www.oneworld.net Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 22 (IPS) - Rampant corruption is increasingly undermining the credibility of democracy and politics in Latin America, although some countries have made progress against the scourge, Transparency International (TI) stated in its latest report, released Wednesday.

The Global Corruption Report 2003 by the Berlin-based international anti-corruption network warned that like last year, respondents to surveys and polls continue to ''view South America as one of the most -- if not the most -- corruption-plagued regions in the world.''

Nor have Central America, Mexico or the Caribbean made much headway against the corrupt, which has led to a deepening lack of public confidence in democracy and the political system, said TI.

But on a more upbeat tone, the report stated that ''The corrupt are running out of places to hide from courageous whistleblowers and journalists'' in today's world, due to a more effective press, quicker and more fluent information flows, and the determined action of civil society organizations.

The report's chapter on South America indicated that the region ''has been racked in recent months by economic crisis, social unrest and popular rejection of the region's political leaders.

''The persistent scourge of corruption in South America has nourished the roots of this discontent'' and ''graft has contributed to the (region's) economic problems,'' it added.

Continuous corruption scandals, in the midst of economic crisis, have eroded the credibility of the region's institutions and the already fragile public confidence in the political system, said the study, which is based on surveys and polls carried out in the region.

One of the surveys cited, conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank, found that public dissatisfaction with economic reforms in the region was growing, particularly among the middle class, and that only one out of two respondents said they believed democracy was the best form of government.

But despite the disenchantment with democracy, TI reported that there have been advances in the fight against corruption in the region, due to efforts by governments, civil society, and especially the press, in spite of the intimidation and aggression of which journalists are often the targets.

The Global Corruption Report 2003 also noted that multilateral financial institutions and donors have become more cautious about providing funds to governments under suspicion of corruption, and have been earmarking more funds to programs that emphasize government transparency.

The Organization of American States (OAS) began to monitor compliance with the Inter-American Convention against Corruption last year, drawing up evaluation reports ''to pressure governments to change or improve aspects that analysts consider unsatisfactory.''

The South American regional chapter of the TI report underlined the efforts made by Peru, especially with respect to investigations into the case of Vladimiro Montesinos, ex-president Alberto Fujimori's (1990-2000) former intelligence chief.

Peruvian authorities arrested Montesinos in June 2001, and he is in jail facing 60 separate lawsuits. In addition, officials were able to recover part of the money deposited in Swiss bank accounts, the product of graft and other forms of corruption in which the network headed by Montesinos engaged.

TI observed that more than 240 investigations, involving over 1,300 people, were under way in Peru into acts of corruption committed during the ''Fujimori-Montesinos era.''

According to ''preliminary findings'', Fujimori -- who is living in Japan -- may have stolen more than 180 million dollars from the public coffers, said the report.

Nevertheless, the investigations have done little to restore Peruvian society's confidence in its leaders, said TI, which pointed out that ''surveys suggest that 75 percent of Peruvians believe that corruption will persist.''

That view may not be unfounded, to judge by accusations that have emerged against President Alejandro Toledo over the way he pushed through the privatization of public enterprises that he had pledged to keep in the hands of the state.

Elsewhere in South America, presidents, ex-presidents and high-level officials are implicated in investigations of corruption.

In Bolivia, officials of the government of the now-deceased Hugo Banzer (1997-2001) face probes and legal action, as do Paraguayan President Luis González Macchi and his predecessor Juan Carlos Wasmosy.

In Argentina, former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) was held under house arrest for six months in 2001, on charges of illegal sales of arms and money laundering.

Menem is also facing legal proceedings initiated last year for allegedly accepting a 10 million dollar pay-off from the government of Iran to conceal its role in the July 1994 bombing of a Jewish community and medical center in Buenos Aires, in which 87 people were killed.

Domingo Cavallo, who served as economy minister under both Menem and Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001), was also arrested in 2002 in connection with the same illegal arms sale scandal.

But the TI report referred to advances in the fight against corruption launched by president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994- 2002) in Brazil.

It warned, however, that most of the Brazilians polled believed corruption was on the rise, a perception that was largely based on accusations of fraud that forced Roseana Sarney from withdrawing as a candidate in the October presidential elections, which were won by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Colombia, meanwhile, ''where a brutal war continues to claim the lives of some 3,500 civilians a year...has suffered the tragic consequences of endemic theft by politicians and public officials for decades,'' said TI.

It pointed out that a World Bank survey released in February 2002 found that ''bribes are paid in 50 percent of all state contracts.''

And while a number of anti-corruption initiatives have been seen in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico, they have brought few results, according to the chapter on that area.

One consequence of fruitless attempts to crack down on corruption and of the broad use of the issue as part of campaign platforms is ''the weakening of people's trust in a democratic regime and in the system of political parties,'' said the report.

