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Colombian President Gustavo Petro
Hard Numbers: Colombia's grim record, Ukraine reconstruction planning, Chinese beach tourists, India's strong arm
215: At least 215 community leaders and human rights activists were assassinated in Colombia last year, the highest level ever recorded, according to the government’s human rights ombudsman. Following the historic peace deal with FARC rebels in 2016, activists have been caught in the crossfire of power struggles over land vacated by the rebels. Leftist President Gustavo Petro took office last August pledging to quell the violence.
300 billion: Where should the money come from for Ukraine’s reconstruction? From the people who started the war, says European Council President Charles Michel. He wants to discuss a proposal to use $300 billion in assets seized from the Russian central bank for the purpose. Critics fear it would set a risky precedent and diminish the safety of central bank assets around the globe.
3: For the first time in three years, Chinese tourists are back on the beaches of Thailand to celebrate the new year, after President Xi Jinping recently dropped his zero-COVID travel restrictions. Before the pandemic, visitors from China normally accounted for a third of all visitors to tourism-dependent Thailand.
50: India has successfully forced Twitter to remove as many as 50 tweets referring to a new BBC documentary that blames PM Narendra Modi for his role in the deadly communal violence that wracked Gujarat when he led the Western Indian state in 2002. Delhi has also strongarmed YouTube into removing posts about the program. Free speech activists are crying “censorship,” while close watchers of Twitter CEO Elon Musk — who pledged to make the platform a bastion of free speech — ask “bro, really?”Then and Now: Colombian peace talks, Sri Lankans' anger, Macron's challenges
Three months ago: Colombia government, ELN resume peace talks
One of Gustavo Petro’s first orders of business after becoming Colombia’s president in Aug. 2022 was to bring “total peace” to the country. As a result, three months ago, his leftist government announced it was resuming talks with the National Liberation Army, a guerilla group known as ELN, for the first time since 2019. The talks were hailed as a big deal considering that the 2,400-member strong force has been at war with the government since the 1960s. The ELN was the largest guerrilla group not to sign onto a historic 2016 peace deal between the government and guerilla groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Since then, violence by the ELN and other armed groups financing their operations through drug trafficking and illegal mining has continued to terrorize Colombians, particularly in rural areas. Last week, however, Petro, a former guerilla, announced a breakthrough, saying his government had reached a peace agreement with the ELN for a six-month ceasefire. But the ELN came out shortly after and said no deal had been reached, stating that “a unilateral government decree cannot be accepted as an agreement.” Petro, for his part, has not responded to the group’s denial. Still, communication is a good thing, and the two sides say they will continue talks this month in Mexico. Petro discussed these issues, and more, in an interview with GZERO Media.
Six months ago: Sri Lankans’ wrath boils over
The global summer of discontent – prompted partly by post-pandemic economic turmoil and aggravated by the war in Ukraine – was on full display in Sri Lanka in July, where, as we wrote here, long-simmering public wrath directed at Sri Lanka’s leader over the country’s economic collapse finally boiled over. After months of blackouts and food scarcity that forced Colombo to default on its external debt for the first time in May 2022, thousands of Sri Lankans forced the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa before storming his residence. (The photos of them swimming in the president's pool were quite something.) While Sri Lanka’s economic path remains precarious – Colombo was forced last year to limit imports to essentials – there has been some progress. In September, President Ranil Wickremesinghe reached a preliminary deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $2.9 billion bailout package after Colombo made some reforms earlier in the year, including floating the rupee. But the IMF won’t follow through until Sri Lanka restructures the billions of dollars in debt owed to three main creditors: India, China, and Japan. Talks between Colombo and all three economic powerhouses remain ongoing, but a range of issues have prevented a deal from being reached before the end of 2022, which Colombo had been aiming for.
