Monthly Archives: May 2013

Pakistan

Amid the PPP’s leadership crisis, where is Bilawal Zardari Bhutto?

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I said he was one of the top 13 politicians to watch in 2013 at the beginning of the year, and he’s the next great hope of not just the Bhutto family’s political legacy, but for the entire political fortunes of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎),, and the May 2013 elections were supposed to mark his grand entrance into Pakistani politics.Pakistan Flag Icon

But with just a handful of days left in the PPP’s campaign to hold on to power in Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has been all but absent from the campaign, and news reports claim that he’s actually no longer within Pakistan due to security threats against him.

The reason? The widespread violence already perpetrated and currently threatened against the PPP in particular by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, تحریک طالبان پاکستان), the ‘Pakistani Taliban’ terrorist group that opposes the government, above all for its cozy links to U.S. and NATO defense forces.

But the fact that the son of Pakistan’s current president, Asif Ali Zardari, has left the country out of concern for his life, speaks to the current state of Pakistan’s security situation.  Bhutto Zardari, at age 24, is still too young to contest Saturday’s elections, and he was never seriously considered as a possibility to emerge as prime minister in 2013.

His decision proved especially wise today in light of the abduction of Ali Haider Gilani, the son of former PPP prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

You can question whether it’s healthy for one family to play such an oversized role in politics (whether the Bhutto family in Pakistan, the Gandhi family in India or even the Bush family in the United States), but there’s no doubt that Bhutto’s family has paid dearly for its starring role in the center of Pakistan’s civilian politics.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who founded the PPP, led Pakistan’s government in the 1970s, but a military government convicted and executed him in 1979.

Benazir Bhutto, who served as prime minister in the 1980s and the 1990s, was assassinated in a December 2007 bomb blast just days after she returned from abroad to contest the 2008 parliamentary elections.

So you can’t really blame Bhutto Zardari for keeping such a low profile — he’s barely just reached adulthood after an adolescence spent mostly abroad, matched by the twin tragedies of his mother’s assassination and the ghost of his grandfather’s execution.

But his absence marks an even wider leadership crisis in Pakistan’s governing party.  Though there are many reasons why the PPP is slumping in the 2013 elections, one factor is certainly the lack of any sort of strong presence at the head of the party.

Although Zardari and his son are the joint leaders of the PPP, Zardari, as Pakistan’s head of state, is unable to take a full-throated role leading the campaign.  Nor would be incredibly effective if he could — he won the presidency in 2008 in part through sympathy for his late wife, Benazir, and his tenure in office has been marked by widespread corruption and impunity.

Gilani, who served as prime minister from 2008 to 2012, was ousted by Pakistan’s supreme court after refusing to facilitate a Swiss investigation into Zardari’s alleged graft.  His successor, Raja Pervez Ashraf, a former water minister, served a largely caretaker role from 2012 until March 2013, and like Gilani, he’s refused to cooperate with Pakistan’s supreme court.  Ashraf, who has his own corruption issues, was initially barred himself from contesting the 2013 parliamentary elections.

That’s left the PPP virtually decapitated throughout the campaign.  That stands in contrast to its two major rivals, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice or PTI, پاکستان تحريک).  The ‘N’ in PML-N stands for Nawaz Sharif, one of Pakistan’s wealthiest businessmen who was twice elected prime minister in the 1990s.  The PTI’s leader, Imran Khan, has been active in Pakistani politics as an anti-corruption crusader for two decades and was a national cricket star in the years prior to his entry into politics.

Photo credit to AFP/Getty Images.

Pakistan

Despite his tumble, Imran Khan is the key to Saturday’s Pakistani election

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The final days leading up to Pakistan’s general election this weekend have been dominated by the fate of one man — Imran Khan.Pakistan Flag Icon

With tensions running high over campaign violence, Khan this week was seriously injured, though not by radical Islamist elements, but by falling off a stage at a campaign rally.

Khan tumbled seven feet Tuesday after falling from a forklift when another staffer lost his balance at a campaign rally in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.  Khan suffered three broken vertebrae and additional head injuries, and Pakistan’s other parties suspended campaigning on Wednesday out of respect for the man who’s become the star of the 2013 campaign.  Khan will not be able to headline any further rallies before the election (today is the final day for active campaigning, in any event), and he won’t physically be able to vote in person on Saturday, either, but he’s already recorded a message for supporters from his hospital bed.

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While the fall may have dampened the prospects for a final campaign rally, it may well have compensated by catapulting Khan into 36 hours of news coverage throughout Pakistan and stepping on the economic reform message of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) was expected to win the largest share of the vote.

But even before the fall, Khan was always going to be the key to determining the outcome of Pakistan’s parliamentary elections.

Some polls show that Khan and his surging nationalist, anti-corruption movement, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice or PTI, پاکستان تحريک) was already gaining ground against both Sharif’s PML-N and the governing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎).

A Herald poll earlier this week showed the PML-N with 25.68% support and the PTI with 24.98% support, a statistical dead heat, with the PPP in third place with 17.74% — notably, it showed Khan trailing the PML-N by only single digits in the populous Punjab province and with a huge lead in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan’s northwest.

So who is Imran Khan and how did he become the fulcrum of Pakistan’s 2013 elections?  Continue reading Despite his tumble, Imran Khan is the key to Saturday’s Pakistani election →

Pakistan

How does Pakistan hold a normal election campaign in the middle of widespread terrorism?

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glassrally

It’s been 45 years since a presidential candidate in the United States has been murdered by an assassin in cold blood, and not since 1864 has the United States held a presidential election in the middle of a war taking place on U.S. soil.Pakistan Flag Icon

But imagine a national campaign that takes place under constant threat of radical terrorist attack.

That is exactly what’s happening in Pakistan, where a tense campaign has taken place not through the recognizable open-air rallies that mark campaigns throughout the world, but in large part behind closed doors — or at least behind thick glass.

