Tag: Jair-Bolsonaro

‘El Loco’ at the helm: What next for Argentina under outsider president Javier Milei?

Post By World , , , , , , , , ,

A former TV personality-turned political maverick, Argentina’s president-elect Javier Milei has promised no half-measures as he bids to make his stricken country “great again”. Riding a wave of anti-establishment rage, the far-right outsider known for his foul-mouthed outbursts will have no time to bask in his stunning victory as he inherits an economy mired in crisis, with no experience and few allies to implement his radical agenda for change.

For years, Argentina’s discredited ruling class has been sitting on a powder keg, unable to lift the country out of a seemingly intractable crisis that has sowed anger and despair in South America’s second-largest economy.

On Sunday, the long-simmering anger boiled over, carrying to power a chainsaw-wielding political outsider who has promised to “blow up” the system and whose own supporters call him “El Loco” (the madman).

Milei, a former economist and TV pundit with almost no political experience, has surged to power on a wave of anger over decades of economic mismanagement. He has vowed to “put an end to the parasitic, stupid, useless political caste that is sinking” a country crippled by triple-digit inflation, where the poverty rate has reached 40%.

The self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” handily defeated his Peronist opponent, Finance Minister Sergio Massa, in a runoff election on Sunday – defying forecasts of a close race in a contest analysts had described as a tussle between two deeply flawed candidates.

“Argentinians were forced to choose between two very unappealing options,” said Benjamin Gedan, head of the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Latin America Program and director of its Argentina Project. He cautioned against reading the result as a wholehearted endorsement of Milei’s personality or agenda.


© FRANCE 24

“On one side, you had the current finance minister who has presided over an utterly failing economy,” Gedan explained. “On the other, a very radical outsider figure who offered something extraordinarily different: who wants to dolarise the economy, close the central bank, liberalise gun ownership and the sale of organs, a quirky individual who has cloned his dog and claims his pets are his senior advisers.”

Trump, Bolsonaro – and Wolverine

Milei’s astonishing rise to power is a measure of the frustration of Argentinian voters, laying bare the depth of resentment at the ruling class and the country’s state of affairs. It is also a product of television channels plugging provocative talking heads to boost their ratings, mirroring the rise of extremist pundits-turned politicians elsewhere.

Read morePushing far-right agenda, French news networks shape election debate

Argentina’s next president made his name by furiously denouncing the “political caste” on television programmes, while also rambling on about inflation and his sex life. His anti-establishment rage resonated with Argentinians yearning for change, while his dishevelled mop of hair – inspired by X-Men anti-hero Wolverine – and profanity-laden rhetoric only contributed to his notoriety.

Two years ago, Milei’s rising television stardom helped him secure a lawmaker seat in Argentina’s lower house of Congress. He was seen as a very long shot for the presidency only months ago – until he scored the most votes in August primary elections, upending the political landscape.

Before entering the public spotlight, Milei was chief economist at Corporación America, one of Argentina’s largest business conglomerates that runs most of the country’s airports. His flagship economic policies include “dollarising” the economy by 2025 to halt the “cancer of inflation”, meaning he would drop the peso – Argentina’s battered currency – and thereby relinquish control over monetary policy.

Milei has cast himself as a fierce adversary of the state, which he accuses of curtailing people’s freedoms and emptying their pockets. At campaign rallies he often appeared on stage revving a chainsaw to symbolically cut the state down to size. He has vowed to slash public spending by 15%, privatise state companies and reduce subsidies on fuel, transport and electricity.

The president-elect, who is due to take office on December 10, started to outline some of his planned policies in a radio interview on Monday morning, saying would quickly move forward with plans to privatise state-run media outlets that gave him negative coverage during the campaign, describing them as “a covert ministry of propaganda”.

“Everything that can be in the hands of the private sector will be in the hands of the private sector,” he told Bueno Aires station Radio Mitre, adding that the state-controlled energy firm YPF would be revamped so it can be “sold in a very, very, very beneficial way for Argentines”.

