The rise of the Philippines' unlikely new leader Duterte

MANILA (AFP) - 

In a nation with a famously raucous political scene, Rodrigo Duterte stands out as one of the Philippines' most colourful, unorthodox and controversial figures.

The longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao has captivated Filipinos with vows of brutal but quick solutions to crime and poverty, offering himself as a strongman capable of up-ending politics as usual.

A lawyer and former state prosecutor who briefly joined a communist organisation in his youth, the 71-year-old has appalled many with foul-mouthed rants including calling the pope a "son of a whore".

But while his outbursts dominated the headlines, none dented his popularity -- even a joke that he wanted to rape a "beautiful" Australian missionary who was killed in a 1989 Davao prison riot.

His rollicking ride to the presidency in Monday's election is testament to the appeal of an anti-establishment politician in a nation sickened by entrenched corruption and the domination of the economy by a few dozen elite families.

Duterte is also an undoubtedly charismatic politician and natural story-teller, with his street language and off-colour jokes enraging his opponents but captivating audiences on the campaign trail in recent months.

He has further burnished his populist credentials by always wearing jeans and casual shirts in public, and shunning the traditional "barong" shirt worn for formal occasions.

Duterte, a serial adulterer who admits to having four children by four women including his estranged wife, has always been a contentious character.

Jesuit priests expelled the truant and under-achieving high schooler from the Ateneo de Davao school, where he boasted he played basketball while his classmates pored over books in the library.

Duterte, the son of a former provincial governor, was forced onto the straight and narrow by a disciplinarian teacher-mother who hailed from an indigenous Muslim group in the southern Philippines.

But friends say his Catholic father, a lawyer who migrated from the central Philippines to the rich farming lands of the Muslim-majority south to seek better work opportunities, was his role model.

Christian Filipinos from the northern and central Philippines were encouraged by the government after independence to migrate to the Mindanao region and establish homesteads, holding up the region as a "land of promise".

As presidential rivals began conceding defeat before dawn Tuesday, Duterte visited his parents' mausoleum and sobbed unashamedly.

- 'Dictator in the making' -

The young Duterte went to college in Manila, where Jose Maria Sison, the now exiled founder of the country's deadly and long-running Communist insurgency, became one of his teachers and inspired his flirtation with the movement.

He studied to become a lawyer at the San Beda Law School, and became a government prosecutor where he said he saw first-hand the corruption that pervades all levels of Philippine society.

He entered politics in 1986, after the fall of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Ironically he was initially appointed as caretaker vice mayor of Davao by the new leader Corazon Aquino, mother of outgoing president and staunch Duterte critic Benigno Aquino.

Aquino warned during the election campaign that Duterte was a dictator in the making but voters took little heed.

Duterte has been mayor of Davao -- the third largest city in the Philippines with a population of about two million -- for most of the past two decades.

Like much of the rest of Mindanao, Davao was wracked by communist and Muslim insurgencies when he first came into office.

He now has a reputation for transforming the city into one of the nation's safest and most orderly, with smoking banned in public places and a midnight curfew for drinking alcohol in public.

However some of his other methods have been hugely controversial.

Duterte is accused of running death squads -- made up of police, ex-communist rebels and hired assassins -- that rights groups say have killed more than 1,400 people, including children.

Duterte has at times boasted of leading the death squads and at other times denied any links.

But on the presidential campaign trail, he vowed to clean up the rest of the country using the same tactics as in Davao, and warned security forces would be unleashed to kill tens of thousands of criminals.

by Cecil Morella

© 2016 AFP

Thousands protest against axing of Mauritania senate

NOUAKCHOTT (AFP) - 

Thousands of people gathered in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott to protest against a move by President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz to abolish the senate.

The president, who seized power in a coup in 2008, announced on Tuesday that he would hold a constitutional referendum that would remove the senate and replace it with a "regional council".