Campaign violence began late in 2012 — members of the pro-U.S., pro-NATO, anti-Taliban Awami National Party (ANP, عوامی نيشنل پارٹی‎ in Urdu, ملي عوامي ګوند‎ in Pashto), the country’s largest Pashtun ethnicity party have long been accustomed to being targets of violence.  But as election day has neared, mainstream parties have been increasingly targeted as well.

The most vulnerable parties have been the incumbent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎) of Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in December 2007 by assassins, and its allies like the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM, متحدہ قومی موومنٹ), a Karachi-based party.  But even their main rivals, the more conservative Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has also been targeted.  The threat of violence is so strong that the PPP has barely held any rallies — it even called off its kickoff rally.  Sharif (pictured above) has campaigned only with extremely cautious protections.

Given that a functioning democracy requires a certain respect for the rule of law and a baseline ability of voters to interact with party leaders and potential prime ministers, the current state in Pakistan is hardly any kind of way to wage a political campaign, and the gruesome toll of violence has led to an eerily subdued campaign season.

The main culprit is the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, تحریک طالبان پاکستان), better known simply as the ‘Pakistan Taliban.’

So what exactly is the TTP and why is it trying to destabilize Pakistan’s election this year?  Continue reading How does Pakistan hold a normal election campaign in the middle of widespread terrorism? →

Pakistan

In Depth: Pakistan

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800px-Islamabad_-_Pakistan_Monument_by_Night

Lahore_Fort

With over 180 million citizens, only five countries in the world have a larger population than Pakistan.Pakistan Flag Icon

Divided in 1947’s Partition from India when both countries received independence from the United Kingdom, and separated from ‘East Pakistan’ — today’s Bangladesh — after a bloody 1971 war, Pakistan sits at the heart of South Asia as a key to not only regional, but also global security.

That makes it one of the most important of 2013’s world elections.

The country shares a border along its southwest with Iran, a country under sanction from the European Union, the United States and others and a potential geopolitical hotspot over its nuclear weapons program.  The country shares a long, mountainous border with Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been engaged in military operations to keep the Taliban at bay since October 2001, though troops are set to leave later this year and its president, Hamid Karzai, is expected to step down after next spring’s presidential election.  Of course, Pakistan shares its eastern border with India, and its northeastern border with the contentious province of Jammu and Kashmir that have soured Indian-Pakistani relations for years, and which has taken on global security significance since the late 1990s when first India, then Pakistan, became nuclear-armed powers.

Where India remained closer to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Pakistan was always a U.S. ally, a role that’s continued throughout the post-Cold War era.  That’s been especially true since the 2001 terrorist attacks — U.S. military action in Afghanistan has so routinely involved close coordination with Pakistani military advisers that U.S. security experts now casually speak of the ‘Af-Pak’ security theater, and Pakistan has been a lethally familiar target of U.S. drone strikes.  In 2010, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed not in his home country of Saudi Arabia or in nearby Afghanistan, but in a compound in Abbottabad, in Pakistan.

It’s a country that’s struggled to find a balance between too-often corrupt civilian leadership and overeager military leadership, and its recent political history is marked by seesawing between military coup leaders and democratically elected politicians.  The current government of Pakistan, however corrupt and/or unpopular, is only the first government in Pakistan’s post-independence history to serve a full five-year mandate.  Most recently, general Pervez Musharraf, the army chief of staff, took military power in 1999 and governed until 2008 as a steadfast ally of U.S. president George W. Bush.

In advance of elections in February 2008, two former prime ministers in exile, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, returned to Pakistan to campaign for office.

Bhutto, the leader of the center-left, urban-based Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎), was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani prime minister in the 1970s who was controversially executed in 1979 by a military-led government.  Bhutto had served as prime minister twice — from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, before spending much of the next decade in exile during the Musharraf era.  Bhutto was tragically assassinated in December 2007, however, which, in part, led to her party’s victory in the 2008 elections.

Sharif, the leader of the center-right, rural-based Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن), served as prime minister from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1997 to 1999.  Sharif, in fact, had appointed Musharraf as his army chief of staff, only to be overthrown in due course by Musharraf.

Despite the return of civilian government five years ago, the Pakistani army and the Inter-Services Intelligence wield massive power within Pakistan, essentially dictating security and foreign policy, while retaining a key role in domestic matters and not insignificant influence in the Pakistani economy as well.  The current army chief of staff, Ashfaq Kayani, has largely remained aloof from directly engaging political discourse, though his term ends in November 2013 — meaning that the new government will be responsible for choosing his successor.

So what’s at stake in the May 11 elections?

The election will determine the composition of the  National Assembly (ایوان زیریں پاکستان‎), the lower house of the Majlis-e-Shura ( مجلس شوریٰ‎), Pakistan’s parliament.  Although the National Assembly has 342 members, 70 of the seats are set aside for women and religious minorities, so only 272 members will be elected directly — as you might guess, that makes it even more difficult for any single party to win a majority of the National Assembly.  Each member is elected to a five-year term on a first-past-the-post basis in single-member constituencies (though the National Assembly can be dissolved earlier with the consent of the president and prime minister).

The election will also determine the membership of each of the provincial assemblies in Pakistan’s four major provinces:

  • Punjab, which comprises 54% of Pakistan’s population, is the strategic Pakistani heartland.  Its residents, who are over 97% Muslim, predominantly speak Punjabi.  It’s home to  though it features to the country’s capital Islamabad and Lahore, a city of key historical importance to Pakistan.  
  • Sindh, home to 22% of Pakistan’s population and more cosmopolitan, given the presence of Pakistan’s largest city and its coastal financial hub, Karachi.  A majority of the population speaks Sindhi, and while the province is over 90% Muslim, there’s a small Hindu minority.
  • Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, home to 13% of the population, crawls across Pakistan’s northwest, and is predominantly Pashtun, with Pashto the major language.  The area includes between 1 and 2 million Afghan refugees, though the province excludes much of the actual border with Afghanistan, which is separately administered as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
  • Balochistan, home to just 5% of the population, is a relatively spare expanse that includes a number of different groups — a bare majority of its residents speak Balochi, and just over a quarter speak Pashto, with small amounts of Sindhi and Punjabi speakers.