Javier Milei brandishes a chainsaw at a campaign event in La Plata on September 12, 2023.
Javier Milei brandishes a chainsaw at a campaign event in La Plata on September 12, 2023. © Natacha Pisarenko, AP

An admirer of former US president Donald Trump, Milei has likewise embraced his maverick status, commanding unrivalled attention throughout the campaign with his provocative statements. He has not shied away from lashing at revered compatriots, including Pope Francis, whom he branded an “imbecile” for defending social justice.

It is no surprise that he has adapted Trump’s best known slogan, promising to “Make Argentina Great Again”.

Like Trump and his Brazilian ally Jair Bolsonaro, Milei has appealed to the conservative vote by promising a crusade against progressive politics. He has described sex education as a Marxist plot to destroy the traditional family unit and has proposed a plebiscite to repeal abortion, which Argentina legalised in 2020. He also rejects the notion humans have a role in causing climate change.

All of this is “very worrying not only for women, but for minorities in general, because Milei is waging the same cultural wars that the far right is waging elsewhere”, said Juan-Pablo Ferrero, a senior lecturer in Latin American politics at the University of Bath.

“He is also rolling back on the human rights agenda that has gained Argentina international recognition” since the transition to democracy, Ferrero added. “Minorities will have to resist his moves in parliament and on the streets.”

Taking another page from the Trump and Bolsonaro playbooks, Milei also made unfounded claims of election fraud before Sunday’s runoff, raising concern about his respect for democratic norms. His victory also means the rise of Victoria Villaruel, his controversial running mate who has minimised the number of victims of Argentina’s brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship.

A ‘stress test’ for Argentinian democracy

In the run-up to the vote, Massa and his allies had warned Argentinians that Milei’s plans would sharply curtail hard-won rights and the public services and welfare programs many rely on. Their margin of defeat suggests the strategy – which Milei had dismissed as a “campaign of fear” – may ultimately have backfired.

“Despite Milei, despite all his campaign mistakes, despite all his peculiarities that raise doubts, concerns (…) despite all of that, the demand for change prevailed,” Lucas Romero, the head of Synopsis, a local political consulting firm, told the Associated Press.

Having cast himself as the “only solution” to Argentina’s woes, Milei will have little time to bask in his victory. Even before his election, analysts had already shed doubt on the feasibility of many of his campaign pledges, starting with his much-touted “dolarizacion”.

Ditching the peso in favour of the dollar requires a hefty stock of greenbacks, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that Argentina’s dollar reserves are dangerously low. Analysts have flagged the risk of a run on the peso as people panic believing dollarisation is imminent.

“Milei is someone who promises big new ideas but maybe too big and maybe not feasible,” said Gedan, noting that the president-elect has no parliamentary majority to back him and even less of a foothold in local government. “It’s far from clear he can implement his agenda, given his fledgling party, his few allies in Congress, the small and inexperienced group that surrounds him, and the fact that he controls none of the country’s provinces,” he added.


Milei’s Liberty Advances party counts just seven seats out of 72 in the Senate and 38 out of 257 in the lower Chamber of Deputies. He will be hoping to win support from the mainstream right of former president Maurico Macri, which threw its electoral weight behind him ahead of Sunday’s runoff in a bid to ensure defeat for the incumbent Peronist camp.

“It remains to be seen whether this electoral support will translate into a political agreement,” said FRANCE 24’s Argentina expert David Gormezano. “Will some of Macri’s circle join the government? Will conservative lawmakers offer their support? It’s too early to know.”

The lure of power, and a common detestation of Peronism, could be enough of an incentive.

“One can imagine the conservative camp going a long way to back Milei, including in some of his excesses, in order to get their revenge over the Peronist camp,” Gormezano added, though noting that Milei would still be short of a majority in Congress even with conservative support.