The protesters massed under the banner of a coalition of 10 opposition parties, which promised further protests if the president continued to "provoke", and chanted slogans including "Get out", "No to the gang of predators" and "No to the extension of mandates".

"Our protest today it to tell Ould Abdel Aziz that the constitution is a red line," said Saleh Ould Henenna, president of the opposition's Forum for Unity and Democracy (FNDU), addressing the rally in the centre of Nouakchott.

"The opposition will not accept entering into a dialogue when Ould Abdel Aziz has already defined the themes, but only to a process of consultation that would include guarantees and subjects that have been adopted by consensus," he added.

Former general Abdel Aziz said on Tuesday there would be a political dialogue ahead of the referendum, and that he would give the opposition "three to four weeks" to decide if they wanted to take part. He did not give a date for the vote.

In his speech he did not make reference to claims by the opposition that he was attempting to seek a third term in office, but said it was "quite normal" for the government to reexamine the constitution.

However, several government members said they were in favour of a change to the constitution to allow Abdel Aziz to run for a third term.

Abdel Aziz came to power in a coup in 2008. He was then elected president in 2009 and again in June 2014 for a second five year term.

© 2016 AFP

Mexican military vet defends torture he oversaw

MEXICO CITY (AFP) - 

The Mexican military veteran recalls overseeing interrogations during which his men beat suspects, wrapped their faces in plastic bags to cut off their oxygen and jolted them with electric shocks.

Although the screams still haunt the retired service member long after he left the military, he remains unapologetic about using torture to find drug lords and rescue kidnapping victims.

It was the only way to break the code of silence of criminals who would otherwise refuse to speak, the 30-year veteran told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"The information obtained in those interrogations becomes intelligence," said the former official, who asked that his rank, military branch and location be omitted in order to speak freely about the torture sessions he witnessed.

The rough interrogations gave criminals "the same dose (of torture) they give" captured government forces, he said.

The stark admission comes as President Enrique Pena Nieto's government faces torture scandals against troops and police amid a decade-long drug war.

When he took office in December 2012, the authorities were investigating 287 torture cases at the federal level, according to figures from the attorney general's office obtained by Amnesty International.

In 2014, the figure soared to 2,403 investigations.

Last week, a general was sentenced to 52 years in prison for ordering the torture of a man who died and whose body was incinerated by troops.

Last month, foreign experts investigating the disappearance of 43 college students said there was evidence the authorities tortured at least 17 suspects.

And in mid-April, the defense minister issued a rare apology after a video emerged showing soldiers and police putting a plastic bag over a woman's head to cut off her oxygen as they interrogated her.

- Following orders? -

The military veteran, who was deployed in some of the country's most dangerous regions near the US border, said he was "following orders" from above to torture suspects.

The army and navy did not respond to requests for comment about his claims.

Many service members suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, he said.

"You think I'm going to sleep calmly for four hours while hearing the screams? Screams from torture?" he said.

Although he feels guilty "spiritually speaking," he is sure "all of them were criminals."

The torture would begin with a "punch" when a suspect claimed to know nothing, the veteran said. Then a plastic bag would be placed over the head.

"When there was no more oxygen, they had to breathe and (water) is poured in the nose," he said.

Electric shocks came next.

"You have to get them wet" first, he said, justifying his actions by saying troops and police have been "completely cut to pieces, decapitated, tortured" by criminals.

Pena Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderon, sent tens of thousands of troops to the streets to combat drug trafficking in 2006.

The current government has vowed to keep them deployed until the country's regions are safe again.

Soldiers, marines and police have been accused of committing various abuses in the past decade.

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture said in 2015 that torture was a "generalized" practice among Mexican security forces, something the government has vehemently rejected.

But experts dismiss the official claims.

"When you imitate a war, you get all of the negative elements," said Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

As for the defense minister's recent apology, Gustavo Fondevila, security expert at the Economic Research and Teaching Center (CIDE) think-tank, said "that was also said by the South American dictatorships."

"They can't say that it's systematic, a protocol."

