~~ posted for dmorista ~~
Introduction:
The first article: “Violence and intimidation leave bloody imprint on Honduran elections”, Nov 23, 2021, Zoe Alexandra, Peoples Dispatch, at < Violence and intimidation leave bloody imprint on Honduran elections : Peoples Dispatch >, discussed the overall electoral situation in Honduras and mentioned some of the many incidents of violence aimed at progressive opponents of the current reactionary regime. The author wrote here that: “.... Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup d’état …. imposed what many classify today as 'a narco-dictatorship' led by the National Party. The past 12 years have been characterized by the militarization of the country, the handing over of territories to private actors for the extraction of natural resources, the deterioration of the socio-economic conditions of the majority, cuts to the public sector, unbridled corruption, and mass migration outside of the country.” The U.S. ruling class and their massive system that delivers the standard line of disinformation and propaganda that never discusses the harsh oppression in Honduras.
The linchpin of U.S. imperialism in Northern South America, the Caribbean Sea, and Central America is Colombia. Despite the provision of tens of billions of dollars, and the use of large numbers of American commandos, Colombia is seething with discontent and progressive organizing. “Death Squads threaten Colombian Human Rights Defender Darnelly Rodriguez twice in two weeks”, Nov 23, 2021, JAMES PATRICK JORDAN, Alliance for Global Justice, at < Death Squads threaten Colombian Human Rights Defender Darnelly Rodriguez twice in two weeks - Alliance for Global Justice (afgj.org) >, discusses some of the actions by Paramiitaries and the police and army to repress the Colombian population. The article points out that over the couple of months the forces of the right have murdered 84 people in Cali itself, and 91 in the “Departamento of Cauca” in which Cali is located. And in addition 181 people disappeared of whom 104 have now been found, the other 77 are likely dead.
The subject of the article Darnelly Rodriguez was seriously injured by a police beating. She is having a difficult time accessing the needed medical attention for wounds from that beating. Colombia has elections coming up in May of 2022 and the activities of the Death Squads and the other repressive organization can be expected to intensify in the lead-up to the election. At the bottom of the article a translation of a death threat against Rodriguez, and 17 otheres, is posted.
The authors look at the situation with democracy in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Haiti. They find a mixed picture but denounce the role of the Organization of American States, (OAS) under the overseeing pressure of the U.S. and a reactionary leadership at the OAS. They suggest setting up some new institutions to rate democracy in the Western Hemisphere.
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Violence and intimidation leave bloody imprint on Honduran elections
Ahead of Sunday’s elections in Honduras, Olivia Zúniga Cáceres, congresswoman of the Libre Party, talks about the violence, hate and intimidation suffered by candidates and members of the opposition
November 23, 2021 by Zoe Alexandra
On Sunday, November 28, 5.5 million Hondurans will participate in the general elections to elect the president, 128 deputies to the National Congress, 298 mayors, and 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament. The electoral process has been strongly criticized by members of the opposition and human rights organizations inside and outside Honduras due to the serious violation of the basic rights of the political opposition and the right of the people to a peaceful and legal electoral process.
For Olivia Zúniga Cáceres, congresswoman of the Party for Liberation and Refoundation (Libre) from the department of Intibucá, this is largely due to the political situation in Honduras over the last decade. “We have had eight years of the dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernández and 12 years of the dictatorship of the National Party, so obviously this is not a normal process,” she explained.
In June 2009, the then president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup d’état that broke with the democratic order in the country and imposed what many classify today as “a narco-dictatorship” led by the National Party. The past 12 years have been characterized by the militarization of the country, the handing over of territories to private actors for the extraction of natural resources, the deterioration of the socio-economic conditions of the majority, cuts to the public sector, unbridled corruption, and mass migration outside of the country.