Pakistan provinces

So who are the major parties and figures contesting the national elections?

PPP. Although Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, became Pakistan’s president in September 2008, his popularity has waned following multiple allegations of corruption, and he nearly found himself impeached and removed from office.  As a result, he largely transferred many of the powers of the Pakistani presidency, as an institutional matter, to the prime minister.  The government’s first prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gillani, served until June 2012, when he was removed by Pakistan’s supreme court, retroactively disqualified as prime minister due to his refusal to facilitate a graft case against Zardari.  His successor, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, a former water minister, led the government as prime minister through the end of the government’s natural term in March 2013.  The PPP-led government of the past five years remains relatively unpopular with voters on nearly every basis — unemployment, inflation and poverty are high, GDP growth is low, and many citizens in Pakistan lack basic access to water, electricity, health care and education.  Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, the son of Zardari and Benazir Bhutto, remains the co-leader of the party along with his father, though at age 24, he’s too young to contest the 2013 elections.

PML-N.  Sharif’s party is widely expected to return to power and Sharif himself is expected to become Pakistan’s next prime minister, largely on the strength of his party’s rural base in Punjab province, where polls show that the PML-N is far and away the favorite to win many of the seats in Pakistan’s largest province.  Shahbaz Sharif, his brother, has served as chief minister of Punjab province since 2008, and is also widely favored to win reelection.  Sharif has pledged that if elected, he’ll appoint the highest ranking official to succeed Kayani as army chief of staff in order to make the decision as apolitical as possible.  He’s also waged a campaign largely targeted at economic reforms.

PTI.  Former cricket star Imran Khan founded the secular, anti-corruption, liberal Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice or PTI, پاکستان تحريک) in 1996, though this year looks to be his breakout year.  Though polls aren’t exactly reliable, the PTI may well win more seats than the PPP, with voters disenchanted by both the Bhutto-controlled PPP and its corruption and the PLM-N.  Khan’s stridently nationalist stance against U.S. drone strikes has made for some extremely odd bedfellows, and some of the most radical, violent elements in Pakistani public life have, if not exactly endorsed Khan, shared common cause with him.  Nearly alone among parties, the Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan (commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban) has made it clear that, despite a violent campaign against most civilian parties, it will not attack Khan and PTI events.

MQM.  The more liberal, urban-based Muttahida Quami Movement (متحدہ قومی موومنٹ) is an almost entirely Karachi-based party with a potent, urban political machine that’s long made it the dominant force in local Karachi politics.  Nationally, it has typically aligned itself in PPP-led coalitions.

PML-Q.  During the Musharraf era, a small band of PML-N centrists broke off to form their own cohort in support of Musharraf, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (پاکستان مسلم لیگ ق, or the PML-Q).  Though it has now abandoned Musharraf and it is running as a coalition partner of the PPP, it’s set to be virtually wiped out.

Musharraf.  Hoping to return to Pakistani politics, Musharraf returned earlier this spring from ‘self-imposed exile’ to lead a movement he formed in 2010, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML, آل پاکستان مسلم لیگ).  Immediately after returning to the country, however, Musharraf has encountered nothing but trouble.  He is now under house arrest and faces serious charges that stem from his time in power, including treason over dismissing Pakistan’s supreme court in 2007 and charges that he failed to provide sufficient protection against Bhutto’s assassination in 2007 as well.  Though his popular support was already negligible, he’s been barred from running in the elections and one court has issued a ruling barring him from Pakistani politics for life.  His continued presence remains a significant difficulty for the Pakistani military, who don’t want to interfere with Pakistan’s judiciary, but also don’t want a precedent that could open additional military leaders to civil or criminal charges.  How to handle Musharraf will be one of the more delicate challenges for Pakistan’s next government.

Local parties.  Aside from the Karachi-based MQM, several local parties are worth noting.  The Awami National Party (ANP, عوامی نيشنل پارٹی‎ in Urdu, ملي عوامي ګوند‎ in Pashto) plays a significant role in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as the largest Pashtun party in the country.  Like the MQM and other smaller parties, it is also part of the PPP-led governing coalition, and it’s extremely anti-Taliban, pro-U.S. and widely supports the Karzai government in neighboring Afghanistan, stances that have made its leaders and members frequent targets of attacks by Taliban sympathizers.  The Balochistan National Party (بلوچستان نيشنل پارٹی) is perhaps the most muscular party in Balochistan — it’s not based on ethnic identity like the ANP, but is a regionalist party based on the principle of greater autonomy and local control in Balochistan.  Pakistan has an Islamist party, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (جمیعت علمائے اسلام‎) but its religious conservative bent attracts surprisingly few supporters.

The current breakdown of the National Assembly is as follows:

pakistan assembly

Here’s all of Suffragio‘s coverage of politics in Pakistan:

Pakistan’s new president: Who is Mamnoon Hussain?
July 30, 2013

How the U.S. drone strike on the Pakistani Taliban undermines Sharif’s government
May 31, 2013

In one year, South Asia and the Af-Pak theater as we know it will be transformed
May 28, 2013

Can Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Dar fix Pakistan’s sclerotic economy?
May 22, 2013

The foreboding political geography of Pakistan’s general election results
May 14, 2013

Six reasons why everyone in the United States should know who Nawaz Sharif is
May 13, 2013

Ten questions for Pakistan’s May 11 general election
May 10, 2013

Amid the PPP’s leadership crisis, where is Bilawal Zardari Bhutto?
May 9, 2013

Despite his tumble, Imran Khan is the key to Saturday’s Pakistani election
May 9, 2013