Nearly a third of federal prison inmates in Mexico claimed to have been tortured or beaten into confessing crimes, a 2012 CIDE study found.

For the military veteran, however, concerns about human rights are "the most absurd thing... Where are our rights as troops?"

- A victim's nightmare -

However, Amnesty International has found innocent people who have been tortured.

Claudia Medina accuses marines of abducting and torturing her in 2012 in a case that was documented by the UN's expert.

"For me, (the authorities) are the criminals," she told AFP. "They hide behind a uniform."

Medina, 36, was accused of illegal weapons possession, drug dealing and money laundering.

After 23 days in jail and 36 hours of torture, the shop worker was exonerated due to a lack of evidence.

She remembers hearing rap music while she was bound and her eyes covered.

Her voice breaks as she recalls the punches to her neck, kicks in the stomach, electric cables around her legs and the voice of the man who raped her.

"You think that you overcome it," she says. "But no."

by Yemeli Ortega

© 2016 AFP

Crises in Brazil, Venezuela threaten Nicaragua projects

MANAGUA (AFP) - 

The political and economic crises buffeting Brazil and Venezuela are having a big impact in Nicaragua, where the future of billion-dollar projects have been thrown into uncertainty.

Venezuela was to have invested $6.5 billion in a petrochemical plant in the Central American country, while Brazil was set to spend $1.1 billion on a hydroelectric facility.

They are among four "megaworks" Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has championed, and they were planned to have started springing from the ground this year in time for the leader's expected announcement he would stand for re-election in November.

The most ambitious of them is a plan to build a Chinese-financed canal across the country to rival the American-built one in Panama.

The projects are meant to ensure "the continuity" of Ortega's reign, former diplomat Roger Guevara told AFP.

Those involving Brazil and Venezuela were forecast to create 6,500 jobs directly and another 18,500 indirectly -- an important fillip in a relatively poor country where unemployment affects nearly one in three economically active people.

But the plummeting economic fortunes of Venezuela and Brazil, both mired in political turmoil and corruption, has piled uncertainty on top of repeated delays. Managua's plans now seem to be up in the air.

Brazil is in the grip of its worst recession in a quarter of a century, with a massive corruption scandal and also moves underfoot to oust President Dilma Rousseff.

Venezuela, an oil-rich state mismanaged since the time of late leader Hugo Chavez and plunging deeper into ruin under his successor Nicolas Maduro, is struggling on the brink of default.

Nevertheless, according to Ortega, there is a desire to see the two projects through, especially as they represent more than half the gross domestic product of his country.

But his critics, such as Edmundo Jarquin, an economist and former presidential candidate from a dissident wing of Ortega's Sandinista movement, believe the government is playing "the lottery with hopes of pulling out the big prize though a mega project."

- Brazilian dam -

The hydroelectric project calls for a dam across the Grande river in the southwest of the country to be built by a consortium 45 percent owned by the Brazilian state company Eletrobras, 45 percent by Brazilian industrial group Queiroz Galvao and with the Nicaraguan government holding the remaining 10 percent.

It was approved by a law that gave the Brazilians the right to operate the plant for 39 years with significant tax breaks.

Its financing was to come from Brazil's BNDES development bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and partners, and last year it acquired 7,000 hectares (1,700 acres) for the plant.

Yet the start of work on the dam, which was meant to have been in 2014, has been pushed back several time because of lack of funds.

"I understand that an investor group had problems getting the capital together" and then Queiroz Galvao got caught up in the corruption scandals rocking Brazil, said former economy minister Mario Arana.

Jarquin said that "the investment amount had always been overestimated" and Brazil's corruption morass "ended up burying it."

Ortega has not thrown in the towel yet, however.

"We are speaking with the Brazilians to find a way to move forward," he said last week.

- Venezuelan refinery -

The Venezuelan petrochemical plant had its inception in 2007. Ortega, returned to the presidency after years in the political wilderness, invited over Chavez to lay the refinery's cornerstone.