TI underlined that Central America ''continues to exhibit asymmetries in corruption.'' While scandals have been ''relatively infrequent in some countries, such as Costa Rica,'' graft has increased in countries like Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Puerto Rico.

But in Mexico, ''important advances'' have been made thanks to the anti-corruption measures adopted by the government of Vicente Fox, according to the report.

Former presidents in Central America are also facing legal proceedings, while presidential candidates who ran on anti- corruption platforms often become the focus of scandals and allegations of the misuse of campaign funds.

On the list of former presidents facing corruption charges are Rafael Callejas of Honduras (1990-1994), Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic (1996-2000), and Oscar Alemán of Nicaragua (1997-2002). TI lamented that their successors have not done much to set themselves apart from that trend.

www.voanews.com VOA News 23 Jan 2003, 15:23 UTC

Global business and political leaders are confronting the issues of slow economic growth and a possible war in Iraq, as the the World Economic Forum opens in Davos, Switzerland.

The chief economist for investment bank Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, told the forum Thursday, that the United States, which he called "the engine of the world," is struggling. He says the U.S. economic recovery will continue to be disappointing. Gail Fosler, the chief economist at the Conference Board, a U.S. business group, was more optimistic than Mr. Roach.

She believes there will be a pickup in business investment that will allow the U.S. economy to grow at least three-percent this year. But she warns that there could be an unpredictable affect on consumer confidence from a war in Iraq, especially if chemical weapons are unleashed.

About 2300 delegates from 104 countries are taking part in this year's six-day forum. Switzerland has mounted a $10 million security operation, closing the airspace over Davos and deploying hundreds of police officers and 2,000 troops to guard the ski resort. Separately in Brazil, thousands of anti-globalization activists are meeting for their third annual World Social Forum to protest the Davos summit. As many as 100,000 activists are expected to attend the forum in Porto Alegre. Brazil's first elected leftist leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is expected to speak on the issues of hunger and poverty. He also plans to attend the economic summit in Davos.

www.upi.com By Bradley Brooks UPI Business Correspondent From the Business & Economics Desk Published 1/23/2003 2:43 PM

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Brazil's new leftist leader will bridge the globalization gap this week, speaking first at the World Social Forum then at the summit which that gathering is meant to protest: the elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

On Friday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will become the first-ever leader of the Brazilian government to speak at the World Social Forum, which opened Thursday in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

For many of the 100,000 activists in attendance, Lula, as he is known, and his October election in Latin America's largest country represents the best hope in lessening economic inequalities between the First and Third Worlds.

"After participating for the third time at the World Social Forum (previously as an activist), I'm going to Davos to demonstrate that another world is possible," Lula said in a Thursday statement. "Davos needs to listen to Porto Alegre."

He said there was an need for a new pact that would bridge economic disparity.

"I will take to Davos the message that the rich countries need to distribute the wealth of the planet," he said.

Great words of hope, no question, that most people wouldn't disagree with: who doesn't want to see a more efficient global economy that would make us all more prosperous? The great difficulty, of course, is backing those words with the grueling work that goes into tackling global economic issues: drug patent fights, agricultural subsidies, stalled talks on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

It is the bare-knuckled arena of international trade negotiations and Brazil's role of representing the Third World where Lula's appetite for either pragmatically making headway or falling back on ideological differences will be tested.

"One of things that will be important is not only his bridging the globalization gap, but his keeping the discussion of the gap alive," said Margaret Keck, a political science professor at John's Hopkins University, of Lula's role in representing poor countries.

Keck, whose book "The Workers' Party and Democratization in Brazil" was the first major study of Lula and the political party he helped found, says Lula has the potential to be a Third World leader who can act as both a catalyst and a salve as rich and poor countries try to reach mutual understandings.

Yet for others, Lula embodies a Latin America that is veering to the ideological left, where voters have recently elected leaders whose apparent opposition to American-style capitalism gives fright to some Bush administration officials and leaders on Capitol Hill.

It was just at last year's World Social Forum that then presidential-candidate Lula told reporters, "I'll fight with all my power to stop the FTAA in Brazil."

Others point to his friendliness with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro as evidence that Lula is going to lead Latin America in the wrong direction.

That worried a few Republican congressmen enough that they sent a letter to President Bush before Lula's October election, expressing concerns about the threat of having a wild-eyed leftist running Latin America's largest economy.

Keck rejects these arguments, saying that it is simply too soon to tell if Latin America really has aggressively gone to the left, or if the left in Latin America has simply wised up and come more to the center, where it can win elections.

"Despite all the connections that get made between Lula and Castro and Chavez, the fact is he is very different from them, his history is extremely different from theirs," Keck said.

