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Geopolitics

Elections In Nicaragua And Guatemala Show Central America's Democratic Deficit

Analysis: Two elections decided Sunday in Central America produced winners – Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Otto Pérez in Guatemala – who couldn’t be more different. But the victories both show how troubled the isthmus’ democratic institutions really are.

A Guatemalan woman votes in September's first-round election
A Guatemalan woman votes in September's first-round election
Paulo A. Paranagua

Two presidential elections took place in Central America on Sunday. In Nicaragua, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was reelected. In Guatemala, retired Gen. Otto Pérez Molina won a runoff with 55% of the vote.

Accredited international observers found that, except for a few incidents, the election in Nicaragua was clean. But there is a major problem with the outcome nonetheless: the Constitution should have prohibited Ortega from running in the first place. Nicaraguan presidents aren't allowed to serve consecutive terms, nor are they allowed to serve more than two in total. Ortega thus should have been barred on both counts, but was allowed to compete thanks to a ruling by the Supreme Court, which he controls.

Venezuelan petro-dollars that the Nicaraguan president uses at his discretion helped his cause as well. Against the left-wing Sandinista party's patron politics, the two conservative candidates didn't stand a chance. According to early results, Ortega – who won 64% of the vote – stomped his closest rival, a 79-year-old radio personality named Fabio Gadea, who won just 29%.

Crumbling institutions

In Guatemala, Gen. Pérez won thanks to promises that he would be tough on organized crime. The outgoing president, Alvaro Colom – a social democrat – disappointed the Guatemalan public in this respect. Pérez benefited as well from not having to face Sandra Torres, Colom's wife, who divorced the current president in order to run. The move backfired. In the end, Guatemala's constitutional court declared her candidacy invalid.

Sunday's contrasting results are revealing, albeit a bit counterintuitive. In Nicaragua, a former left-wing guerilla stands for continuity. In Guatemala, a hard-nosed general embodies change. But what both elections show is that Central America is indeed the hemisphere's weak link. That's something the 2009 coup in Honduras had already demonstrated.

In addition to its entrenched poverty and persistent inequalities, the Central American isthmus now faces pressure from drug cartels and ultra-violent youth gangs, known as "maras." Guatemala, the region's northernmost country, is at the point of collapse, completely infiltrated by criminals. On the other end is Panama, a fiscal haven and ideal place for laundering money.

In El Salvador, a left-wing government called on the army to help address the security problem, just as Mexico's right-wing government was forced to do. In Guatemala, Gen. Pérez promises to do the same thing. Twenty years after Central America's civil wars came to an end, the presence of soldiers in the streets is testament to just how challenged democratic institutions are right now in this long-troubled region.

Read the original article in French

Photo - spotreporting

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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