The plant was to be constructed by Albanisa, a joint venture in which Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) held 51 percent and Petroleos de Nicaragua Petronio had the other 49 percent.

The goal was to build a gleaming facility to handle 150,000 barrels of oil a day -- four times the demand in Nicaragua and half of the entire consumption across Central America.

Financing was to be sourced from profits Nicaragua made on cheap oil imported from Venezuela and backing from PVDSA, said Guevara, a former ambassador to Caracas.

But "that didn't work out because the fall in the price of oil came along" and Maduro found himself against the wall, he added.

The former deputy general manager of Albanisa, Rodrigo Obregon, told AFP that "at the moment the refinery is not being built." The only sign of moves that had been made are 12 new tanks meant to store fuel.

Guevara said feasibility studies had never been carried out and the plant would never have been viable because the other Central American countries had their own refineries.

"It seems to me that it was a geopolitical toy," he said.

Jarquin concurred.

"All of that frenzy resulted in a terminal just with storage tanks," he said.

by Blanca Morel

© 2016 AFP

Rwandan mayors to go on trial in France over 1994 genocide

PARIS (AFP) - 

Two former Rwandan mayors go on trial in France on Tuesday facing charges of crimes against humanity and genocide over the 1994 massacres in the central African country.

As the second trial in Paris by a special court created to go after suspected Rwandan killers who fled to France, it is expected to lay bare the strained relations between the two countries.

Two decades on, Rwanda accuses France of complicity in the genocide -- which saw at least 800,000 people die in an 100-day slaughter -- because of its unwavering support for the Hutu nationalist government at the time.

Two years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the mass killings, Rwanda's minority Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, openly accused French soldiers of not only complicity in the genocide but of actually taking part in it.

On Tuesday, Octavien Ngenzi, 58, and Tito Barahira, 64, will go on trial for allegedly playing a direct role in the massacre of hundreds of Tutsi refugees in a church in the eastern town of Kabarondo on April 13, 1994.

The pair were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by Rwandan people's courts, known as gacaca, in 2009.

They were both mayors of Kabarondo, Ngenzi having succeeded Barahira in 1986.

They deny accusations of carrying out "massive and systematic summary executions" and implementing a "concerted plan aimed at the annihilation" of the Tutsi minority.

Their lawyers Philippe Meilhac and Francoise Mathe have highlighted "contradictions" in witness testimony.

Meilhac has also said he is "extremely concerned" over Barahira's fitness to stand trial, as he suffers from kidney failure and must have dialysis three times a week.

The killings in Kabarondo, a town near the border with Tanzania, took place with great speed.

The bloodshed was over by the end of April, when Tutsi rebels in the armed wing of what is now the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) took control of the area.

Elsewhere in the former Belgian colony, the slaughter would continue until the FPR fighters finally prevailed in July.

The mayors' trial, which is set to last eight weeks, comes two years after that of Pascal Simbikangwa, a former Rwandan army captain who was jailed for 25 years for his role in the genocide.

The defence has denounced that verdict as "political" and is appealing it.

"With this second trial, we will be dealing with a much more concrete genocide, with victims," said Alain Gauthier, president of the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda (CCPR).

"There are around 50 witnesses coming from Rwanda," Gauthier, whose wife lost her mother and dozens of other relatives in the genocide, told AFP.

- A 'good mayor' -

Witnesses have said that on the morning of April 13, they saw Barahira, wielding a spear, at a rally at the football field where he called for "work" -- then already code for killing Tutsis.

Soon afterwards, hundreds of refugees who had arrived in the previous days were hacked or beaten to death or blown up with hand grenades within the space of a few hours, according to survivors.

They say Ngenzi and Barahira took part in the process of separating the Tutsis from the Hutus.

Barahira, as the town's former mayor, was said to have "exceptional influence", his lawyer said, adding that he "went to see if he could do something to help the refugees".

Ngenzi, accused of initial passivity before taking on an active role, is described by his lawyer as "a good mayor overwhelmed by events".

