South American Politics thread - Page 39

On September 01 2019 02:12 JimmiC wrote:
Your last sentence is so full of irony I don't think I have time to unpack it.

But to your first part, the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force, the legitimate political party that was formed when the peace treaty was signed, I have no problem with and I hope they continue to operate and grow.

As the flawed democracy that they are (scoring 6.96) I have hope that they will be able to sort out what they have going on.

The tough part for the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force is that they have the stain of the terrorism, drug trafficing, murder, torture, killing of indigenous and so on baggage, so they are not polling well. Those supporters you speak of do not support the current FARC.

As I stated from the start I understand I don't know a ton about Colombian politics. And it is clear you know even less despite your belief to the opposite, but maybe a party like "POLO" might be better for you. I'd likely vote green party there, but I would have to dive much deeper than I have.


It might be worth trying to re-read my posts and the sources without the predetermined conclusion that I am evil, or whatever it is that makes you so angry and wanting to argue with everyone of my posts, when you clearly have shown you don't even understand even my most simple position. Or maybe ask follow up questions so you do, instead of instantly attacking me and them based on whatever assumptions you have made about me and treat as fact. It would be appreciated. Hopefully you can calm down and have a great rest of your day!

On September 01 2019 03:22 JimmiC wrote:
Actually I addressed it like 5 times. Saying you could put all the killings of both the paramilitary and the government in the same bucket and it would not change my position. Which I stated clearly numerous times.

Now what demonstrates you do not belong is your almost pathological need to dodge every direct question I have, put on the blame on the "government" with out the slightest realization the both the FARC and the government have changed pretty dramatically over the time period of the start of the war to today.


So for the 6th time. Do you think the FARC should restart the war? If the answer is yes please explain what about the current FARC make it clear to you that they will do enough better to justify the horrors of war. If you say no, great we have no argument and you are arguing with the voices in your head.

On September 01 2019 07:10 JimmiC wrote:

The part of the group that continued to act as FARC is a criminal organization. The peace treaty required them to stop being "FARC" and start being the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force.

This is why I keep using current FARC, because this is not the original group. This is a group of old FARC members that preferred to be drug lords rather than politicians.

This was also in my original source and is like super basic information about FARC and Columbia's politics, which is also why so many of your posts are dripping with irony as you talk condescendingly to me over and over.


Which brings to my to the 7th time I'll ask, feel free to dodge as usual, Do you think the FARC should restart the war? If the answer is yes please explain what about the current FARC make it clear to you that they will do enough better to justify the horrors of war. If you say no, great we have no argument and you are arguing with the voices in your head.

On September 01 2019 07:33 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Seems it has started already. One wonders if this more extreme element of FARC will attempt to attack Brazilian targets like in the early 90s. Especially if they are in Venezuelan territory.

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1167486095468236807

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan officials say they have proof of paramilitary training camps operating in neighboring Colombia where groups are purportedly plotting attacks to undermine President Nicolás Maduro.

Communications Minister Jorge Rodríguez appeared on state television Saturday accusing Colombia’s President Iván Duque of doing nothing to stop it.

The accusation comes amid mounting tensions between the South American nations. A group of leftist guerrillas announced days earlier they’re taking up arms again in Colombia and Duque has accused Venezuela’s socialist government of harboring Colombia’s guerrillas.

Maduro’s spokesman, Rodríguez, showed satellite images and coordinates of what he described as three paramilitary training camps along the border in Colombia.

He also said they’ve thwarted a terrorist plot to detonate explosions targeting two special police units and the Palace of Justice in Caracas.

Argentina Considers a Return to Peronism

For nearly a century in Argentina, allegiance to Peronism has been an unwritten condition to completing a full term. Raúl Alfonsín, the first non-Peronist leader to govern the country since its return to democracy, in 1983, left office almost six months early, after surviving three military uprisings. The second, Fernando de la Rúa, resigned in 2001, halfway into his term, fleeing the Presidential palace aboard a white helicopter. The current President, Mauricio Macri, took office in 2015 and is now seeking reëlection, but, after he suffered a disastrous defeat in the primaries earlier this month, many have questioned whether he will prove an exception to the rule.

Primaries in Argentina are intended to whittle down the list of candidates, but they effectively serve as a test of national sentiment. The results of the August 11th vote cast doubt on Macri’s ambitious reform agenda, as he fell fifteen points behind Everyone’s Front, a Peronist coalition led by Alberto Fernández and the former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. From the outset, the President, who is a former executive and the scion of a prominent family, had a difficult path to reëlection; Cambiemos, his project to steer Argentina away from economic disarray, has faltered, and many voters believe that their country was in better standing before he took office. The economy has recently contracted, and last year Argentina had to request its twenty-second bailout from the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.). Because a large part of the electorate has grown wary of his market-friendly approach, Macri chose the Peronist senator Miguel Ángel Pichetto as a running mate. Still, their coalition, Together for Change, hasn’t successfully appealed to Argentines, who have returned to associating Peronism with a prosperous future.

Eduardo Levy Yeyati, a former adviser to the administration, told me. “I think the government erred on the side of naïveté in attributing the country’s structural problems to ‘populism’ and assuming that a more market-friendly rhetoric and cast would unlock the animal spirits of investment and growth.”

