted to change the constitution and get himself reelected. Rather, he was seen as too close to President Hugo Chávez and the country's politicians, judges and entrepreneurs wanted to prevent a Chavez-like concentration of power in Mr. Zelaya's hands. No doubt, Mr. Zelaya miscalculated when he kept pushing for his referendum in the face of huge opposition from the judicial and legislative powers. He also made a gross miscalculation about the extent of his control over the military. Firing General Vásquez also created uncertainty over the other Army generals who feared that the President could fire more of them if they opposed his referendum. He pushed the system too far, and those people who felt they had interests to protect reacted by getting rid of him.

Now, Mr. Zelaya is a sad figure in Nicaragua trying to get his presidency back. And he should get it back. Even if we dislike President Chávez, his policies and his allies, even if we dislike Mr. Zelaya a little, Honduras is in a worse situation now that President Zelaya has been deposed. The new government in Tegucigalpa will spend the rest of its days being despised by the world and the rest of Latin America. Don't expect anyone to recognize them as the legitimate government of the country, and so, they will only bring painful sanctions on their own people. No country can thrive if it's government is isolated from the rest of the world. In this time of democracy for Latin America, nobody likes a government that came to power by By kicking Mr. Zelaya out, the new leaders of the country have also made a gross miscalculation. They forgot that nobody can claim to defend democracy by using antidemocratic means.

However, it won't be easy for Mr. Zelaya to get his presidency back. Even if President Chávez is kind of threatening a military operation, the chances of this occurring in reality are small. Also, even if there still are thousands who support President Zelaya inside Honduras, the grip on power of the new government seems strong. In the next few weeks, the country will probably slide slowly into normalcy. As of now, most people have not stopped their daily activities and are going to work. If there is not a change in the situation within the next month or so, it seems that Mr. Zelaya will be destined to remain Latin America's most recently overthrown president. Nonetheless, Mr. Zelaya is due to address the UN General Assembly tomorrow, which does signal the support that he is receiving from the international community.

So, between the president who wanted to get himself reelected at all costs, and the leadership who got their way to the top through a coup, we choose the former. Even if he is not the President that Honduras needs, Mr. Zelaya is the President that Hondurans elected. And with an illegitimate group of people in his place, with no recognition from any other country, the ordinary Honduran will be the one to bear the consequences.

Told ya: Colombia's government fiscal deficit

Oscar Iván Zuluaga - Colombian Minister of Economy

There is an inherent pleasure to saying "I told you so". Knowing that someone was wrong when they did not take your advice and that now they are regretting it gives us a sense of superiority and self complacency.

So yes, Colombian government, we told you so. You knew as well as we did that if you did not save money during the short economic boom in the past few years, and transformed your fiscal deficit into a surplus, we were all going to regret it when the happy times were over. And guess what? The happy times are over. Big time! The world has entered its greatest recession in over 70 years and Colombia's economy, of course, has been hit. Now, due to Colombia's slowing economy and diminished tax revenue, the government forecasts that its fiscal deficit will grow to 22,8 trillion pesos (around USD 11.4 billion), and we will all suffer the consequences. We told you so, dear government, but you did not want to listen.

But only an idiot (and politicians in opposition to the government) would get pleasure out of that "I told you so". A bigger fiscal deficit means that the government will have to take loans domestically, which will diminish the amount of credit available to the private sector (ha! you and me), or get the money outside the country, which will make the peso appreciate as more dollars enter Colombia (there goes our exports sector!), or raise taxes (ok, give me a break). In any case, these are not good news for the economy.

But never mind. Despite the bad times, Colombians remain optimistic about the economy, and no one really knows why. Perhaps it is the fact that we believe that we have seen bad times before, and that this once we will also be able to work our way through. But speaking of work, jobs are scarce -the unemployment rate is 12%, industrial output is down and the peso has been appreciating already at an almost alarming rate (10% in a few weeks!). The few dollars I brought from the US are not worth as much anymore.

So, what hope do we have left? Well, first and foremost, the government will have to revise its budget and cut some spending. Start with the National Commission for Television, a useless behemoth that serves no other real purpose than distributing public offices to friends of the government. But that won't save much money. Of course, no one wants social spending to be cut, and as far as possible it should not be. It would be unwise to scrap defense spending, too.