For the Libre Party, the slogan “they will leave” is key in this context as it seeks to put an end to this cycle that has undermined the well-being of the Honduran people in every sense of the word. Libre’s bid has received strong support, with its presidential candidate Xiomara Castro leading all opinion and voter intention polls. However, as Zúniga Cáceres recalled, those who have come to power through coups and fraud will not leave office without a fight, and she talked about the “fear of the violence of the National Party, of the violence of those who feel defeated, who know they are going to lose the electoral process”.
Hate campaigns
According to the congresswoman from Intibucá, the atmosphere just days before the elections is “one of a lot of repression, persecution, criminalization and campaigns of hate, especially against women.” She herself has received constant threats and attacks from the hegemonic media, members, and supporters of the National Party, and the security forces in response to her unrelenting stance against acts of corruption and violence by the ruling party.
On November 14, the Office in Honduras of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) condemned acts of electoral violence following the murder of three mayoral candidates, Francisco Gaitán, Elvir Casaña, and Luis Gustavo Castellanos, on that day. The OHCHR denounced the killing of at least 28 people in political violence since the primary elections, and called on the actors involved to “conduct peaceful elections with respect for human rights.” On November 22, following the murder of two human rights defenders, the OHCHR issued another alert on the increase of political violence and the violation of human rights.
The representative of the Libre Party in the National Electoral Council, Rixi Moncada, who has the responsibility of guaranteeing a transparent and legitimate electoral process – as opposed to that of 2017 – has also been the target of “a huge smear campaign of hate, and above all the boycott of everything she has developed in this electoral process,” explained Zúniga Cáceres.
“The fraud has already begun”
The 2017 elections were condemned by many Honduran and international organizations and institutions as fraudulent due to irregularities in the counting process. The seemingly irreversible trend in favor of the opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was reversed in favor of Juan Orlando Hernández after a blackout in the system. After that, the gap widened and the unexpected (and for many, invented) victory of Juan Orlando Hernández was consolidated. The obvious fraud motivated thousands to take to the streets, organizing takeovers and road blockades across the country to “fight in defense of the democratic principles so that the will of the sovereign, of the Honduran people, be respected,” recalled Zúniga Cáceres.
During these protests, more than 35 young people were killed in the streets by the security forces, and to date there has been no justice in any of the cases. “Today we hope that this same history will not repeat itself, that the will of the people prevails, that democratic principles prevail, and that we will not again see Honduran men and women murdered in the streets in a brazen manner, and repressed with tear gas, rubber bullets and with all kinds of extrajudicial imprisonment,” she emphasized.
The concerns about fraud, however, are not only about the vote count on the 28th, according to the congresswoman, but involve a long-term process. Many of these concerns already seem justified due to the”the buying of votes, and with the delivery of aid that was given by international cooperation agencies and from countries around the world during hurricanes Eta and Iota [in November 2020].”
She added that the political campaign of the National Party has been financed “by drug trafficking and with the money stolen from the COVID-19 pandemic with the infamous cases of the mobile hospitals.”
Fears of violence
With the deployment of the military across Honduras, rumors are circulating that the armed forces are preparing for a prolonged crisis, and with memories of the violence of 2017 looming large, many fear for what may come after November 28.
According to the mainstream media, the electoral violence of 2017 was due to “terrorist riots” and the protesters were given “warlike treatment.” Zúniga Cáceres pointed out that the responsibility for the violence lay with “the National Party, the dictatorship, the oligarchic elites who do not want to give up their benefits, their privileges, and violence has never come from the people”.
She stressed on the fact that “We hope that we are going to be victorious, our call has always been for peace, that it be a democratic and civic celebration in which we know that the Honduran people are going to come out in a disciplined, orderly manner to exercise their suffrage”.
She also insisted that the opposition would defend the will of the people but will not give “into provocation … and this violent strategy that has been carried out against the Honduran people and against the Libre party, against Xiomara Castro and all the opposition candidates, the Libre candidates and [we demand] that there should be no more assassinations of political leaders.”
