Mexico’s finance minister Jose Antonio Meade stepped down on Monday to seek the 2018 presidential nomination for the ruling party, which hopes his honest reputation will help counter the taint of corruption that has blighted its record in power.

Meade had been widely expected to run for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose credibility has been seriously undermined by graft scandals, gang violence in the country and persistent accusations of electoral fraud.

“I’m going to register as presidential pre-candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party. I do so after 20 years of serving my country continuously with integrity and honesty,” said the 48-year-old, who has held most of the top jobs in government.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said Harvard-educated former World Bank official Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya would leave state oil company Pemex to replace Meade in the finance ministry.

Meade is viewed by many PRI grandees as the most suitable candidate to take on the early front-runner in the July 2018 presidential race, leftist former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Lopez Obrador, twice runner-up for the presidency, has railed relentlessly for years against government corruption, hitting the PRI where it is most vulnerable.

Meade is not a member of the PRI, which changed its statutes in August to make it easier for outsiders to run and has ruled Mexico for 76 of the past 88 years.

The party will formally elect its candidate on Feb. 18, but the identity of the winner may be clear long before that.

Meade first entered cabinet under the previous center-right administration of the National Action Party, or PAN.

Serving as energy, then finance minister in 2011, Meade became foreign minister when Pena Nieto took office in December 2012. He later switched to the social development ministry before returning to finance last year.

Seen by allies as a discreet and diplomatic official, Meade’s grasp of finance and economics is matched by few in Mexico, and his academic career includes degrees in law and economics as well as an economics doctorate from Yale.

The soft-spoken Meade remains far behind Lopez Obrador in opinion polls. But Meade’s potential cross-party appeal is viewed as one of his principal assets at a time of increasing political fragmentation in Mexico.

Crucially, argue his supporters, he has avoided the damaging scandals that have engulfed the PRI under Pena Nieto, who cannot constitutionally seek a second six-year term.

“I thank (Meade) for his dedication and commitment and I wish him success in the project he has decided to undertake,” Pena Nieto said in an address at his Los Pinos residence, where he accepted Meade’s resignation earlier in the day.

TV images showed Meade driving toward Los Pinos behind the wheel of a modest compact car, a frequent prop among Mexican politicians seeking to project the common touch.

Gonzalez Anaya, who is related by marriage to influential former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, will be replaced at Pemex by Carlos Trevino, a senior executive at the company.
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A general appointed at the weekend to run Venezuela’s energy sector will name more military officers to senior management posts at state oil company PDVSA as part of a shakeup the government says is aimed at fighting corruption, two company sources told Reuters on Monday.

In a surprise move, unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday tapped Major General Manuel Quevedo to lead PDVSA and the Oil Ministry, giving the already powerful military control of the OPEC nation’s dominant industry.

Besides the corruption scandals, Quevedo will have to tackle an attempted debt restructuring, within the context of a deep recession and debilitating U.S. sanctions.

Sources in the sector said Quevedo’s appointment could quicken a white-collar exodus from PDVSA and worsen operational problems at a time when production has already tumbled to near 30-year lows of under 2 million barrels per day.

About 50 officials at state oil company PDVSA have been arrested since August in what the state prosecutor says is a “crusade” against corruption.

Sources within PDVSA and the oil industry said Maduro’s administration was using corruption allegations to sideline rivals and deepen its control of the industry, which accounts for over 90 percent of export revenue.

“The order given is to militarize PDVSA in key areas,” said a PDVSA employee, asking to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A second source said he was told military officials would take over key production divisions in Venezuela’s east and west.

Venezuela’s president, a former bus driver and union leader whose popularity has plummeted during the economic crisis, has gradually handed the military more power in his cabinet and in key sectors such as mining.

Unlike his popular predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro does not hail from the military. The opposition says he has been forced to buy the loyalty of the army, historically a power broker in Venezuela, giving them top posts and juicy business contracts while turning a blind eye to corruption.

PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an internal company message seen by Reuters called on workers to come to Caracas on Tuesday for Quevedo’s swearing in.