"It is important to have somebody out there as an international spokesman for bridging the globalization gap, someone who has legitimacy and who doesn't raise the same kinds of knee-jerk ..'well, he was a revolutionary and radical populist' .. response."

Lumping Lula in with Chavez or Castro is inaccurate at best, and, truth be told, a wholly simplistic vision of a region comprised of extremely different countries, but that for short-hand purposes becomes "Latin America" in the United States.

Lula himself has disavowed any connection with the political beliefs of Chavez or Castro, repeatedly saying he has no intention of leading Brazil to economic self-destruction, like Chavez.

The fact that Lula received more votes than any other democratically elected leader in the history of the world -- with the exception of Ronald Reagan's 1984 election -- should be evidence enough that he is no Castro.

But the proof, clearly, will be in the pudding, and whether Lula is truly intent on taking his country out of its miserable economic state will be seen in how he addresses his dualistic concern: uplifting the poor by bringing more economic justice to the world.

Marta Lagos, the director of Latinobarometro, a Santiago, Chile-based group that tracks public opinion in Latin America, told United Press International in November that the notion that the region is swinging to the left can't be viewed through the same prism as it was during the Cold War years.

"There is no leftist revolution before us, nor is there a military regression," Lagos said. "The left and right as they were in the past is gone. The alternatives are not a socialist state versus capitalism. Today, the market economy has no competitor."

Just how Lula intends to make Brazil competitive in the global economy -- and what sort of example he will provide for the rest of the developing world -- is yet to be seen.

But for Keck, Lula's past experience of leading union negotiations against Brazil's military regime makes him a savvy spokesman ready to take to the world stage.

"Lula and the Workers' Party have a lot more experience in governing than it used to," Keck said. "That has made most people in the party aware of the costs of radicalizing expectations too much, too quickly."

"It has given people more realistic notions of what is possible."

santafenewmexican.com

By ALAN CLENDENNING | Associated Press 01/23/2003 Italian activist Vittorio Agnoletto speaks with Italian delegates before the opening of the 3rd World Social Forum in Brazil. The forum is an annual protest against the World Economic Forum held simultaneously in Davos, Switzerland. AP | Giuseppe Bizzarri ORTO ALEGRE, Brazil —As thousands of anti-globalization activists lounged near bright red banners espousing socialism, Chilean teacher Claudio Alfaro lashed out at U.S. President George W. Bush. Alfaro said Bush personifies the darkest fears of the activists flocking to Brazil for the third annual World Social Forum: Capitalism favoring huge corporations; war with Iraq to guarantee developed countries get the oil they need. "He's as dangerous as Hitler, and could lead us to worldwide destruction," said Alfaro, a teacher who works with the children of poor vineyard workers. The six-day forum begins Thursday in this far southern city, and as many as 100,000 activists will attend the protest against the World Economic Forum taking place simultaneously at a luxury Swiss ski resort. Tens of thousands are expected to officially open the social forum with a march against militancy and a U.S.-led war. In between protests, participants will hold extensive talks on alternatives to tame the excesses of global capitalism. Italian biologist Umberto Pizzolato readily acknowledged the march would do little to deter a U.S. military strike, but said it is still important. He toted his bicycle from Italy to Porto Alegre and hoped to ride it during the march to send a message on behalf of his activist Italian cycling group. "Less oil, more bicycles, less war," said Pizzloato, 36. "I'm sure I cannot stop the war, I'm not stupid. But if you use a car, your country has to buy oil. And with less oil, there would be fewer conflicts." Alfaro, the Chilean teacher, traveled with 16 friends who set up tents with at least 6,000 other activists near the site where Brazil's new president will become the first government leader to personally address the forum. The forum is now in its third year, but the appearance of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — Brazil's first elected leftist leader — is in a sense revolutionary, because government officials were previously excluded. Silva will deliver his speech Friday, and embattled Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was expected to attend on Sunday. After Silva speaks, he will fly to Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the economic forum, which is expected to attract 2,000 business and government leaders. The landslide election of Silva, a former radical union leader, in October was seen as a rejection of the free-market policies of his Social Democrat predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Social Forum participants say their opposition to American-style capitalism should strike a responsive chord. The summit follows a year of unprecedented business scandals involving multinational corporations. Participants will crowd into a soccer stadium, a string of warehouses alongside the muddy Rio Guaiba and at Porto Alegre's Catholic University for hundreds of panel discussions, debates and seminars on themes ranging from corporate misdeeds to the Third World's foreign debt. They can also dance at a concert by Brazilian pop superstar Jorge Ben Jor, attend Japanese Noh theater presentations or even see a drag queen show. Prominent activists attending include actor Danny Glover, anarchist and linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, and Aleida Guevara, the daughter of legendary guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove said Wednesday he had no plans to create disruption as he did at the first forum in 2001 — when he led the invasion and occupation of a farm owned by U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto. Brazilian authorities made him leave the country. Bove, a farmer who became famous in 1999 when he and nine others used farm equipment to dismantle a French McDonald's under construction, said there is no need for such protests now that Silva is in power. "Things have changed in Brazil," he said. At the campsite where Alfaro was staying, banner after banner denounced Bush for trying to incite a war. "He's just not capable of seeing the consequences for the world with what he's doing," Alfaro said as friends sipped beer and grilled beef over a makeshift grill. Besides destruction, a war could have dire consequences for the world economy — something the Economic Forum participants in Switzerland should recognize, said Rainer Rilling, a German social sciences professor with the Berlin-based Rosa Luxembourg Foundation. "We hope a war can still be avoided," he said. Forum organizers said the 2004 event will be held in New Delhi, India. The forum will return to Porto Alegre in 2005.