How does Pakistan hold a normal election campaign in the middle of widespread terrorism?
May 9, 2013

Musharraf didn’t need the Peshawar High Court to render him politically irrelevant
May 5, 2013

More about Pakistan’s ‘milestone’ and a preview of its upcoming May 11 elections
March 20, 2013

U.S. Justice Department memo justifies targeted killings of U.S. citizens abroad
February 5, 2013

Khan ‘peace rally’ near Waziristan border has implications for politics in Pakistan and beyond
October 8, 2012

Everything you need to know about the showdown between the Pakistani People’s Party and the Supreme Court of Pakistan
August 15, 2012

India, Karnataka

As expected, BJP loses Karnataka state elections to surging Congress

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Votes from Sunday’s elections in the Indian state of Karnataka were counted today and, as polls suggested, the troubled government of the conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) has overwhelmingly lost.India Flag Iconkarnataka flag

The Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) has won 121 seats — an absolute majority — among the 223 seats up for election in the Karnataka legislative assembly, the Vidhan Sabha (विधान सभा).  In contrast, the BJP lost 72 seats and now holds just 40.

karnataka

So what do the results mean for Indian national politics?  As with most special elections and regional and local elections, it’s hard to extrapolate trends from a local election for national significance.  But given that India’s national leaders, including very likely its next prime minister, all campaigned in Karnataka, there are some points worth noting, with India’s own national elections set to take place before May 2014.

First, critics of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, both inside and outside the BJP, will have an argument that Modi’s brand of campaign magic isn’t transferable outside his own state.  Modi campaigned vigorously in the final days of the campaign, and he’s widely seen as the frontrunner to lead the BJP in next year’s general election and even a slight frontrunner to become India’s next prime minister.  But the BJP in Karnataka was always facing an uphill battle, so Modi’s failure to change the dynamic is no more or less indicative of his national appeal than Rahul Gandhi’s inability to help Congress win last year’s elections in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

Second, the Karnataka election was the first state election since Rahul (pictured above) became the vice president of Congress, so a loss or a closer-than-expected race might have demonstrated that Congress’s brand — and the Gandhi brand — is wearing thin nationally.  That didn’t happen, so from Rahul’s perspective, the election is a success.

Perhaps the most important lesson is the anti-incumbent mood, and it wouldn’t be surprising if many of Karnataka’s voters, who just ejected a BJP government this week, will be equally keen to eject the national Congress-led government next year — a government that’s been in office nearly a decade and has received much criticism, even abroad, for a drop in India’s economic growth and its relative lack of energy in pursuing economic reforms.

Back in Karnataka, however, attention will now turn to the next chief minister of a state that remains a technology-fueled economic star within India.   Continue reading As expected, BJP loses Karnataka state elections to surging Congress →

Canada

Video of the day: Mulcair knows the money’s in the banana stand

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It’s been a tough few weeks for the New Democratic Party in Canada, what with the surge of newly elected Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau pushing his once dominant party back into third place in polls.Canada Flag Icon

But NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, who as the head of the second-largest party in the House of Commons, is also the leader of the opposition, pulled out a reference to the television series Arrested Development today while questioning what happened to government funding under Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper:

[Mulcair] was wondering where $3.1 billion in unaccounted anti-terrorism spending went when he uttered this gem:

“So the question is, is the money just in the wrong filing cabinet, is it hidden in the minister’s gazebo, is the money in the banana stand?”

Thanks to Giancarlo Di Pietro for the tip.

Brazil, Mexico, WTO

Who is Roberto Azevêdo? (And does he matter?)

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The only dispute between México and Brazil since the emergence of the World Trade Organization is a minor matter — Brazil opened a case in 2000 when it accused México of enacting anti-dumping measures on electronic transformers that were tougher than allowed under the WTO agreement.  Brazil, as it turned out, sought consultations with México, and the case never proceeded to a full WTO panel.Mexico Flag IconWTO flagbrazil

But this week’s seen the conclusion of a contest between the two Latin American countries with much more wide-ranging consequences than policy on electronic transformers — the final round to select a new director-general, and it’s a contest that Roberto Azevêdo, a Brazilian diplomat and trade representative, has won the final nomination for the job, and will likely be officially confirmed as the next director-general on May 14.

Azevêdo defeated former Mexican trade minister Herminio Blanco, in a contest between two men that represent the two largest economies in Latin America.  As Brazil’s man in Geneva for the past five years, Azevêdo won the post in large part due to his status as a knowledgeable WTO insider.  Blanco, who helped draft the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s among the United States, Canada and México, had more high-level experience in government (Azevêdo has never been a cabinet-level minister in Brazil’s government), but has spent his time out of government in the private sector, not in Geneva.

To a degree, the showdown marks the growing, if friendly, rivalry between México and Brazil — the Mexican economy, with a GDP of $1.76 trillion, and an estimated 2012 growth rate of 3.8%, is expected to overtake Brazil’s economy in the next decade.  With a GDP of $2.36 trillion, Brazil remains the largest economy in Latin America, and it’s forecast to improve on a paltry 2012 GDP growth rate of 1.7%.

Azevêdo’s win demonstrates that Brazil, one of the four initially identified ‘BRIC’ emerging economies, remains a widely respected player in global economic policymaking, despite its economy’s recent stumbles and a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward global trade from its center-left presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, though Brazil was a founding member of the South American free trade bloc, Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur) in 1991.  Blanco’s loss is a rare diplomatic setback to Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office less than six months ago and has already enacted a whirlwind of domestic reforms that have made his country once again a darling of international investors.

Azevêdo will succeed Pascal Lamy, the Frenchman who’s been the WTO’s director-general since 2005, and he’ll take over the organization at a time when its role in global trade seems to be on the decline.  The Doha round of negotiations, which began way back in November 2001, now seem nearly hopeless, with the WTO members split between the developed world and the developing world.