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Death Squads threaten Colombian Human Rights Defender Darnelly Rodriguez twice in two weeks
We are very worried for the safety and security of Centro Pazífico coordinator, Darnelly Rodriguez. On November 19 2021, she received the second of two death threats in two weeks. This threat came from the AGC paramilitary group. She was listed along with several other social movement and union leaders in a pamphlet that was left under the door of Cali’s largest labor federation. A translation of the threat is included at the end of the page.
Darnelly is also the coordinator for the Francisco Isaías Cifuentes Human Rights Network (REDDHFIC)’s Valle Del Cauca chapter. Threats against Darnelly have increased over the past year, and already last February, she had had to change her residence.
INTERVIEW WITH DARNELLY RODRIGUEZ
Coordinator for the Pacific Center for Human Rights (Centro Pazífico)
Conducted by James Patrick Jordan of the Alliance for Global Justice, in celebration of the first anniversary of the Centro Pazífico’s founding.
The Centro Pazífico, or, by its full name, the Pacific Center for Human Rights, was founded in the Fall of 2020 in Cali, Colombia, the largest and capitol city of the Department of Valle del Cauca. It was established as both an international and local response to extreme repression in the region. Southwest Colombia has the highest levels of political violence in the entire country. Many around the world saw evidence of this when we witnessed the police, military, and paramilitary assaults against the National Strike. During the strike, the Centro Pazífico was a safe place and distribution center for medical supplies. Overall, the goal of the Center is to provide office, meeting, and training space for regional popular movements, and short- and medium- term housing for threatened social leaders and human rights accompaniers.
Darnelly Rodriguez, the Centro Pazífico coordinator, is one of the most capable people I know. She is articulate, energetic, well-organized, and a comprehensive source of information. Above all, she is courageous. Earlier this year, in February, AFGJ sent out an alert asking for protection for Darnelly after she had to move for the second time in several months because of the threats against her. In the interview that follows you will read about how police viciously beat her while she undertook a mission of verification. Just the morning after finishing the interview, Darnelly texted me that she had received yet another threat—the second in two weeks. Yet, she doesn’t back down.
Question: When the Centro Pazífico opened, we were in the worst days of the pandemic. However, almost from the beginning, it was necessary to give shelter to 15 individuals displaced from a neighborhood in Buenaventura (a mostly Afro-Colombian city that is the country’s largest port on the Pacific). Can you talk a little bit about this experience? How did you organize so quickly with so few resources to receive them? What caused their displacement?
Answer: These 15 social leaders (including two youth) are from Buenaventura, Valle de Cauca. Their displacement is due to their organizational work so that minors of age can avoid recruitment by armed groups. They have community processes that present theater, dance, music, among other art forms to prevent the dispersion of children and young people in the municipality and from becoming armed actors. Because of this work, the armed groups considered the community leaders a risk for their activities, and they began to make threats and carry out assaults against them, shooting at some of them at their homes, disappearing the family members of others. They recruited four of another man’s sons and two of them were returned to his house in plastic bags. This is why the 15 leaders had to leave.
Receiving them was not easy. First, we had to go to friends in other social organizations to ask for their solidarity, in order to buy tickets from Buenaventura to Cali for these persons. That was very difficult because of the pandemic. There was no public transportation, so that we had to find private transportation, which was triple the normal costs. Additionally, we had to buy food for these persons. Once we were able to get them out of Buenaventura to our house of refuge, at first, some had to sleep on the floor, on blankets and mats, since we didn’t yet have all the beds for them. Later, we received donations from people (blankets, sheets, towels, among other things).
Q: Has the Centro Pazífico continued to offer shelter to people displaced or threatened by political violence? Can you give another example to help our readers understand the nature of this service?
A: Yes, at the Centro Pazífico we have constantly received comrades in complex and risky situations. An additional case I could mention is the following.