“Let’s all go to Caracas to consolidate the deepening of socialism and the total, absolute transformation of PDVSA,” the message read.

Increasing Military Sway

Quevedo, a former housing minister with no known energy experience, is not a heavyweight in Venezuela’s political scene, although two sources close to the military told Reuters he was a Maduro ally.

Opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado predicted the appointment would worsen PDVSA’s operations.

“They’re getting rid of the old executives, who although socialist and working under catastrophic management, at least knew about oil,” he said. “Now we’re going to have totally inexperienced hands.”

Although military appointees had been on the rise within the oil industry too, Quevedo’s appointment is the first time in a decade and a half that a military official has taken the helm of the oil industry.

PDVSA so far had been led by chemist Nelson Martinez and the Oil Ministry by engineer Eulogio Del Pino, both of whom rose in the ranks under previous PDVSA president and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez.

Later demoted to become Venezuela’s representative at the United Nations in New York, Ramirez recently criticized Maduro for not reforming Venezuela’s flailing economy, in what insiders say is a power struggle between the two rivals.

Oil Companies Worry

The opposition has also accused Quevedo of violating human rights during the National Guard’s handling of anti-Maduro protests, in which stone-throwing hooded youths regularly clashed with tear gas-firing soldiers.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio included Quevedo on a 2014 list of Venezuelan officials whom he said should be named in U.S. sanctions, although Quevedo does not appear in the list released by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Venezuela’s government denies abuses, saying protesters were in fact part of a U.S.-promoted “armed insurrection” designed to sabotage socialism in Latin America.

Quevedo’s appointment has worried foreign oil companies in Venezuela, including U.S. major Chevron and Russian state oil giant Rosneft, according to industry sources.

Venezuela is also trying to pull off a complex restructuring of foreign debt, including $60 billion in bonds, about half of which have been issued by PDVSA. Bondholders were invited to Caracas for a meeting with the government two weeks ago, but market sources say there has been no concrete progress or proposals since.

PDVSA said on Friday it was making last-minute payments on two bonds close to default, including one backed by shares in U.S.-based Citgo, a Venezuelan-owned refiner and marketer of oil and petrochemical products, due on Monday, and called for “trust” as it seeks to maintain debt service amid the crisis.

Quevedo’s position on the debt issue is not publicly known.
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Water entered the snorkel of the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, causing its battery to short-circuit before it went missing November 15, a navy spokesman said Monday as hope dwindled among some families of the 44-member crew.

The San Juan had only a seven-day oxygen supply when it lost contact, and a sudden noise was detected that the navy says could have been the implosion of the vessel. Ships with rescue equipment from countries including the United States and Russia were nonetheless rushing to join the search.

Before its disappearance, the submarine had been ordered back to its Mar del Plata base after it reported water had entered the vessel through its snorkel, causing a battery to short-circuit, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference.

“They had to isolate the battery and continue to sail underwater toward Mar del Plata, using another battery,” Balbi said.

After contact with the San Juan was lost, the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts, detected a noise the navy said could have been the submarine’s implosion.

The search for the 65-meter (213-foot) diesel-electric submarine is concentrated in an area some 430 km (267 miles) off Argentina’s southern coast. The effort includes ships and planes manned by 4,000 personnel from 13 countries, including Brazil, Chile and Great Britain.

Among the crew’s family members, fissures started appearing Monday between those who refuse to give up hope and those who say it is time to accept that their loved ones will not come back alive.

Some relatives have said they are focusing on the lack of physical evidence of an implosion and the possibility that the submarine might have risen close enough to the ocean surface to replenish its oxygen supply after it went missing.

But Itati Leguizamon said she believed her husband, crew member German Suarez, had died.

“There is no way they are alive,” she told reporters, her voice shaking and eyes welling with tears. “It is not that I want this. I love him. I adore him. He left his mother and sister behind, but there is no sense in being stubborn.

“The other families are attacking me for what I am saying,” she said, “but why have they not found it yet? Why don’t they tell us the truth?”
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The United Nations has asked Brazil to send troops to join its peace mission in the Central African Republic, said Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the U.N.’s head of peacekeeping operations, in an interview Monday.