Indeed, the developed/developing struggle came to define the final round of the race to become the next director-general, with the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea allegedly backing México’s Blanco, and China and the rest of the developing world backing Brazil’s Azevêdo.  Despite the divide, U.S. and E.U. officials were never intensely opposed to Azevêdo, who will become the first Latin American director-general of the WTO (or its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the first director-general from the ‘global south’ since Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi held the job from 2002 to 2005.

But the last major Doha negotiations broke down in July 2008, and they haven’t resumed in any significant way since the global financial crisis that exploded later that year.  While the WTO has seen its membership grow by 17 since the Doha round began (including China in 2001, Saudi Arabia in 2005, Vietnam in 2007 and Russia in 2012), many countries have moved toward bilateral and regional trade accords.  Some WTO proponents fear that such smaller trade agreements undermine the role of the global trade regime, though proponents argue that regional agreements work toward the same underlying goals of greater free trade among the world’s nations.

In particular, the United States is kicking off talks for two of the most ambitious regional trade agreements in U.S. trade history that would far outweigh the impact NAFTA made in the 1990s — the Trans-Pacific Partnership among various Asian, North American and South American nations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the United States. Continue reading Who is Roberto Azevêdo? (And does he matter?) →

Venezuela

We’re starting to see what Madurismo will look like in Venezuela

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It’s been nearly three weeks since I returned from Caracas to cover the Venezuelan presidential campaign, but the post-election situation there remains far from becalmed, unfortunately. Venezuela Flag Icon

Here’s a quick review of where things stand after another week that was, wherever you stand on the Venezuelan political spectrum, not a very good week for Venezuela and its political and legal institutions:

  • The opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who leads the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD, Democratic Unity Roundtable) coalition, is taking his challenge directly to Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice that contests over 2.3 million votes in over 5,700 polling stations from the April 14 vote.  A planned audit of the election will continue under the supervision of Tibisay Lucena, the head of Venezuela’s national electoral council, though Capriles and the MUD opposition have rejected the terms of the audit.  Although the audit will recount the votes, it will not audit aspects of the voting process, such as voter signatures and fingerprints, that could confirm that the votes were legitimately cast, not just properly tallied.  Capriles and his allies have also alleged a wider range of election-day concerns, including voter intimidation and dumped ballot boxes.  
  • In Venezuela’s Asamblea Nacional (National Assembly), which is dominated by the chavista party, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela), opposition deputies have not only been prohibited from speaking, but were attacked in a vicious assault last week on the floor of the National Assembly while its chavista president, Disodado Cabello looked on with a smile.  No matter if you’re in Ukraine or in Venezuela, brawling politicians on the floor of a parliament are always unseemly:
  • Meanwhile, the government of president Nicolás Maduro has taken an increasingly harsh political line against the United States, attacking U.S. president Barack Obama for ‘meddling’ in internal Venezuelan affairs.  Maduro has railed against the Obama administration, which has not yet recognized Maduro’s victory on April 14, and which has aired concerns about the vote.  Maduro’s new administration has added additional tension to U.S.-Venezuelan relations by imprisoning a U.S. documentary maker on charges of inciting political violence in Venezuela.  Maduro, who suggested during the campaign that the United States may have caused the cancer that killed his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, has argued that the United States is fomenting post-election violence as well.  For good measure, he’s also accused former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe of attempting to assassinate him and he’s even attacked Peru’s foreign minister Rafael Roncagliolo.
  •  Maduro’s new cabinet, appointed in late April, looks much like the previous one, with many familiar high-level chavista faces retaining much of the power in Venezuelan government.  Rafael Ramírez remains the country’s energy minister and head of the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA); Elías Jaua, a former vice president, will remain foreign minister; and Cabello remains the president of Venezuela’s national assembly.  The longtime head of the finance and planning ministry, Jorge Giordani, will remain merely planning minister and Nelson Merentes, formerly the head of Venezuela’s central bank, will become finance minister, a post he held briefly in the early 2000s as well.  Merentes’s promotion has caused some optimism internationally, and Merentes is seen as more of a pragmatist than Giordani and dislikes Venezuela’s currency controls, which have artificially skewed the flow of dollars to importers.  It’s not clear, however, that Giordani will relent control over economic policymaking, given that he’s been the economic czar of Venezuelan government since virtually the beginning of the Chávez era.

What is the sum impact of all of this?

So far, it seems that madurismo is the same as chavismo, but with less charisma, fewer petrodollars and the possibility of a more violent government than under Chávez.

With no signs that Capriles is giving up his challenge, Maduro faces a real legitimacy problem, and he’ll continue to do so as long as Capriles challenges the election’s audit process in a court system that’s widely seen as tilted more toward politics than toward impartial interpretation of the law.  In the best case scenario, chavismo somehow lost 600,000 supporters between Chávez’s reelection in October 2012 and Maduro’s own election in April.  In the worst case scenario, Maduro and the chavista government simply bought, scared or muscled enough votes last month to steal the election.  It’s not an enviable position, especially given Venezuela’s ongoing economic troubles.

But Maduro also faces serious challenges within the PSUV and the ruling chavista elite.   Continue reading We’re starting to see what Madurismo will look like in Venezuela →

French Polynesia

Tahitians indifferent to independence movement in weekend elections

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Although you may be aware of Malaysia’s blockbuster elections yesterday and even elections held yesterday in the 60 million-plus Indian state of Karnataka, you may not have realized that French Polynesia also held elections on May 5.french polynesia

Polynésie française exists officially as an overseas country within the French republic — and its most well-known and populous component is the island of Tahiti (around 70% of the country’s population), though the entire French Polynesian nation comprises a huge group of islands over a wide swath in the south Pacific Ocean.

Though its population, at around 270,000 people, is less than you’d find in Iceland, French Polynesia’s islands cover an area larger than Europe, and they are a highly strategic holding for France, which has controversially engaged in nuclear testing on one of the islands, Fangataufa, most recently in 1995.