A young human rights defender is falsely accused of being an insurgent. They make an illegal raid of his house, stealing his computer, cell phones, documents, the same with his housemate. They begin surveilling his house, they threaten the owner of the house so that she will not rent to him so that he has to urgently leave this place.
For his security he takes shelter in the Pacific Center for Human Rights [Centro Pazífico], where he continues his activities as a Human Rights defender for one month, and subsequently he was able to secure employment to be able to find another place to live.
Q: We, as internationals, looked on with horror at what happened in Cali with the repression of the National Strike. Is this something you experienced directly and personally? Can you tell us a little about the statistics—how many people were assassinated, detained, disappeared? Can you tell us something about the victories the people were able to achieve?
A: The National Strike began on April 28, 2021, and Santiago de Cali was a strong city in the strike and counted 23 “Resistance Points” (Puntos de Resistencia, where they had concentrations of protesters throughout the day and during all the three months of the National Strike.)
As far as statistics, unfortunately, we have to mention that just in the City of Santiago de Cali, we had the murder of 84 persons, and in the Department of Valle del Cauca, a total of 91. There was a total of 401 cases of arbitrary detentions (all are now free), and 22 persons in penal establishments who are facing judicial frame-ups on the part of the Colombian State. With regard to the disappeared, we had a total of 181 persons, of whom 104 were found. We couldn’t get much information, either because of the fear of their families, friends, and companions, or because persons couldn’t get back to their homes and turned up later. Of these cases of forced disappearances, we had very grave cases such as the following: a girl of 17 years, detained and taken from the city of Cali to the city of Yumbo, where she was tortured, sexually abused, without food, over three days, and the fourth day, she was left in the street, without shoes, without money, and she had to walk almost 20 kilometers before she found someone who would help her.
Yes, I personally lived through many situations in the National Strike, the most grave, and the one that almost caused our deaths, was the following [she provides a copy of the alert released by REDDHFIC]:
“At around 8:40 p.m., a verification mission [arrived] composed of… delegates from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [UNHCHR], the Attorney General’s Office and the Ombudsman’s Office, and human rights defenders Darnelly Rodríguez (REDDHFIC, Francisco Isaías Cifuentes Human Rights Network) ,Ana María Burgos (FCSPP, Committee in Solidarity with the Political Prisoners Foundation), James Larrea of the Human Rights Committee of the Congreso de los Pueblos [People’s Congress] and the Human Rights Committee of the CUT Valle [labor confederation], Rubén Darío Gómez coordinator of the…archdiocese of Cali.
At the police station there were evidently four people in custody, 3 of them… not part of the National Strike…, and a young man who was [at demonstrations] in the sector of La Luna , who had bruises, and an open wound in his leg, due to physical aggression by agents of the National Police and the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD). Once the verification was done… a police officer asked the UN and the Attorney General’s Office to verify the police officers who were apparently injured…. The human rights defenders James, Ana and Darnelly were left behind. They began to be verbally assaulted by a police officer, who, in an intimidating manner… shouted ‘you are useless, you don’t defend our rights, you are useless, go away!’.
Immediately, barracked police officers began to come out of the police station and surround the human rights defenders…. A police officer assaulted the human rights defender James Larrea and as a result of the blows he was thrown to the ground…. and a plainclothes police officer kicked Ana Maria Burgos in the back and hit Darnelly Rodriguez in the head, without removing his helmet. Despite the aggressions and the defenseless state of the group of defenders, about 150 policemen surrounded them and shouted, ‘Go away, go away! You are useless! You are killing us or is that we have no rights?’.