The U.N. Security Council approved this month the deployment of an additional 900 peacekeepers to protect civilians in the impoverished landlocked nation, where violence broke out between Muslims and Christians in 2013.

Lacroix said violence had increased in the east, largely due to a security vacuum left by the departure of Ugandan troops, who had been part of a separate U.S.-supported African Union task force tracking Lord’s Resistance Army rebels.

The request for troops from Brazil, which has just ended a 13-year mission in Haiti, must be agreed to by President Michel Temer and approved by the Brazilian Congress.

“Brazil has a huge degree of know-how and professionalism and we definitely need those kinds of troops in our peacekeeping operations,” Lacroix told Reuters in Brazil’s capital, ahead of a meeting with the top brass of the country’s armed forces.

The troops did a “fantastic, really exceptional” job in Haiti, where they improved the security situation by establishing a relationship of trust with the Haitian population and exhibited good conduct and discipline, he said.

Brazil is emerging from its worst recession on record and a huge government budget deficit could weigh on a decision to send more troops abroad, though its contribution to peacekeeping has enhanced the South American nation’s international influence.

U.N. peacekeeping forces are facing the pinch of the United States pushing to reduce costs. Washington pays more than 28 percent of the $7.3 billion annual U.N. peacekeeping budget.

In June, the U.N. agreed to $600 million in cuts to more than a dozen missions for the year ending June 30, 2018.

Lacroix said the peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast had been closed, troop deployment in Sudan’s Darfur was being reduced, and next year the peacekeeping operation in Liberia would be closed down.

“There is an expectation that we be prudent and use our resources in the most cost-effective way we can,” said Lacroix, a French diplomat who has been in the role since April.

The political objectives and efficiency of almost all of the U.N.’s 15 peacekeeping operations worldwide were under review, Lacroix said.
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Early results from Honduras’ presidential election Monday showed leftist challenger Salvador Nasralla with a surprise lead over incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

 

David Matamoros, president of the electoral court, announced that, with 57 percent of the vote counted, Nasralla is polling 45.7 percent of the vote, to Hernandez’ 40.2 percent.

 

The late hour for the announcement of the votes had suggested a close vote between Hernandez, a conservative U.S. ally, and Nasralla, the candidate of the leftist Alliance of Opposition Against Dictatorship. Both men had claimed victory.

 

Turnout in Sunday’s vote appeared to be heavy across the country, with relatively minor irregularities reported.

 

Nasralla, 64, trained as an engineer and is a popular sports commentator and presenter on one of the country’s top television contests.

 

Born in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, Nasralla began working as a radio sport reporter when he was 14. According to his official party biography, it was in his travels around the country for his programs that Nasralla came to understand the needs of Hondurans.

 

Nasralla says constant complaints about corruption in the country led him to form the Anti-corruption Party in 2013, promising to challenge the two-party system and set up of an anti-impunity commission.

 

A director of programs such as Miss Honduras, Nasralla last year married Iroshka Elvir, Miss Honduras of 2015.

 

Hernandez built his support largely on a drop in violence in this impoverished Central American country, whose homicide rate was once among the world’s worst. Honduras’ National Autonomous University says the rate has dropped to 59 homicides per 100,000 people from a dizzying high of 91.6 in 2011.

 

But corruption and drug trafficking allegations cast a shadow over his government.

 

And his re-election bid fueled charges that the president’s National Party was seeking to entrench itself in power by trampling the country’s institutions with court approval for the president to seek a second term.

 

Fears of just that sort of consolidation — but by a leftist rival allied with Venezuela — led Hernandez’ party to back a military coup in 2009 against a president it accused of plotting to violate Honduras’ seemingly iron-clad constitutional ban on re-election.

 

The country’s highest court backed the 2009 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. But the current court is packed with Hernandez’ supporters and it ruled in 2015 that the constitutional ban was overridden by a citizen’s right to seek re-election.