According to Ferrero, Milei’s election signals the “biggest stress test” for Argentina’s democracy since the end of military rule. Under the country’s constitution, “presidents have the power to rule by decree in exceptional circumstances – but that tests the system,” he explained. “We will see to what extent he makes use of those powers.”

There will be plenty of scrutiny of Milei’s first steps on the international stage, too. The Argentinian provocateur has already raised alarm bells in a number of Latin American countries and said he would seek to reduce trade with China, Argentina’s second-biggest trading partner after Brazil.

While Trump and Bolsonaro were quick to hail the election result on Sunday, neither is currently in power. The centre-left leaders of Argentina’s two largest neighbours, Brazil and Chile, have been noticeably more guarded in their response.

Brazil’s President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday extended his best wishes to the newly elected president, but did not make direct mention of Milei. He had previously expressed his hope that Argentinian voters would choose a president who supports democracy and the Mercosur trading bloc – which Milei has suggested Argentina should leave.

Milei has criticised Brazil’s president multiple times and labelled him an “angry communist” with a “totalitarian” bent. On Monday, a close Lula aide said Argentina’s president-elect must apologise to the Brazilian leader before talks between the two can be organised.

“He freely offended President Lula,” Social Communications Minister Paulo Pimenta told reporters. “It’s up to Milei, as president-elect, to call and apologise.”

Whether at home or on the international stage, Argentina will be sailing through uncharted – and choppy – waters with “El Loco” at the helm.

Source link

#Loco #helm #Argentina #outsider #president #Javier #Milei

Brazil’s Lula seeks to reverse Amazon deforestation

Post By World , , , , ,

Shaking a traditional rattle, Brazil’s incoming head of Indigenous affairs recently walked through every corner of the agency’s headquarters — even its coffee room — as she invoked help from ancestors during a ritual cleansing.

The ritual carried extra meaning for Joenia Wapichana, Brazil’s first Indigenous woman to command the agency charged with protecting the Amazon rainforest and its people.

Once she is sworn in next month under newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Wapichana promises to clean house at an agency that critics say has allowed the Amazon’s resources to be exploited at the expense of the environment.

As Wapichana performed the ritual, Indigenous people and government officials enthusiastically chanted “Yoohoo! Funai is ours!’’ — a reference to the agency she will lead.

Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters sympathetic to their causes were important to Lula’s narrow victory over former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Now Lula is seeking to fulfill campaign pledges he made to them on a wide range of issues, from expanding Indigenous territories to halting a surge in illegal deforestation.

To carry out these goals, Lula is appointing well-known environmentalists and Indigenous people to key positions at Funai and other agencies that Bolsonaro had filled with allies of agribusiness and military officers.

In Lula’s previous two terms as president, he had a mixed record on environmental and Indigenous issues. And he is certain to face obstacles from pro-Bolsonaro state governors who still control swaths of the Amazon. But experts say Lula is taking the right first steps.

The federal officials Lula has already named to key posts “have the national and international prestige to reverse all the environmental destruction that we have suffered over these four years of the Bolsonaro government,” said George Porto Ferreira, an analyst at Ibama, Brazil’s environmental law-enforcement agency.

Bolsonaro’s supporters, meanwhile, fear that Lula’s promise of stronger environmental protections will hurt the economy by reducing the amount of land open for development, and punish people for activities that had previously been allowed.

Some supporters with ties to agribusiness have been accused of providing financial and logistical assistance to rioters who earlier this month stormed Brazil’s presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court.

When Bolsonaro was president, he defanged Funai and other agencies responsible for environmental oversight. This enabled deforestation to soar to its highest level since 2006, as developers and miners who took land from Indigenous people faced few consequences.

Between 2019 and 2022, the number of fines handed out for illegal activities in the Amazon declined by 38% compared with the previous four years, according to an analysis of Brazilian government data by the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups. 