santafenewmexican.com

By ALAN CLENDENNING | Associated Press 01/23/2003 Italian activist Vittorio Agnoletto speaks with Italian delegates before the opening of the 3rd World Social Forum in Brazil. The forum is an annual protest against the World Economic Forum held simultaneously in Davos, Switzerland. AP | Giuseppe Bizzarri ORTO ALEGRE, Brazil —As thousands of anti-globalization activists lounged near bright red banners espousing socialism, Chilean teacher Claudio Alfaro lashed out at U.S. President George W. Bush. Alfaro said Bush personifies the darkest fears of the activists flocking to Brazil for the third annual World Social Forum: Capitalism favoring huge corporations; war with Iraq to guarantee developed countries get the oil they need. "He's as dangerous as Hitler, and could lead us to worldwide destruction," said Alfaro, a teacher who works with the children of poor vineyard workers. The six-day forum begins Thursday in this far southern city, and as many as 100,000 activists will attend the protest against the World Economic Forum taking place simultaneously at a luxury Swiss ski resort. Tens of thousands are expected to officially open the social forum with a march against militancy and a U.S.-led war. In between protests, participants will hold extensive talks on alternatives to tame the excesses of global capitalism. Italian biologist Umberto Pizzolato readily acknowledged the march would do little to deter a U.S. military strike, but said it is still important. He toted his bicycle from Italy to Porto Alegre and hoped to ride it during the march to send a message on behalf of his activist Italian cycling group. "Less oil, more bicycles, less war," said Pizzloato, 36. "I'm sure I cannot stop the war, I'm not stupid. But if you use a car, your country has to buy oil. And with less oil, there would be fewer conflicts." Alfaro, the Chilean teacher, traveled with 16 friends who set up tents with at least 6,000 other activists near the site where Brazil's new president will become the first government leader to personally address the forum. The forum is now in its third year, but the appearance of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — Brazil's first elected leftist leader — is in a sense revolutionary, because government officials were previously excluded. Silva will deliver his speech Friday, and embattled Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was expected to attend on Sunday. After Silva speaks, he will fly to Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the economic forum, which is expected to attract 2,000 business and government leaders. The landslide election of Silva, a former radical union leader, in October was seen as a rejection of the free-market policies of his Social Democrat predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Social Forum participants say their opposition to American-style capitalism should strike a responsive chord. The summit follows a year of unprecedented business scandals involving multinational corporations. Participants will crowd into a soccer stadium, a string of warehouses alongside the muddy Rio Guaiba and at Porto Alegre's Catholic University for hundreds of panel discussions, debates and seminars on themes ranging from corporate misdeeds to the Third World's foreign debt. They can also dance at a concert by Brazilian pop superstar Jorge Ben Jor, attend Japanese Noh theater presentations or even see a drag queen show. Prominent activists attending include actor Danny Glover, anarchist and linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, and Aleida Guevara, the daughter of legendary guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove said Wednesday he had no plans to create disruption as he did at the first forum in 2001 — when he led the invasion and occupation of a farm owned by U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto. Brazilian authorities made him leave the country. Bove, a farmer who became famous in 1999 when he and nine others used farm equipment to dismantle a French McDonald's under construction, said there is no need for such protests now that Silva is in power. "Things have changed in Brazil," he said. At the campsite where Alfaro was staying, banner after banner denounced Bush for trying to incite a war. "He's just not capable of seeing the consequences for the world with what he's doing," Alfaro said as friends sipped beer and grilled beef over a makeshift grill. Besides destruction, a war could have dire consequences for the world economy — something the Economic Forum participants in Switzerland should recognize, said Rainer Rilling, a German social sciences professor with the Berlin-based Rosa Luxembourg Foundation. "We hope a war can still be avoided," he said. Forum organizers said the 2004 event will be held in New Delhi, India. The forum will return to Porto Alegre in 2005.