The high commissioner, Jean-Pierre Laflaquière, and the French government, which sits nearly 10,000 miles away, holds the final say on the ‘overseas country’s’ policy on justice, security, defense and even its education.  That’s one reason why the independence movement has attracted more attention in recent years, including as in the lead-up to Sunday’s election for the territorial assembly.

Politics in French Polynesia is dominated by the personal rivalry between two leaders: its current president Oscar Temaru (pictured above) and the leader of the opposing, conservative, anti-independence Tāhōʻēraʻa Huiraʻatira (Popular Rally), Gaston Flosse.  Flosse dominated local politics for decades until 2004, when Temaru first won local elections, though power has revolved among Flosse, Temaru and Flosse’s one-time ally, Gaston Tong Sang.  Temaru leads the more leftist, pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira (People’s Servant), one of several parties that comprise the larger Union pour la Démocratie (Union for the Democracy) coalition that Temaru also heads.

Temaru has spent his entire political career of four decades in pursuit of one goal — full independence for French Polynesia.  It’s a goal that Temaru appeared to be closer to achieving in the past couple of years, winning support from the French Polynesian assembly in 2011 for a petition to place French Polynesia back on the United Nations’s list of nations to be decolonized.  Sunday’s result is widely seen as a result of discontent over an unemployment rate of between 20% and 30% and a poverty rate of around 20% throughout the islands rather than a rebuke against independence, though it’s hardly clear that Tahitians and the rest of French Polynesia remain incredibly enthusiastic about independence.

Following Sunday’s election, power seems likely to revolve once again from Temaru to Flosse, which means that the flickers of life for French Polynesian independence are likely to recede in the coming years.  Continue reading Tahitians indifferent to independence movement in weekend elections →

Italy

Former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti is dead

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No one quite personified post-war, ‘First Republic’ Italy more than Giulio Andreotti.Italy Flag Icon

Andreotti’s death today, at age 94, ends a career that spanned from the 1950s well beyond the end of the ‘First Republic,’ through the collapse of the hegemony of Italy’s Democrazia Cristiana (DC, Christian Democracy), and well into the contemporary era as one of Italy’s ‘senators for life.’

Andreotti is being remembered today for his triumphs — seven times a prime minister, first in 1972 and for the final time in 1992, he represented Italy throughout the Cold War and affirmed Italy’s close ties throughout the post-war years with the United States.

‘Divo Giulio‘ (Divine Julius) to his supporters and Belzebú (Beelzebub) to his opponents, Andreotti and his legacy remain just as complicated in death as in life, and his career’s ups and downs coincided with some of Italy’s most traumatic national tragedies, and it’s impossible to judge his career in the context of today’s political climate, but rather of the climate of post-war Italy, where tensions ran strong following a civil war between partisans and fascist supporters that settled, only over decades, into the broad left and right of today’s Italian politics.

His life inspired a 2008 biopic, Il Divo, that helped explain the Byzantine nature of post-war Italian politics to an international audience, and he presided over an era that saw Italy transformed from a country ravaged by war and 20 years of Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule into one of Western Europe’s strongest economies and a member of the G-7 group of world economies.  At a time when the rest of southern Europe remained under the thumb of right-wing and military dictatorships and eastern Europe remained behind the iron-curtained influence of the communist Soviet Union, Andreotti and the Christian Democracy that he personified led Italy to a period of economic prosperity and pluralistic democracy, however imperfect.

The most traumatic of those imperfections includes the kidnapping and assassination of his more leftist Christian Democratic friend and colleague, Aldo Moro, who served as prime minister in the 1960s and again from 1974 to 1976.  The performance of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI, Italian Communist Party) in the 1976 elections had reached its highest level in Italian history, and Moro (pictured below), among others, turned to an unprecedented coalition with the PCI.  Moro, however, was abducted on the streets of Rome in March 1978 by the leftist terrorist group, the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades).

As prime minister once again, Andreotti refused to negotiate with Moro’s kidnappers, despite pleas from many within even his own government and from Moro himself.  By May 1978, Moro had been killed and his corpse thrown in an old car, and Andreotti himself was the recipient of charges of incompetence, at the least, and malfeasance, at the worst, in letting political motivations override the priority of securing the release of a popular Italian political leader.  DC-PCI cooperation ended — for good — shortly thereafter, much to the delight of the DC’s more right-wing members and to the delight of Italy’s American allies.  Though the assassination took place 35 years ago, key questions about Moro’s death remain unanswered amid a web of conspiracy theories and the revelation of other programs — such as the existence of NATO’s Operation Gladio, a ‘stay-behind’ anti-communist operation in post-war Italy and the existence of the shady, Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (‘P2’) to which much of Italy’s post-war political elite belonged.  Continue reading Former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti is dead →

Malaysia

Six reasons why Malaysia’s BN-led government held on to power in Sunday’s election

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Malaysia’s incumbent government, headed by prime minister Najib Razak, has won Sunday’s landmark parliamentary elections, returning the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front) coalition and its largest party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), to power, extending the UMNO’s 55 consecutive years of rule.malaysia flag

The race was the most closely contested in Malaysian history, with the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR, People’s Alliance) waging the most tenacious and successful campaign to date.  If Pakatan Rakyat delivered a shock to Malaysia’s ruling elite in the March 2008 elections by depriving it of the two-thirds majority it had enjoyed (and with it, the power to amend Malaysia’s constitution), the May 2013 elections proved that the opposition can present a campaign with a genuine shot at winning.

The Pakatan Rakyat appears to have come up short — the Barisan Nasional will return to office, with Najib (pictured above) winning his first popular mandate since replacing his predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in 2009 following the poor results of the 2008 elections.  According to official results, the Barisan Nasional will hold 133 seats (the UMNO holding 126 of them) to just 89 seats for the Pakatan Rakyat in the 222-member Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives).  That’s a 14-seat swing — seven seats less for the governing coalition and seven seats more for the opposition.