In fact, foreign investment didn’t arrive arrive as expected or promised. Last year, amid a severe currency crisis, Argentina entered a recession—inflation soared to fifty-five per cent, the peso lost half of its value, and three million people fell into poverty. In the summer of 2018, Macri sought a fifty-seven-billion-dollar bailout from the I.M.F., the biggest in the Fund’s history. Argentina has negotiated dozens of agreements with the I.M.F. in the past six decades, and the institution is widely regarded as a villain, complicit in the country’s recurrent indebtedness. Seeking the Fund’s assistance once again was perceived as a humiliation and an indication that more austerity measures lay ahead. Protesters blocked streets in Buenos Aires and spray-painted messages such as “imf = hunger” or “with the imf we’re going back to the bottom.” The bailout was also a sign of weakness for a President who had committed to bringing inflation down to single digits and leaving Argentina’s recessionary history behind. “We failed to realize how fragile the government and the economy really were on the inside,” a senior Argentine official told me.

One of Macri’s most ambitious campaign goals was his “zero poverty” pledge. Although Kirchner stopped publishing statistics altogether, estimates reveal that roughly a third of the population lived in poverty while she was in power. With the exception of mid-2017, when the poverty rate fell to 25.7 per cent, the numbers haven’t changed much under Macri—if anything, they’ve worsened.

On September 01 2019 09:44 GoTuNk! wrote:
Peronism has ruined Argentina for the last 80 years.

Macri was not a "right wing president", as the article you share correctly points out; he did not do any right wing changes, rather, he fooled the FMI for more money to keep running unaffordable government programs using his "right wing" image.
Since nothing really changed, the country is begining to collapse in a pretty predictable fashion (like it has many times before), with the ghost of hyperinflation looming in the horizon.

My personal opinion is that Argentina's collapse is inevitable at this point, who they elect doesn't matter much, except that Macri's opposition are not just fools like him and his team, but crooked criminals of the worse kind. With them it will be collapse and perpetual misery, as opossed as collapse and maybe some recovery.

People like me have been pointing at this for at least 10 years, saying Argentina's economy is unsustainable and required urgent pro market reforms. These measures where unpopular in Argentina, so politicians never implemented them. Now they will pay very steep consequences.

Juan Perón famously said, “It is not that we were good, but those who came after us were so bad that they made us look good.”

On September 01 2019 09:57 GreenHorizons wrote:


While I disagree that the Republican president isn't right wing (center right is a fair characterization in context), I do appreciate you offering the further right pro-market perspective we lack in the US politics thread anymore (even if I disagree with practically all of it).

I honestly don't know who else reads this thread, so I don't know if there's any reason to analogize your argument relative to the more popular US political scene, but would you say it's fair to characterize your argument in the vein of a sort of tea party opposition to Republicans?

That it's a failure to govern (as well as results to manifest) like their pro-market rhetoric suggested they would and should?

As to Peronism, I'm not much of a fan myself, but I can see why it's popular. I think he summed it up well himself:

On September 01 2019 10:29 GoTuNk! wrote:


I'm honestly not sure I understand your question.
Half of what I am saying is that typical "right wing" economic policies include some sort of: lower taxes, lower government spending, make it easier for international trade, better enforcement of property rights, more flexible job market, etc.
Typical left wing policies are the opposite.

Macri campaigned on "typical right wing stuff" but didn't implement any of it. (I think we can agree up to there).
He also used his "right wing image" to fool the FMI to loan him money. They would never lend money to the Kirchner.

The other half of the argument is that Argentina has been running for decades on mostly left wing, anti market policies, and avoiding collapse required drastical changes. It didn't happen. He got the titanic going towards an Iceberg, and didn't correct course.

Peronism is a bit more complicated that you put it here, it's some sort of mystical populism in Argentina where both left wing and centre-right groups try to call themselves "Peronist". Some left wing groups call themselves "peronist", others don't and they fight each other, it's pretty hard to understand even for me that I speak the language and follow somewhat Argentinian politics.

Backed by Colombia’s opposition parties, FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño on Monday urged President Ivan Duque‘s compliance with the peace deal and rejected dissident guerrillas.

In its rebuttal to the president’s speech over the “new guerrilla group” of dissident FARC commander “Ivan Marquez,” the opposition pushed forth “Timochenko” to address the nation.

Duque vows to continue Colombia’s peace process, but FARC dissidents ‘will suffer the full weight of the law’
Backed by opposition senators, the former guerrilla leader began by fiercely rejecting his former second-in-command’s call on FARC members to rearm.

"We, the opposition parties, join the national cry of rejection of the decision, which constitutes a violation of the commitments made in the peace agreement, taken by this group of people. The proven noncompliance of the state may not be responded by other failures to comply."

—FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, a.k.a. “Timochenko”

The FARC leader reiterated that the peace process “has been supported by all Colombians who believe that through civilized dialogue and the deepening of democracy we can and must construct a better country.”

Londoño stressed that, “those who want peace are the majority and we have the obligation not to falter.”

The opposition “also rejects statements made in order to take advantage of the situation to call for the noncompliance of what has been agreed between the state and the FARC” in an indirect reference to Duque’s political patron, former President Alvaro Uribe.

Londoño warned Duque that further attempts by the president or his minority coalition to alter the peace agreement can count on the “certain rejection” of Colombian society and the international community.

While speaking on behalf of the leftist opposition, the FARC leader’s call to implement the peace deal can also count on the support of the center right voting block that was formed last year to prevent attempts by Duque and his far-right party to undo parts of the peace deal.