Then, frightened, the human rights defenders and the official from the Ombudsman’s Office left the place. Arriving at the corner… some street inhabitants… accompanied them in a human chain to stop the aggressions…. Several police officers… shouted, ‘This time we are going to kill them!’. At that moment police officers began to fire their guns against the human rights defenders, then ESMAD arrived…. The people from the street stood in front of them, shielding Darnelly Rodriguez and Ana Maria Burgos. Meanwhile, the police officers threw a stun grenade… and continued firing into the air and towards the human rights defenders and the people in the street. Dazed, the two human rights defenders… Darnelly Rodriguez and Ana Maria Burgos ran away, [but]… Darnelly Rodriguez received two impacts with what was apparently a blunt force weapon. One of her wounds is on the left side of her breast and the other in the calf of her left foot. The two women were helped by a bystander…to go to where the rest of the mission was. At that precise moment… Darnelly Rodriguez received what apparently was a blow in her coccyx which prevented her from moving normally. Then a police officer arrived at the scene and took them away, running, and told them, ‘Get out of here because these people are very emotional, and anything could happen’.”
Because of these aggressions, I have a spinal injury, a herniated disc, for which I have to undergo surgery. But it is difficult since it is a complicated surgery. Above all, it is a long period of quiet time (two months) that would prevent me from working. Therefore, it keeps getting postponed since I cannot stop working for that long because I have to care for my daughter.
Q: Were Centro Pazífico groups involved in the National Strike? Many of us contributed to funds for the street medics, funds that were distributed by Centro Pazífico members and allies.
A: Yes, fortunately we had your help for the street medics, or the health brigades, as they are known here. It helped us buy medications, cots, and thousands of supplies for attending to the wounded.
The Pacific Center for Human Rights served as a warehouse for the collection of food and medicines to assemble the first aid kits that were delivered during the national strike to all the points of resistance. It was also used as a site for non-emergency health care, that is, for minor cases…, these people were taken to the Human Rights Center and treated by health workers.
Likewise, the Centro Pazífico was our meeting place, where we slept to be able to cover the points of resistance. Approximately 20 human rights defenders would sleep there. It was where we were planning for the next day, where we received the information coming in from the street, where we were making declarations, where we held press conferences, among other activities. The role of the Centro Pazífico was fundamental for the work of the human rights groups among us.
Q: The number of victims of political violence almost always increases during the holidays. Is the Centro Pazífico and its member organizations prepared to receive more threatened leaders, more displaced people? Do you have the tools you need to defend human and labor rights? What are their immediate and current needs: groceries, printer, beds, furniture, security camera, anything else?
A: Yes, we human rights defenders, always, throughout the year, are ready to attend to whatever situation presents itself, late at night or in the morning, Sunday or Monday. Wiithout regard to the day or the hour, we are there to help, above all, when our comrades’ lives and security are at risk.
At the Centro Pazífico, we have many needs. We already count on all the financial help we have received for rent and utilities, but we do not know where all the materials will come from in order to attend to our fellow social leaders.
This is what we need at the Centro Pazífico: cots so that people will not have to sleep on the floor, sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, but, above all, we need funds so that when we receive some threatened social leader, we can offer them the food necessary for their subsistence while they are staying there.
Additionally, for training, declarations, and communication work, we need a computer that is constantly at the Human Rights Center, a printer, a video camera, a projector, and to be able to keep our comrades in the territories constantly trained.
Regarding security, we think it is important to install a security camera system in the center that will allow us to monitor the house.
Finally, we are thinking of being able to acquire a house, not a rented one but our own, so that this work we do will last for many more years, will be constant as our rights are being violated.
Q: The repression of the strike was made possible by bullets and guns and helicopters and tear gas from the U.S. government. As we prepare for a season dedicated to peace and good will to all, do you have any final words in closing on the importance of international solidarity?
A: First, we would like to thank the Alliance for Global Justice for their constant support, not only financially, but also for their constant accompaniment of our social movements, for sharing everything that is happening in our country, and for pressuring the Colombian state to provide guarantees for human rights defenders. We would also like to thank James, Raquel, Maya [staff and volunteers at AFGJ], and everyone for always being there.