In one sense, it’s a win for the Pakatan Rakyat, which has had the best election result in Malaysian history, and it stands a good shot of building upon Sunday’s results to win power in the next elections.  Najib’s role as prime minister may even be in doubt following the Barisan Nasional‘s less-than-vigorous victory.  In another sense, it’s obviously a disappointment because the opposition failed to make sufficient inroads among ethnic Malays to win after a campaign that saw Malaysians divide largely on class, age and ethnic lines, with ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians supporting the Pakatan Rakyat and a majority of ethnic Malays supporting the Barisan Nasional, despite a growing mass of younger and more urban ethnic Malays supporting the opposition.

Indeed, the Barisan Nasional‘s two other major constituent groups, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), were nearly wiped out — the MCA won just six seats and the MIC none at all.  Ironically, that makes the UMNO itself even more dominant, even as the result confirms that the Barisan Nasional has lost nearly all of its support beyond ethnic Malays, which bodes precariously for its future.  Ethnic Malays constitute a little over 50% of the country’s population, while ethnic Chinese account for around 24% and ethnic Indians for 7%.

So what happened — what made the difference in Sunday’s election to push what was widely seen as a toss-up election to the incumbent?

Here are six reasons. Continue reading Six reasons why Malaysia’s BN-led government held on to power in Sunday’s election →

India, Karnataka

Karnataka, India’s high-growth power state, votes in shadow of 2014 national campaign

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In 2004, when the national government of the center-right, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) sought reelection, it did so with the slogan of ‘India Shining,’ a catchphrase that it hoped would capture the progress India was making in catching up to the economic development that for so long eluded it.  That campaign failed, and the slogan itself largely backfired, but make no mistake — no city was shining brighter than Bangalore, the capital of the state of Karnataka.karnataka flagIndia Flag Icon

Bangalore, in the 1990s and the 2000s, rapidly developed into the so-called ‘Silicon Valley’ of India, with a rapid, increasingly technology-fueled growth wave that made the city a favorite among multinational corporations and that made Karnataka one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.  Bangalore’s population went from 5.1 million to 8.4 million from 2001 to 2011 alone.

Karnataka itself has a population of nearly 62 million people — although it ranks as only the ninth-most populous state within India, it nonetheless has a slightly larger population than Italy and a population twice as large as Malaysia, though I’m sure you’ve heard much more about the recent Italian elections and the Malaysian parliamentary elections scheduled for the same day as Karnataka’s state elections on May 5.  But given the rising economic, cultural, demographic and political importance of India, and the central role than Bangalore and its economic hinterland has played in India’s 2000s economic boom, there’s really no reason why Italian politics should necessarily be any more important than Karnataka state politics.

Its importance comes especially into relief when you view the Karnataka campaign in the context of India’s highly anticipated 2014 national election showdown between the BJP, which will likely (though not certainly) be led by Gujarati chief minister Narendra Modi and the current governing party, the Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस), which will almost certainly be led by Rahul Gandhi, the son of current Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and both Rahul and Modi have recently visited Karnataka state to campaign for their parties and to take swipes at one another.

So what do you need to know about the politics of Karnataka? Continue reading Karnataka, India’s high-growth power state, votes in shadow of 2014 national campaign →

Pakistan

Musharraf didn’t need the Peshawar High Court to render him politically irrelevant

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Pakistan’s former leader, Pervez Musharraf, has been barred from Pakistani civilian politics for life, following a ruling this week by the Peshawar High Court, the highest court in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Pakistan Flag Icon

Musharraf, who took power as army chief of staff in 1999, ousting prime minister Nawaz Sharif at the time, left office in 2008 to the first truly free and fair elections since the 1997 election that Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) won.

After five years outside the country, Musharraf was hoping to return to Pakistan from self-imposed exile under the banner of his newly formed (as of 2010, at least) All Pakistan Muslim League (APML, آل پاکستان مسلم لیگ).  The faction that supported Musharraf throughout the 2000s, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (پاکستان مسلم لیگ ق, or the PML-Q), is no longer much of a factor, and what remains of the PML-Q now supports the ruling — and fading — Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎).

Though the PPP is struggling in advance of the May 11 elections, Musharraf has never been thought the likely benefactor.  Instead, Sharif, the prime minister that Musharraf ousted over a decade ago and who returned to Pakistan from his own exile in late 2007, leads polls in the May elections and is expected to win on the basis of his party’s wide support in Punjab province, the country’s most populous by far.

Musharraf retains pockets of support, especially within Pakistan’s military.  But when he returned to the country on March 24, only about 300 supporters even bothered to greet him at Karachi’s airport.  Things have gone downhill ever since for Musharraf, whose recent lifetime political ban is the least of his legal worries.  Musharraf was disqualified from running by election officials in four locations throughout the country, and he’s now subject to at least three other investigations, one of which forced him to flee a courtroom earlier in April over charges that he committed treason for declaring emergency rule in 2007.  Even more immediately, he’s been placed under house arrest in respect of the investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who returned from her own exile in 2007 as well to run for office at the head of the PPP.  Musharraf isn’t believed to have actively participated or planned the bombing and shooting  attack, but he’s been accused of failing to provide Bhutto sufficient protection at the time.   Continue reading Musharraf didn’t need the Peshawar High Court to render him politically irrelevant →

Iceland

Gunnlaugsson now unexpectedly in line to form Icelandic government

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Despite the fact that Iceland’s long-ruling Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (Independence Party) won about 2% more in voter support in Saturday’s parliamentary elections, it looks like Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, the leader of the second-place Framsóknarflokkurinn (Progressive Party), will have the first shot at forming a government.Iceland Flag Icon

That’s because both parties ultimately won 19 seats each in the Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament, and Iceland’s president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, surprisingly decided to give Gunnlaugsson the first shot at forming the next Icelandic government.