The bottom line is that this will be a major headache for Uribe's (hopefully) last year in power. His successor (if that is not Uribe himself) will have to deal with a difficult situation with government finances -a situation that, according to Rudolf Hommes, a former Minister of Economy, could even be more difficult than that of Mr. Uribe's first year in government, when the country was still recovering from its worst economic crisis in 60 years.

How pessimistic should we be? I honestly don't know. The least we can do is to be somewhat concerned and press the government to cut useless portions of its budget. There is a lot of pork going around. The government should also stop worrying so much about trying to get the President reelected and start working on the real issues. Paraphrasing Ortega y Gasset, ¡A las cosas! Also, forget about a shortlived recession and a quick rebound of the economy. The good times we lived in the past are precisely that: in the past. Now, it's a different story.

Contando Palabras: Lo que la prensa dice del país

De vez en cuando la revista The Economist publica gráficas que muestran el número de veces que una palabra aparece en algún periódico. Esto, con el fin de mostrar qué tanto la palabra "recesión", por ejemplo está dominando la agenda mediática en algún país.

Siguiendo el ejemplo de The Economist, decidí hacer lo mismo con la página de eltiempo.com con las palabras reelección, recesión, homicidios, narcotráfico, desempleo, inflación y TLC. Sin embargo, me di cuenta de que eltiempo.com ha expandido su número de artículos singificativamente en los últimos años. Debido a esto, un simple conteo de palabras daría resultados que tenderían a mostrar inevitablemente un incremento en la aparición de estos vocablos en años recientes, lo que iría en contra del propósito del ejercicio.

Entonces, decidí tomar el número de veces que aparecía cada una de estas palabras en un año y dividirlo por el número de veces que apareció la palabra "país" en el mismo año -una palabra que, a mi juicio, tiene la misma probabilidad de aparecer en un año que en otro.

Los resultados son muy interesantes. Las siguientes gráficas muestran el índice de aparición de las palabras enumeradas anteriormente en diferentes años (número de veces palabra dividido entre número de veces palabra 'país').

El ejercicio muestra que la inflación y el desempleo dominan mucho menos la agenda mediática que en el pasado, aunque este año ha habido mayor preocupación por el creciente desempleo en el país, rompiendo la tendencia a la baja.



La palabra reelección, por el contrario, ha vuelto a aparecer con fuerza en la agenda mediática, mientras el referendo reeleccionista se abre paso en el Congreso. La gráfica muestra dos picos en el 2004 y 2009, años en los que la segunda y tercera reelección del Presidente Uribe han aparecido más en los titulares de prensa. Entre 2004 y 2007, el tema fue perdiendo importancia en la agenda mediática, sólo para recuperarla en 2008 con la aparición del referendo reeleccionista.

La palabra "recesión" se apropió de los titulares de prensa del año 1999, durante la crisis económica que sacudió al país. La prensa fue prestándole menor atención al tema después de 2000, y el vocablo apenas apareció en el periódico entre 2005 y 2007. Sin embargo, en 2008 y 2009, la recesión volvió a ser noticia con la crisis económica mundial. Hoy, la palabra aparece más en el periódico que en cualquier momento después de 2001.


La gráfica para "TLC" demuestra la gradual pérdida de importancia que el tema ha tenido después de 2006, año en el que fue firmado el TLC con los Estados Unidos. Se ve cómo el tema ganó atención súbitamente de 2003 a 2005, mientras se llevaban a cabo las negociaciones, pero en años más recientes, dada la antipatía demócrata en el Congreso de EEUU, los titulares se encargan menos de hablar del tema.