International solidarity has always been so important for us, because at the national level we do not have the resources for our work, but also because it makes our situation visible in their countries, and we put an end to the lies that the national government is telling about Colombia. The solidarity shows the social and political reality, and that is very brave and important for us. We hope that this support continues for a long time and that we can help many social leaders in Colombia, especially here in the Southwest where the repression is so heavy.
TWO WAYS YOU CAN HELP:
If you have any further questions about the Centro Pazífico, please send an email to either centropazifico@gmail.com or James@AFGJ.org
COPY OF LATEST DEATH THREAT TO DARNELLY RODRIGUEZ AND OTHER SOCIAL AND LABOR LEADERS IN CALI:
(Translated by Maya Hernández)
The Gaitan Self Defense Groups of Colombia (AGC)
Public Notice November 2021
The Gaitan Self Defense Groups of Colombia (AGC) ratify our flags and denounce any and all guerrillas, communists, militias who threaten the country of Colombia. We have decided to move forward with attacks against those who form part of people’s organizations, such as unions, NGOs, human rights defenders, medics, people’s congress, and farmworkers who call themselves the Strike Committee, as well as certain representatives of political parties who encourage criminal activity and different forms of struggle in an effort to revive urban militias such as ELN, EPL, FARC dissidents, that began on April 28th, 2021. As a direct result of an intelligence process that was started to monitor and interfere with such organizations in the Department of Valle and Cauca, we were able to identify key individuals, their financing and their politically militant orientations. The “front line” [primera linea] calls have gravely harmed our beloved Colombia.
In continuation of our struggle against insurgents, we take military action against anyone who sympathizes or supports the following people: Magaly Pino alias la Chiqui, Walter Agredo, Alfredo Mondragón, Darnelly Rodriguez, Francisco Maltes Tello, Wilson Sáenz, José Miliciades Sánchez, Julián Lozano, Alexander López, Carlos Garcia, Jimmy Nuñez, Jorge Ivan Vélez, Wilson Ariaz, Isabel Olaya, Alberto Guzmán, Jhonson Torrez, Eufemia Mosquera, Gilberto Pareja, Feliciano Valencia. Our goal is to exterminate them.
¡For a Colombia that is free of Castro Chavism! ¡AGC is present!
For the motherland of Colombia, and for all
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We need a new observatory of democracy in the Americas
The Organization of American States is no longer credible. We need a new body if we are to protect democracy
On 20 October, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, traveled to Ecuador to set out a vision for democracy in the Americas. Over the past five years, the hemisphere has suffered an assault on its democratic institutions, as political leaders from Donald Trump to Jair Bolsonaro have adopted a new authoritarian playbook: lies, violence, repression, and more lies. Two-thirds of US citizens now believe that democracy is under threat, while a majority of Brazilians fear a military dictatorship will return to the country. “We find ourselves in a moment of democratic reckoning,” announced Blinken.
But the Biden administration continues to put the US on the wrong side of this reckoning. Consider Blinken’s recent trip. In Quito, he lavished praise on President Guillermo Lasso in the same week that Lasso declared a nationwide state of emergency to intimidate critics of his government and distract from an investigation into alleged tax fraud following his appearance in the Pandora Papers leak. In Bogotá hours later, Blinken applauded the democratic credentials of the Colombian president, Iván Duque – “We have no better ally on the full range of issues that our democracies face in this hemisphere,” Blinken said – while his government stands accused of targeting protesters and allowing an unprecedented number of assassinations of Indigenous, Black, and peasant leaders to take place under his watch.