The decision shines a spotlight on the fact that in many countries, the head of state has quite an influential role in determining who will be the next head of government — in this case, it seems like Gunnlaugsson will nonetheless be on track to become the next prime minister, not the leader of the Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson.

It makes some intuitive sense — the Progressives have by far the most momentum, having garnered nearly an additional 10% of the vote in the 2013 election, and although the Independence Party won the vote in Reykjavík and the small southwestern region of Iceland surrounding Reykjavík, the Progressives won more votes in all of the other regions of the country (though they are more sparsely populated).

Although all signals from both Gunnlaugsson and Benediktsson are that they’ll form a center-right coalition, one possibility that I hadn’t considered is that Gunnlaugsson might join forces with other parties, leaving the Independence Party outside of government.

That seems unlikely, of course, but it’s an avenue that’s more open to the Progressives than the Independence Party, given that the Progressives can make a marginally better argument that they represent a rupture from both the Independence Party that dominated Icelandic government in the decades prior to 2009 and the more recent government led by Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and the Samfylkingin (Social Democratic Alliance) and their coalition partners, the Vinstrihreyfingin – grænt framboð (Left-Green Movement).

Mathematically, a government needs 32 seats for a majority in the 63-member Alþingi.

Conceivably, and this is now in the realm of pure speculation, that means that Gunnlaugsson could team up with the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement for a 35-seat majority, though that seems nearly suicidal, given that the two parties suffered the heaviest losses in the recent election.  It seems even more unlikely given the Social Democratic Alliance’s support for joining the European Union, a position that both the Independence Party and the Progressives — and even the Left-Green Movement — oppose.

But another path might include a Progressive-led government that draws on support from the anti-EU membership Left-Green Movement and the most successful of the two newest parties in the Alþingi, Björt framtíð (Bright Future) — that would bring exactly 32 seats.  Bright Future was founded both by former Social Democrats and Progressives, which means that, despite its pro-EU membership views, Bright Future could be an easier coalition partner for the Progressives.

What’s clear is that, for now, Gunnlaugsson would appear to have the greatest number of options, including several novel paths to a government that could shake up Icelandic politics more than we thought even over the weekend.

Venezuela

Gettin’ Raucous in Caracas

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Here’s a piece I wrote for an LGBT website on the Caracas gay scene a couple of weeks ago– and how the election season put a damper on exploring Caracas’s nightlife.  It’s not my typical foreign policy analysis, but perhaps some of you will enjoy it nonetheless if you ever find yourselves with a free night in Venezuela’s capital.

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CARACAS, Venezuela — Perched in a valley of a mountain range that runs along the Caribbean coast on the northern rim of South America, Caracas isn’t exactly the first thing you think of when you think gay destination.Venezuela Flag Icon

But you’d be surprised at how much fun life could be in the capital of the Bolivarian Republic — Sean Penn can’t be completely wrong, right?

My chief obstacle was the ley seca, the dry law that went into effect at 6 p.m. Friday night in advance of last Sunday’s election.   Nothing kills a South American party faster than public teetotaling, though Venezuelans had figured how to circumvent that law fairly discreetly after a similar dry spell following the death of former president Hugo Chávez and another during semana santa (Holy Week).  But the state of things left nightlife a bit more subdued than it would have otherwise been.

Being stuck in Caracas during election season isn’t all bad, though.  In a society that now, more than ever, is incredibly political polarized, gay life is one of the few parts of Venezuelan society where chavistas — the followers of Chávez and his successor, president-elect Nicolás Maduro — mix with opposition supporters.

Unlike in the United States, both sides court the gay demographic, and early in the most recent campaign, opposition candidate Henrique Capriles lashed out at Maduro for using homophobic language to slur Capriles (he’s called Capriles a ‘little princess’), arguing that there’s no place for the kind of machismo language that ostracizes and excludes gay Venezuelans.  Despite Maduro’s language, the Venezuelan government hasn’t been wholly bad for LGBT rights.  Chávez’s 1999 constitution attempted to include language banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, though Chávez in 1999 outlawed discrimination by statute.

Capriles, for the record, is fairly easy on the eyes and incredibly fit, in contrast to either Maduro or Chávez.  He’s also single, though he’s been linked to numerous women in the past, so don’t get any ideas.

Notwithstanding the pre-election ley seca, and the post-election tension, which continues even now to threaten Venezuela’s political stability, I still found some time to see the best of gay Caracas while covering the election and its policy issues.

Don’t expect Buenos Aires or Rio — Caracas isn’t a hard-dancing party town.  Instead, expect a surprisingly sophisticated mixed scene — the term in Caracas for the more gay-friendly scene is ‘en ambiente,’ but really the entire neighborhoods of Altamira and Chacao, as some of Caracas’s safest neighborhoods, come alive with a chill scene at night.  Forget what you’ve heard about the ‘murder capital’ of the world — Altamira and Chacao are walkable by night with the precautions you’d use in New York or Los Angeles.

I was lucky to have Julian Eduardo — a.k.a Stayfree — to show me around town.  He’s an icon of gay life in Caracas as one of the first Venezuelans to come out publicly, and he was for a while one of the hosts of a popular television show, ‘Noches de perros,’ making him one of the first openly gay figures on Venezuelan television.  He said that Caracas has become increasingly sensitive to LGBT issues over the past decade.  Though gay life in Venezuela may not be as out and proud as in countries like Argentina and Uruguay, which have both enacted gay marriage (Uruguay did so last week), gay life in Venezuela is a mellow thing, especially in the capital.

So, for instance, check out Puto Bar, which is Chacao’s answer to a hipster dive with great music, cheap drinks and a fun mixed, en ambiente scene where there’s usually even more action outside among the smoking area than inside with the night’s live set.  There were quite a few boys with some assets worth, ahem, expropriating, faster than you can say ‘Mister Danger.’ Continue reading Gettin’ Raucous in Caracas →