IBERO-AMERICA NEWS DIGEST
Guatemalan Group Supports Zepp LaRouche's Appeal for Dialogue of Cultures
The General Assembly of the Guatemalan Association of Cultural Centers, at its national conference on March 3, endorsed Helga Zepp LaRouche's call for a Dialogue of Culture (see article in Indepth). Zepp LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute, and wife of renowned U.S. economist and 2004 Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.
The Guatemalan statement says:
"Considering that since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the world has moved dangerously toward the possibility of war, whose escalation based on the concept of a clash of civilizations--which concept denies the possibility that civilizations can find points of convergence around universal principles--is being fanned by the world press; and
"Considering that the Schiller Institute, whose main offices are in Germany, and its president Helga Zepp [LaRouche] have promoted a project for a dialogue of civilizations worldwide;
"Therefore, this assembly, which represents a love of peace not only for our country beaten down by intransigence, discrimination, and racism, declares itself in favor of all those initiatives--national and foreign--which come out for world peace, for which reason it not only embraces the initiative of the aforementioned Schiller Institute, but calls on that Institute to take our association into account, given that it is made up of more than 130 cultural centers throughout the national territory...."
Bedoya, Londono Offer 'Fuerza Colombia' Alternative
Offering the voters a genuine alternative in the May 2002 Presidential elections in Colombia, is "Fuerza Colombia," an independent political movement headed by Presidential candidate and retired Army General Harold Bedoya, who has long offered a plan to win the war on drugs, with no appeasement of narcoterrorists like the FARC. Asked to comment on front-runner Alvaro Uribe Velez's much-touted hardline against the FARC, Bedoya called Uribe "a virtual soldier," insisting that Colombia's Armed Forces are fully capable of defeating the narcoterrorists on their own, if given the financial, materiel, logistical, and, most important, political backing they require." Uribe had been quoted as calling for U.S. troops.
Bedoya's economic advisor is Maximiliano Londono, a longstanding associate and friend of Lyndon LaRouche. Londono also headed Bedoya's slate of Congressional candidates from Bogota, campaigning on a program of national reconstruction, premised on a break with the moribund IMF system and participation in creation of a New Bretton Woods system, as called for by LaRouche.
Colombian Political Parties Disintegrate After Years of Appeasing Narcoterrorists
Over 10 million Colombians went to the polls March 10, to elect a new national Congress and, in so doing, to determine the direction of May's Presidential contest. The results show clearly that the years of appeasement and concessions to narcoterrorism by the traditional parties, the very centerpiece of President Pastrana's Conservative Party government's program, are over.
The ruling Conservative Party lost so many seats that the party president was forced to resign in shame. Furthermore, by March 12, Juan Camilo Restrepo, Presidential candidate of the Conservative Party, had resigned from the Presidential race, telling a press conference that he did not have sufficient unity behind his candidacy to continue in the race. Immediately, the Conservative Party bloc of Congressmen elected March 10 met and decided to throw their support to the hardline dissident candidate and front-runner Alvaro Uribe Velez, whose "Colombia Always" Party is a split-off from the opposition Liberal Party. The headless Conservative Party as a whole is now meeting to discuss whether to endorse Uribe's candidacy. This would be the first time in the country's history that the Conservative Party went to Presidential elections without its own candidate.
It is now considered almost certain that Uribe Velez will be elected Colombia's next President. But the collapse of the two main political parties after years of dirty dealings with the narcoterrorists, means that a revamping of the entire political system is now in order.
Colombia's other leading party, the Liberal Party, also lost a significant number of seats, while clinginng to majority control over the Senate. Independents of both the left and right, as well as dissident forces from both traditional parties, were swept into office in record numbers.
Financial Times Fears Argentina Crisis Could Spark Regional Backlash vs. Free Trade, Austerity
Reflecting fear that the political situation in Ibero-America is not at all under control, the Financial Times' Richard Lapper on March 9 fretted that Argentina's problems could turn the entire region against free trade. He argues that all of Ibero-America adopted the same policies of privatization, free trade, and austerity as Argentina did, and the benefits that were supposed to result from them never materialized. So, Argentina's problems today "could serve as a warning to policymakers ... It is not just Argentines who have begun to question the liberal economic model."
Warning of the dangers of "populism," Lapper appeared to share the fears of other financier oligarchs that Lyndon LaRouche's American System economics and a New Bretton Woods system might take hold in the region, as Argentina's Ambito Financiero warned in its Jan. 28 slander against LaRouche, whom the paper labelled "populist." Unfortunately, Lapper wrote, "populist economic policies, such as more state intervention and much higher social spending, are gaining credit."
The great challenge Ibero-American nations face, he concluded, is how to sell austerity to their populations--people aren't interested in buying it.
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