The US government is complicit in these attacks on democracy, not only as an “ally” but also as a leading member of the Organization of American States (OAS). Just two days after Blinken’s South America jaunt, the governments of Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico held their own event at the Washington DC headquarters of the OAS to discuss the organization’s controversial role in the 2019 Bolivian election. The experts’ findings were clear – and damning: while the OAS found no evidence of fraud in the election of President Evo Morales, it lied to the public and manipulated its own findings to help depose him. “It was later reported that the US representative to the OAS actually pressured and steered the observation mission to reach a determination of fraud,” testified Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Bolivia is not an isolated case. In Haiti, for example, the anti-democratic interventions of the OAS stretch over decades. In 2000, the OAS observer mission concluded that the Haitian election had been a “great success” only to change its position under pressure from Washington to claim it was illegitimate. The goal was evident: “to dislodge the Aristide administration”, as Dr Paul Farmer, deputy special envoy for Haiti at the United Nations, testified to Congress. Then, 10 years later, the OAS intervened again to reverse the result of the 2010 presidential election on the basis of faulty statistical methods. It is difficult to overstate the destabilizing consequences of these interventions. Juan Gabriel Valdés, the former head of the UN in Haiti, recently described the 2010 OAS decision as “the origin of the present tragedy” in the country.
The OAS, then, is no longer a credible observer of democracy in the Americas – particularly under the present leadership of Luis Almagro, which has been described as the “worst in history”. In the eyes of several member states, the institution is too beholden to US interests to provide an effective defense of democratic institutions, leading some to call for “autonomous” organizations to contest it. “The world is currently going through a very worrying moment, where attacks on democratic institutions happen with frightening frequency,” said Brazil’s former foreign minister Celso Amorim. “The creation of an international electoral observatory – popular and non-partisan – will fill an important gap in defense of democracy and human rights.”
What would such an observatory do? Three capacities are critical. The first would be to organize delegations to countries where democratic institutions are clearly under threat – both by domestic actors and international observers like the OAS. Bringing together data scientists and parliamentary representatives, these delegations would provide independent analysis of the electoral process and a defense against false narratives that threaten to derail it. The goal is not only to observe how votes are cast and counted; it is also to observe the observers.
The second critical capacity would be to launch investigations of unlawful interventions in the democratic process. Over the course of the last decade, the dominant mechanism of democratic undoing has been legal, namely the weaponization of the judicial system to intimidate, exclude, and even incarcerate political opponents – a tactic known across Latin America as legal warfare, or “lawfare”. Deploying a global network of legal experts, a new observatory could challenge these tactics to help ensure a free and fair democratic process.The third and final capacity of the new observatory would be communications. In the technological era, bad information often travels faster than good. Big tech platforms such as Facebook not only serve to disseminate false stories and stir civic conflict; evidence suggests that their executives intervene to favor some candidates and ban others from the platform altogether. In the context of such bias, this new observatory would need to build an autonomous communications infrastructure to ensure that the findings of its delegations and investigations are rapidly spread, widely read, and well understood.
The call for a new observatory could not be more urgent. Contentious elections lie just on the horizon in 2022. In May, Colombia will head to the polls after a year of roiling protests against government violence, corruption, and a failed pandemic response. Five months later, Jair Bolsonaro will face Lula da Silva after profiting from his flagrant persecution on the road to the presidency in 2018. Bolsonaro and his allies in Congress have already pushed a legislative package to rewrite Brazil’s electoral laws, while parroting lies about potential fraud in the country’s electoral system.
Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, Secretary Blinken is moving ahead with plans for a Summit for Democracy. Convening leaders from “a diverse group of the world’s democracies” in early December, the summit aims to encourage commitments to fight corruption and respect human rights – an opportunity, as the White House press release suggests, to “speak honestly about the challenges facing democracy so as to collectively strengthen the foundation for democratic renewal”.
But the crisis of democracy will not be solved by summitry alone. We cannot delegate “democratic renewal” to our presidents, nor to the OAS that claims to represent them. We need an observatory to defend democracy from the bottom up – an institution with the capacity and credibility to fight authoritarian tactics and even the playing field for democracy to flourish. That fight starts now.
David Adler is the general coordinator of the Progressive International. Guillaume Long is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and former foreign minister of Ecuador
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