He has been held since 2010 when he was captured in the French overseas department of Mayotte off the east coast of Africa, where he had been living under a false name.

Barahira was arrested in 2013 in the southwestern French city of Toulouse where he was living.

- 'Time on killers' side' -

Gauthier's non-profit CCPR is devoted to tracking down alleged perpetrators of the genocide who fled to France.

Likened by some to a Nazi hunter, he says his task is a race against time.

"We're well aware that it is going to be more and more difficult to try people. More than 20 years after the genocide some witnesses contradict each other, or they're vague... Time is on the killers' side," he said.

Kigali broke off ties with Paris in 2006 after a French judge issued arrest warrants against nine Rwandan officials over the assassination of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana.

The shooting down of the presidential plane on April 6, 1994, was blamed on the Tutsis and is considered to be the event that sparked the genocide.

The diplomatic freeze lasted for three years.

Last year, charges were thrown out against a priest, Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, the first Rwandan to be prosecuted in France in what had also been viewed by his defence as a politically motivated case.

by Sofia Bouderbala

© 2016 AFP

Trump says no need for Republican unity

WASHINGTON (AFP) - 

There may be much Republican hand-wringing over Donald Trump's presumptive nomination to face the Democratic candidate for the White House, but the boastful billionaire says he doesn't care, and it doesn't matter.

A growing chorus of senior Republican leaders have joined the "anyone but Trump movement," including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the last two Republican presidents, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.

"Does it have to be unified?" Trump asked about the Republican Party.

"I'm very different than everybody else, perhaps, that's ever run for office. I actually don't think so," he told ABC's "This Week" in excerpts provided ahead of Sunday's broadcast.

"I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be -- there would be something good about it. But I don't think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense."

A group of conservatives opposed to Trump's candidacy meanwhile announced it had launched a "formal effort" for an alternative candidate, though it stopped short of backing a contender from a third party.

"This is not just a fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party; it is a battle for the future of our country," Conservatives Against Trump said in a statement.

"This week, Conservatives Against Trump launched a formal effort to identify an acceptable alternative candidate to run for president against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton."

The race is still "wide open for a qualified conservative candidate," the group of activists said.

"We will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton; but we will vote."

Trump, however, said he expected even some Democratic voters to throw their support behind him to win the general election.

"I'm going to go out and I'm going to get millions of people from the Democrats," Trump said.

"I'm going to get Bernie (Sanders) people to vote, because they like me on trade," he added, referring to the Democratic candidate in an uphill fight against Hillary Clinton to clinch the party's nomination.

© 2016 AFP

Is Hillary a sure thing for the White House?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - 

In a US election that has ripped up, chewed through and spat out conventional wisdom, Hillary Clinton is still favorite to beat Donald Trump in November.

Few analysts or journalists predicted that Trump would last long in a tough Republican race, much less win it.

But here is why Clinton is still odds-on favorite to become the first female president, along with a few reasons why a dose of caution might be warranted.

- The numbers -

At the starting gate, a CNN/ORC poll has Clinton leading Trump 54-41. For months, head-to-head surveys have found a similar result.

That is a monumental lead in a country almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. But it is also borderline irrelevant.

The November 8 vote is six months away, light years in US electoral politics.

And US elections are won by carrying individual states, not the popular vote, as Al Gore found to his cost in 2000.

Still, the polls contain harbingers of doom for Trump, particularly in a sliver of data that politicos refer to as "unfavorables."

About 65 percent of voters have a negative impression of Trump, according to an average of polls by Real Clear Politics.

Given he has been in the public eye for years, he is widely known and minds could be difficult to shift.

Yet "The Donald" has shown he does not play by conventional election rules.

He has already branded his rival "Crooked Hillary" and is certain to stir up memories of Bill Clinton's marital infidelity.

Clinton who is herself seen negatively by 55 percent of voters -- a large number, but not quite as catastrophic as Trump's -- has the upper hand, but will have to find the right tone to parry attacks.