Los conteos para "narcotráfico" y "homicidos" muestran algo muy intrigante. Aunque la atención que los titulares de prensa le prestan al narcotráfico ha disminuido desde su máximo en 1996, el tema sigue estando a la cabeza de la agenda mediática y su aparición en los medios ha crecido continuamente desde 2003. Paradójicamente en 1999 y 2000, años en los que Colombia tuvo su mayor área de cultivos de coca, el tema obtuvo menos atención de la prensa. Con la palabra homicidios sucede algo parecido. La prensa ha ido incrementando su atención en el tema desde 2005, y 2007 es el año en el que más se habló del asunto -quizás tenga algo qué ver la reducción en la tasa de homicidios vista ese año. En cualquier caso, los homicidos también están en el centro de la agenda mediática de eltiempo.com



Ahora bien, la última gráfica muestra qué tanta atención comparativamente están recibiendo estos temas en el 2009. La palabra que más ha aparecido en la prensa es narcotráfico, seguida de reelección y en tercer lugar, homicidios. Comparativamente, el desempleo, el TLC y la recesión, son temas de segunda y tercera página.

Welcoming Murderers: The OAS resolution on Cuba

Yesterday, the members of the Organization of American States gave a pat in the back to the last dictatorship remaining in the New World. In its 39th General Assembly, the thirty-four OAS members agreed to lift the ban that suspended Cuba's membership in 1962. Back then, the OAS passed a resolution that excluded that Caribbean island from the organization, due to its love of communism and dictatorship. Today, however, with the ban brushed aside, the Castros regime would technically be able (if not willing) to rejoin the regional organization.

Leftist heads of state, including Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, who hosted the summit, Fernando Lugo of Paraguyay, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua congratulated each other for their action. Mr Zelaya flamboyantly declared that the lift of Cuba's suspension meant the end of the Cold War, adding that history had finally absolved Fidel Castro. From Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez said that the move by OAS was a restoration of Cuba's dignity, but that one ought to remember that this was not a favor being done to the island; for Chavez the ban was a "stain" in the history of OAS that was being "washed out". Cuba, Chavez said, was a "moral example", and this was a "recognition" to the Castros and to the revolution. José Miguel Insulza, OAS Secretary-General, a Chilean, and a socialist, said he was "happy and very proud" for the new resolution, adding that this was one of the "greatests achievements" of his secretariat.

Although the lift of the ban was arrived at through a 'consensus' of all the 34 members of OAS, including the United States, the move is being regarded as a victory of left wing Latin American governments over US foreign policy. There definitely was some discomfort in Washington due to the fact that the resolution lifted Cuba's suspension without any conditions whatever. There are some Republican members of Congress who are talking about withdrawing all American financial support of OAS.

But there is more than meets the eye. The move may well be regarded as the most recent in a series of steps that the Obama administration has taken in order to ease its relations with the Cuban regime. After decades of isolating Cuba, the American government seems somewhat willing to change (oh, that quintessentially Obama word) its approach to the Castros. Perhaps President Obama and Secretary Clinton are not entirely opposed to the resolution, although they surely do not like the fact that there are no conditions attached to it.

Moreover, one may also ask: does all this really matter? The dictators in Havana responded to OAS action with disdain, saying that they would never want to rejoin that "repugnant" organization. The lift of the ban was a merely symbolic gesture that is unlikely to change anything tangible in the region. It was nothing more than an opportunity for leftist governments to congratulate each other and rejoice about how far away they have moved from Washington's agenda.

But symbols do matter. The resolution came too close to be a celebration of the Castros' murderous, tyrannical, 50 years old rule. From all points of view, the Caribbean island remains the least free county of the Americas and one of the least free in the world. There is no freedom of speech or of association. The elections in the island are a bad joke on Cubans. In 2003, the Congressional election presented voters with 609 candidates (all supported by the dictatorship) competing for (wait for it) 609 seats. Newspapers that show the most minimal attempt at independence or opposition to the regime are closed. Prodemocracy groups are hunted down, and their leaders can be (and have been) sent to jail for 20 year long sentences: there are at least 250 political prisoners in the country. People are "encouraged" to spy on their neighbors and report any "antisocial behavior". The regime tightly controls what professors teach at universities and what students read. Cuba is an Orwellian nightmare come true.