Nine months ago: No cakewalk for Emmanuel Macron
Back in April, we reported on French incumbent Emmanuel Macron’s electoral successes – he not only won a second term as president, a mean feat in French politics, but he also kept the country’s increasingly influential anti-establishment forces, on the right and left, at bay. Still, we noted that Macron’s second term would be anything but a cakewalk, with him facing a host of thorny issues at home and abroad. Fast forward nine months and it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Macron – and things are bound to get even dicier in the weeks ahead. In parliamentary elections back in June, Macron’s Ensemble Together bloc finished 44 seats short of a majority in the National Assembly, crippling the president’s ability to easily pass legislation and giving birth to what one French publication described as a “stillborn five-year term.”
The difficulty in getting his legislative agenda through will likely to come to a head soon as Macron is pushing ahead this week with his pension reform plan, which would raise the retirement age by three years to 65 – a move unpopular with roughly 70% of French voters. While Macron can find ways to get this through parliament using emergency powers, the government is already bracing for mass public outrage comparable to strikes in 2019 against the same proposal that paralyzed the country. Still, Macron says he will move ahead with pension reform as it is central to his pledge to reduce France’s debt-to-GDP ratio. Moreover, while Paris has spent billions of dollars to subsidize electricity bills, the cap on power prices rose this month from 4% to 15%, which is bound to hurt consumers at a time when food inflation remains sky-high.
What We're Watching: Khan charged, Petro the peacemaker, Finland's partying PM, Russia-Ukraine latest
Former Pakistani PM charged under terror act
A Pakistani judge charged Monday former ousted PM Imran Khan with violating the anti-terror act for threatening judicial officers in a speech. Khan has been granted bail, but he could face several years in prison if he's convicted of the terror charge. Since he was removed in a no-confidence vote in April, the former PM has been touring the country, leading huge rallies trying to pressure the government into calling a snap election. Khan is plotting his comeback boosted by his resurgent popularity, which helped his party win a recent election in Punjab, the country's most populous province. The turmoil comes at the worst possible time for Pakistan, embroiled in a severe economic crisis: poor Pakistanis are suffering the most from double-digit inflation, and the country is on the brink of default on its sovereign debt. Khan's supporters have warned they'll march on Islamabad if he's arrested, so keep an eye out for Thursday, when the former PM is scheduled to appear before the judge. Meanwhile, he's been banned from speaking in public and his speeches removed from YouTube.
Petro’s ELN olive branch
Delivering on his campaign promise to bring "total peace" to Colombia, newly minted President Gustavo Petro has suspended arrest warrants and extradition requests for National Liberation Army members in order to restart peace talks with the Marxist armed group, at war with the government since 1964. Petro says that the two sides will begin where they left off in 2019, when the previous government called off the talks in Cuba after the ELN killed 21 police cadets in a bombing in Bogotá. Previous efforts to end decades of violence have failed due to internal divisions within the group, yet the leftist Petro — himself a former member of the leftist M-19 guerrillas — believes he has an opening because the ELN responded well to his election. Still, most of the group’s political leaders have been in their Cuban exile for decades, and it’s unclear if they carry much sway with younger ELN fighters in the countryside.
Can a prime minister party like a rockstar?
Finnish PM Sanna Marin has come under a political firestorm over a leaked video of her partying with celebrities, sparking a debate in the famously egalitarian Nordic country. For her supporters, she has every right to have a good time with her friends when she's not on the job, and there would be no scandal if Marin were not a young woman. But her critics say that reveling is inappropriate for a PM — especially of a country that wants to join NATO because it feels threatened by Russia. Interestingly, the clip surfaced online Wednesday, the same day Finland announced it would limit to 500 the daily number of Russian tourist visas amid a recent surge in arrivals. Marin — who's gotten flak in the past for attending rock festivals or going late-night clubbing without her phone — defended herself from the backlash. The world's second-youngest national leader at 34 — only Chilean President Gabriel Boric is now her junior — has taken a drug test to prove she didn't do anything illegal.