Trump's rivals learned the hard way that getting in the mud with him rarely pays off, but taking the high road might look detached or meek.

- The electorate -

The long trend of America becoming less white means Trump, with his pseudo-nativist message, is also waging a campaign against demographics.

In the 2012 election, 93 percent of African-Americans, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Barack Obama.

That was enough for the Democrat to win the election, even though he only got 39 percent of white voters, the biggest voting group.

Trump -- thanks to talk of building a border wall, Mexican "rapists" and deporting the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants -- is doing even worse among Hispanic voters than the last Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

His approval ratings among Hispanic voters currently stand at 12 percent.

That's bad news for Trump's chances in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and maybe even Arizona. To add to Trump's misery, his standing among women voters is derisory.

Almost half of Republican women say they can't see themselves voting for him.

"Trump has alienated growing demographic groups such as Hispanics, and he is at toxic levels with women and young people," said Larry Sabato, who heads the University of Viarginia Center for Politics.

If he can't reach working and college educated women, then even blue collar states like Pennsylvania may remain out of reach.

Trump hopes to change the calculus by getting more white voters to turn out.

"He needs to excite the middle and working class white who doesn't usually vote," said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Sabato was skeptical.

"There aren't millions of blue collar whites who don't usually vote Republican just waiting to show up for Trump. Where's the evidence for this breathtaking proposition?"

- The Map -

The most important number in US politics is 270, the number of electoral college votes -- out of a total of 538 -- needed to win the presidency.

Of the 51 state and regional contests, most are winner-take-all. But not all are equal.

California is worth 55 votes, while Vermont is worth three.

In 2008 and 2012, Obama broke 300.

The last Republican president George W. Bush squeaked by with 271 and 286.

Trump may target states in the Rust Belt and New England, and battlegrounds like Florida and Ohio, but he faces the prospect of having to flip several states to the Republican column just to be competitive.

- The campaigns -

The businessman will have to try to do all this without the unified support of the Republican party.

There have been mass refusals to back the controversial candidate.

Many donors and potential campaign staff promise to "sit this one out."

To give one example of the impact, "Hacking the Electorate" author Eitan Hersh said Trump will find it more difficult to get targeted messages to voters.

A key arrow in the quiver of modern US electoral campaigns is microtargeting -- cross-referencing voter rolls with records on everything from magazine subscriptions to eBay searches to build a profile of individual voters and deliver a specific message.

Trump has instead focused on macromessaging, by dominating the TV news which also gives him free advertising.

"Trump hasn't shown much of an appetite to engage in microtargeting. He also is not a team player," said Hersh.

"Part of the Democrats' advantage is that the state parties, interest groups, labor unions and candidates up and down the ballot see themselves as largely on the same team."

- The zeitgeist -

One area where Trump may have an advantage is capturing the spirit of the age.

Many Americans still feel the effects of the Great Recession.

Middle class incomes have been stagnant, while the rich have become significantly richer.

Democrats are not oblivious to that fact, indeed Bernie Sanders has built most of his campaign around addressing income inequality.

But Trump may better articulate the fear and anger of those who have faltered.

After years of modest growth, a mediocre jobs report in April was a reminder that another slowdown could come even before the impact of the last one is no longer felt.

That could easily eat into Obama's solid 51 percent approval rating, a metric that currently indicates the electorate is not desperate for a changing of the guard.

Along with the economy, polls show terrorism is a top concern for voters.

Here too, Trump's message of bombing the Islamic State group to oblivion is more easily digested than Clinton's more nuanced push for tackling radicalism through military, economic, diplomatic and cultural means.

Where rivals see him as naive, Trump's status as a political neophyte might serve him well.

It's harder for Clinton, a former first lady, US senator and secretary of state to argue that she will bring change to Washington.

But her wealth of experience might also mean she knows a bit more about winning elections.

by Andrew Beatty

© 2016 AFP