One of the strongest signs yet of Lula’s intentions to reverse these trends was his decision to return Marina Silva to lead the country’s environmental ministry. Silva formerly held the job between 2003 and 2008, a period when deforestation declined by 53%. A former rubber-tapper from Acre state, Silva resigned after clashing with government and agribusiness leaders over environmental policies she deemed to be too lenient.

Silva strikes a strong contrast with Bolsonaro’s first environment minister, Ricardo Salles, who had never set foot in the Amazon when he took office in 2019 and resigned two years later following allegations that he had facilitated the export of illegally felled timber.

Other measures Lula has taken in support of the Amazon and its people include:

  • Signing a decree that would rejuvenate the most significant international effort to preserve the rainforest — the Amazon Fund. The fund, which Bolsonaro had gutted, has received more than $1.2 billion, mostly from Norway, to help pay for sustainable development of the Amazon.
  • Revoking a Bolsonaro decree that allowed mining in Indigenous and environmental protection areas.
  • Creating a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, which will oversee everything from land boundaries to education. This ministry will be led by Sonia Guajajara, the country’s first Indigenous woman in such a high government post.

“It won’t be easy to overcome 504 years in only four years. But we are willing to use this moment to promote a take-back of Brazil’s spiritual force,” Guajajara said during her induction ceremony, which was delayed by the damage pro-Bolsonaro rioters caused to the presidential palace.

The Amazon rainforest, which covers an area twice the size of India, acts as a buffer against climate change by absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide. But Bolsonaro viewed management of the Amazon as an internal affair, causing Brazil’s global reputation to take a hit. Lula is trying to undo that damage.

During the UN’s climate summit in Egypt in November, Lula pledged to end all deforestation by 2030 and announced his country’s intention to host the COP30 climate conference in 2025. Brazil had been scheduled to host the event in 2019, but Bolsonaro canceled it in 2018 right after he was elected.

While Lula has ambitious environmental goals, the fight to protect the Amazon faces complex hurdles. For example, getting cooperation from local officials won’t be easy.

Six out of nine Amazonian states are run by Bolsonaro allies. Those include Rondonia, where settlers of European descent control local power and have dismantled environmental legislation through the state assembly; and Acre, where a lack of economic opportunities is driving rubber-tappers who had long fought to preserve the rainforest to take up cattle grazing instead.

The Amazon has also been plagued for decades by illegal gold mining, which employs tens of thousands of people in Brazil and other countries, such as Peru and Venezuela. The illegal mining causes mercury contamination of rivers that Indigenous peoples rely upon for fishing and drinking.

“Its main cause is the state’s absence,” says Gustavo Geiser, a forensics expert with the Federal Police who has worked in the Amazon for over 15 years.

One area where Lula has more control is in designating Indigenous territories, which are the best preserved regions in the Amazon.

Lula is under pressure to create 13 new Indigenous territories — a process that had stalled under Bolsonaro, who kept his promise not to grant “one more inch” of land to Indigenous peoples.

A major step will be to expand the size of Uneiuxi, part of one of the most remote and culturally diverse regions of the world that is home to 23 peoples.

The process of expanding the boundaries of Uneiuxi started four decades ago, and the only remaining step is a presidential signature, which will increase its size by 37% to 551,000 hectares (2,100 square miles).

“Lula already indicated that he would not have any problem doing that,” said Kleber Karipuna, a close aide of Guajajara. 

(AP)

Source link

#Brazils #Lula #seeks #reverse #Amazon #deforestation

Perspective – ‘Quite possible’ Bolsonaro won’t accept results of Brazil’s presidential election

Post By World , , , , , ,



Issued on:

It was a nail-biting race, but in the end Brazil’s former – and now future – left-wing president came out on top. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a highly polarised presidential run-off. The win marks an incredible comeback for Lula, who after spending 580 days in prison on corruption charges will return to office for a third term. But can he lead such a divided country and will Bolsonaro accept the results? We discuss this and more with our Perspective guest Marieke Riethof, a senior lecturer in Latin American politics at Liverpool University in the UK.



Source link