And that is precisely why Cuba should not have a seat next to the region's democracies. The celebration of the resolution, the mutual congratulation, the words of encouragement to the Cuban regime, and talk of the absolution of all of Fidel Castro's crimes are a shame for the continent and their governments. This move is an insult to the memory and to the lives of all those who have suffered under the horrendous hand of the Cuban Communist Party. It was the celebration of poverty, of murder, of oppression and tyranny. This is what Latin America's left has brought us to.

The Cold War may be over, but there are a thousand more reasons to keep the Castro regime out of OAS. Shame, shame, shame.

'Su Anuncio Aquí': La alcaldesa y los comerciantes de Tunjuelito

Diana Marcela Martínez, Alcaldesa de Tunjuelito

En Tunjuelito, la localidad número seis de la ciudad de Bogotá, viven aproximadamente unas 250.000 personas, la mayoría de estrato 2. Es una zona de alta densidad poblacional y que padece graves problemas de contaminación, en parte por el deteriorado estado del río Tunjuelo. El humo de los automotores que pasan por la zona y las basuras también representan problemas para los habitantes de Tunjuelito.

Con el fin de mejorar la situación, la alcaldesa de la localidad, Diana Marcela Martínez, tiene una serie de "proyectos en materia ambiental y metas establecidas para el 2009 acorde (sic) al Plan de Desarrollo Local". La señora quiere mejorar las cosas. Entre estos proyectos, según la página de la alcaldía, está "realizar 20 programas y/o acciones en materia de residuos sólidos, reciclaje, selección en la fuente, limpieza del espacio público, contaminación visual...". Es este último punto el que ha acaparado mi atención.

El noticiero de Canal Capital, el canal público del distrito de Bogotá, informó esta noche que la alcaldesa decidió tomar medidas en contra de los comerciantes que contaminan visualmente la localidad con sus pendones, carteles y anuncios. Los empresarios de la zona, cuyos negocios crecen de forma desordenada, aseguran, han puesto un enorme número de avisos que afectan la armonía visual de la zona. Así pues, la señora Martínez ordenó el inicio de una campaña 'educativa' para enseñarles a los comerciantes a no contaminar el espacio urbano con su publicidad. Si los comerciantes no 'aprenden', dicta la medida de la alcaldesa, se verán expuestos al cierre de sus negocios. Asimismo, aquéllos que deseen tener anuncios en sus locales, tendrán que asistir a una oficina de la alcaldía (sin especificar) a solicitar un permiso. Adicionalmente, los avisos no podrán sobrepasar los tamaños especificados por la alcaldía. En la nota del Canal Capital, un ingeniero ambiental de la alcaldía de Tunjuelito explicó los alcances de la medida.

Así como lo expresé en una entrada anterior sobre el concejal Antonio Sanguino, con este nuevo caso creo que confirmo que las instituciones que gobiernan el distrito se llenaron de idiotas. La medida de la alcaldesa Martínez parece salida del '1984' de George Orwell y las explicaciones insensatas del supuesto ingeniero ambiental me hicieron hervir la sangre. ¿Son ésas las prioridades de una alcaldía en la que viven 250.000 personas de estrato dos? ¿Cerrarles los negocios? ¿Ir de tienda en tienda, metro en mano, a medir el tamaño de los afiches, pendones y demás anuncios? ¿Llenar de trámites a un montón de gente de medios modestos para que puedan colocar un simple anuncio en su negocio? ¿Será que la calidad de vida de los habitantes de Tunjuelito aumentará significativamente con el plan de estos papanatas? Los comerciantes de Tunjuelito sólo intentan ganarse la vida de manera honrada y prestarle servicios a la gente que los requiere. Y para hacer eso, necesitan publicitar sus empanadas, minutos de celular, bolígrafos, papelería, etc. Sin duda alguna, estos comerciantes son una parte importante de la economía de la localidad, pero la alcaldesa Martínez parece no darse cuenta.

¿A qué clase de imbéciles está nombrando Samuel Moreno para las alcaldías locales de Bogotá? Más valdría que se hiciera en Bogotá lo que sucede en Ciudad de México, donde los habitantes de cada localidad (delegación) eligen a sus alcaldes locales (jefes delegacionales) con su voto. Ojalá la señora reflexione y los tenderos de Tunjuelito puedan seguir ganándose el pan.