Daily Archives: June 25, 2012

Cyprus, Greece

No country for old men

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It’s not been the best week for the new Greek government.

Later this week, the key decision-makers of the European Union will be engaged in the latest attempt at ending the eurozone’s crisis at a conference in Rome.

But the new Greek prime minister won’t be there. And neither will his finance minister, a post that may now be vacant.

A week after his center-right, pro-bailout New Democracy won a narrow victory in Greece’s parliamentary elections, Antonis Samaras had emergency surgery over the weekend to repair a detached retina.

Meanwhile, his nominee for finance minister, Vassilis Rapanos, the president of Greece’s national bank, has resigned (or turned down the offer — he was never formally sworn in) after falling ill on Friday and being rushed to the hospital.

Newly sworn-in foreign minister Dimitris Avramopoulos won’t attend.

Neither will Evangelos Venizelos, a former finance minister and leader of the center-left (and also pro-bailout) PASOK nor Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of the more leftist (and moderately anti-bailout) Democratic Left.  Both PASOK and the Democratic Left are supporting Samaras’s government, but have refused to take any ministerial roles in the new government — indeed, both Venizelos and Kouvelis seem incredibly terrified that the staunchly anti-bailout and radical leftist SYRIZA will steal even more of their support base.  SYRIZA placed a strong second in the June 17 elections and now threatens to displace PASOK as the dominant party of the Greek left.

Greece’s president, Karolos Papoulias, will lead the delegation instead.

Leading Greek newspaper To Pontiki calls out the government for its “sloppy handling” of Greece’s representation in Rome, but it is hard to blame Samaras too much for the unfortunate timing of two medical emergencies.  But the incident marks an ominous tone for Greece at a time when the country seems to have days or weeks (not months) to shore up Greece’s position in the eurozone.  After a campaign in which even Samaras agreed that the bailout package should be renegotiated in a way to help the Greek economy out of recession, it will be a massive blow to Samaras’s government that he will not be in Rome, nor will his initial choice for finance minister, nor will the leaders of the two parties that are his coalition partners.

In other news likely to be depressing to Athens, the country with the largest exposure to Greece’s banks has now requested a bailout from the European Union as well — Cyprus needs €1.8 billion this week to shore up Cyprus Popular Bank.  The amount, tiny by EU bailout standards, represents 10% of Cyprus’s GDP.  Although the European Central Bank will want to impose some conditions on the bailout, Cyprus has also been talking to Moscow and Beijing about a cash infusion, making the Cyprus situation not only a financial headache for Athens, but a strategic headache for Berlin and Brussels as well (and it’s not as if the EU doesn’t have one or two problems that make even Greece seem like an afterthought).

Mexico

Why fears about the return of the PRI to power in Mexico are wrong

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Jo Tuckman had an engaging piece in The New York Times on Sunday, decrying the “lost years” of Mexican democracy and sounding some alarm about the likely return to power in Mexico of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) when Enrique Peña Nieto, as widely predicted, wins the presidential election on July 1.

She asks:

How is it, then, that the party’s candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, seems poised to win the presidential election next Sunday and become the leader of 113 million Mexicans?

The answer is that Peña Nieto has run a much (much) superior campaign than Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) or Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).  The PAN has held the presidency for 12 consecutive years, so it has taken the brunt of criticism over the Mexican economy, drug violence and the less-than-galloping pace of political and economic reform, even though it doesn’t control Congress, and the PRI and the PRD have opposed most of president Felipe Calderón’s agenda.  For its own part, the PRD still isn’t truly a political presence in northern Mexico and López Obrador blew a huge lead in the 2006 presidential election and refused to cede the PRD’s shot in 2012 to the younger and more centrist Marcelo Ebrard.

The PRI, of course, governed Mexico from 1929 until 2000, often with a healthy dose of authoritarianism, an even healthier dose of electoral fraud and a lot of government spending diverted to bolstering the party.  For most of the PRI’s reign, it’s safe to say, Mexico was something short of a strict dictatorship (Mexico’s government had certain features that limited authoritarian abuse, such as a six-year term limit for Mexican presidents), but nothing like a liberal democracy.

But Tuckman is wrong to call the last 12 years a lost opportunity, and she’s wrong that the impending return of the PRI indicates that Mexican democracy is in danger — if anything, the PRI’s return indicates that Mexican democracy is thriving.

It would be prudent, of course, for Mexican civil society to remain vigilant for any signs of backsliding, and groups, such as the youthful YoSoy132 movement, are pressing this very point within Mexico.  As it turns out, Televisa, Mexico’s largest television network, had been selling favorable coverage to Peña Nieto — in years past, the PRI may have gotten away with that; instead, it was plastered earlier this month across global headlines when The Guardian broke the scandal (back in 2000, Mexico’s oil company, Pemex, gave $140 million in loans to certain PRI-backed unions, who in turn donated the cash to the PRI’s then-presidential candidate Francisco Labastida, who still lost handsomely), embarrassing Televisa, the PRI and Peña Nieto.

A lot of people think that 2000 — the year that the PAN’s Vicente Fox wont he presidency — marks the key transition for Mexican democracy.  Fox’s election was indeed a landmark for Mexican democracy, but the real turning point came a bit earlier — in 1994. Continue reading Why fears about the return of the PRI to power in Mexico are wrong →