World Watch: Good night Wangari

* Kenya: Rest in peace Wangari Maathai; the environmental activist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient died at the age of 71 on Monday.

* Middle East: The U.N. Security Council will start holding meetings on Wednesday to decide on the recognition of Palestinian statehood to the global body.

* Italy: A senior member of the Catholic Church blasted the Italian political class for numerous scandals that have implicated top officials.

* China: A pair of Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in protest against the Chinese government's policies.

Image – The Guardian

Online Sources- CNN, BBC News, New York Times, CBC News

World Watch: Is Egypt next?

* Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak could suffer the same fate as Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as he risks being ousted after a popular uprising.

* Tunisia: Speaking of Tunisia the country’s interim government issued an arrest warrant for the capture of Ben Ali and six of his relatives.

* Italy: The pressure of the latest sex scandal seems to be getting to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after he engaged in a war of insults with a TV talk show host.

* Russia: The landmark “New START” nuclear disarmament treaty between Russia and the U.S. could soon take effect.

Image – Ben Curtis/AP via The Guardian (“Mobile phone users film riot police blocking press photographers during a second day of protests in Cairo.”)
Online Sources- The Guardian, AP, ABC News (Australia), The Telegraph

Daily Headlines: January 25, 2011

* Dominican Republic: Dominican model Maria Ester Garcia Polanco is one of the figures caught in the middle of the most recent sex scandal implicating Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

* Nicaragua: The ruling Sandinista party could ratify President Daniel Ortega to run for reelection though he may be constitutionally banned from doing so.

* South America: A minor diplomatic spat has arisen after the cover for Chilean author Eduardo Labarca’s latest book showed him supposedly urinating on the grave of Argentine wordsmith Jose Luis Borges.

* Mexico: Bishop Samuel Ruiz, best known for campaigning for indigenous rights and acting as a mediator with the Zapatistas, died on Monday at the age of 86.

Image – Ettore Ferrari/EPA via The Guardian (“Support for Silvio Berlusconi's party has increased from 28% to 30% this month, according to a poll published in Corriere della Sera.”)
Online Sources- The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Tico Times, BBC News

Corruption victorious in Colombian elections

One of the big winners of yesterday’s Colombian legislative elections were parties allied with President Alvaro Uribe. Sadly another victor was several corrupt politicians and their puppets.

The primary for the Conservative Party’s presidential candidate became a two-horse race between former ambassador Noemi Sanin and ex-Agriculture Minister Andres Felipe Arias. With only a few hundred votes separating both hopefuls, electoral officials will hold a recount while Sanin and Arias have each alleged voter fraud.

Arias had been involved in one of several scandals that have hampered Uribe in his eight years of presidency. Under Arias’ time as minister over $113 million in “non-repayable, tax-free subsidies” ended up in the hands of wealthy contributors to Uribe. Dubbed by some as "Uribito" (Little Uribe), Arias foolishly claimed that lands originally destined for thousands of displaced families would be better served by politically connected agribusinesses. Now he is a stone’s throw away from being the presidential candidate of one of Colombia’s main political parties.

Perhaps worse were the gains made by numerous politicians linked to the “para-politics” scandal. Despite being created last year by politicos investigated of having strong ties to right-wing paramilitary armies, the National Integration Party won at least eight Senate seats. “PIN's success in several provinces provided strong evidence that right-wing criminal bands associated with drug trafficking continue to plague Colombia's countryside,” according to the AP. The PIN won more seats than the two main leftist parties- the Greens and the Alternative Democratic Pole- on a day when six of seven former hostages held by the FARC lost their legislative bids.

Several jailed politicos convicted of their paramilitary ties even won by using their family members as proxies:

With 92.19% of the vote counted the children of “La Gata” (Enilce López) and ex-governor Hugo Aguilar won senate seats for the PIN.

For the Liberals one of the winners was the wife of Juan Manuel López Cabrales, convicted to seven years in jail. The cousin of former Senator Juan Carlos Martínez won a seat in the House of Representatives. – [ed. Translated text]

Image- Al Jazeera English (Colombian president Alvaro Uribe voted in Sunday’s local elections).
Online Sources- Colombia Reports, Plan Colombia and Beyond, IPS News, Canal Caracol, MSNBC, RCN Radio, El Tiempo

Colombian intel head resigns

The chief of Colombia’s intelligence services (DAS) quit on Thursday after her bureau was caught spying on an opposition senator.

“It would not be fair for the work of hundreds of agents to be stained by the actions of a few," Maria del Pilar Hurtado said in a release after center-left politico Gustavo Petro accused the DAS of secretly monitoring his actions. Hurtado also claimed that neither she nor President Alvaro Uribe ordered the surveillance of Petro or other members of the Polo Democratico party.

The DAS’ illicit surveillance paints an ugly picture of the Uribe administrations intolerance of contrarian political factions. Regardless of the ideologies behind Uribe and the Polo, such actions are undemocratic and stifling of dissent.

As the Center for International Policy’s Adam Isacson observed on his blog:

These documents are frightening because of what they say about the Colombian government’s tolerance of dissent, its ability to distinguish between legitimate political participation and left-wing terrorism, and the amount of political space in which the political opposition can operate.

They should trigger a scandal, and an investigation into possible illegal infringement of Colombians’ right to organize and participate in political movements. They should also inspire the U.S. government to loosen its embrace of a government that is clearly going too far in an undemocratic direction.

In 2005, former DAS chief Jose Noguera quit over alleged paramilitary ties. A former intel official also accused Noguera of “plotting to destabilize” the Venezuelan government.

Image- El Espectador (Maria del Pilar Hurtado stands behinds a seated Alvaro Uribe)
Sources- The Latin Americanist, AP, BBC News, Reuters UK, Plan Colombia and Beyond