 

“Here in Honduras there is no democracy; there is a dictatorship,” Zelaya told The Associated Press late Saturday. “The hypocrisy of the Honduran elite is evident … the people will have to decide at the ballot box.”

 

In addition to people in Honduras, tens of thousands of Hondurans were eligible to cast ballots in seven U.S. cities: Atlanta, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Washington.

 

Sunday’s general elections were the 10th in Honduras since the country returned to democracy in 1980 after almost two decades of military regimes.

 

Despite his popularity, Hernandez had a weak spot in the perception of corruption.

 

A convicted drug trafficker testified in a New York courtroom this year that he met with Hernandez’s brother Antonio to get Honduras’ government to pay its debts to a company that the trafficker’s cartel used to launder money. Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, ex-leader of the cartel known the Cachiros, testified that Antonio Hernandez asked him for a bribe in exchange for government contracts. The brother has denied that allegation.

 

And in September, the son of a former president from Hernandez’s party, Porfirio Lobo was sentenced in New York to 24 years in prison after revealing his role in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Fabio Lobo, 46, pleaded guilty in May 2016, admitting he worked with drug traffickers and Honduran police to ship cocaine into the United States.
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Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday voted alongside thousands of people in municipal elections that kick off the process to end his family’s hold on the island nation.

The Communist Party-supervised process comes a day after the first anniversary of Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s death.

Though no opposition candidates were competing in Sunday’s elections for more than 12,500 council seats, voters could still choose among 30,000 candidates named by acclamation in neighborhood assemblies.

The municipal vote, Cuba’s only direct election, is the beginning of a strictly controlled process to eventually choose leaders in higher government positions.  A February election for provincial and national assembly deputies is expected to decide who will succeed Raul Castro as president.

Campaigning in Cuba is prohibited.  Candidates for ward post are chosen based on merits; not on policy agendas.  They are nominated at neighborhood meetings.

The Castro brothers have headed the government since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel.

Current first Vice President Migel Diaz-Canel is expected to replace 86-year-old Raul who succeeded the ailing Fidel as president in 2008.  But Sunday Diaz-Canel would not contemplate the future.

“I think today is not the day to talk about that.  Today, we are feeling much more sublime things.  There will always be presidents in Cuba, defending the revolution, and they will be comrades who come from the people.  The people will elect them. And they will have to go through this process,” he said.  “Today is the day to talk about what we are doing here. Today is the day to talk about Fidel,” he added after casting his ballot.

Voter Marisela Quesada said, “I’m telling you from my heart. I am a revolutionary until the end but I would like my president Raul [Castro] to continue.  I would like him to continue, yes,” she said.

“In my life, I wouldn’t want any other because things are still being done like when there was his brother [referring to Fidel Castro].  Everything is still the same. Everything is good. I feel good,” she said.

A voter, who requested anonymity due to her government position, told Reuters there is an ongoing discussion on reforming the electoral process.

“I am happy to vote, but I must say, like most young people I do not think it makes any difference,” she said.

Castro is expected to remain the leader of the all-powerful Communist Party.  He would be 90 when his current term ends in 2021.

Results from today’s election are expected Monday.  Ballots are secret and more than eight million people were eligible to vote.

 
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Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a conservative U.S. ally, appeared likely to win a second term on Sunday despite opposition claims that his re-election is an unconstitutional power grab.

Hernandez’s popularity is based largely on a drop in violence in the impoverished Central American country, whose homicide rate was once among the world’s worst. Honduras’ National Autonomous University says the rate has dropped to 59 homicides per 100,000 from a dizzying high of 91.6 in 2011.

But corruption and drug trafficking allegations have cast a shadow over his government, and his re-election bid has fueled charges that his conservative National Party has trampled the country’s institutions in a bid to entrench itself in power.

Fears of just that sort of consolidation – but by a leftist rival allied with Venezuela – led Hernandez’s party to back a military coup in 2009 against a president it accused of plotting to violate Honduras’ seemingly iron-clad constitutional ban on re-election.

The country’s highest court backed the 2009 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. But the current court is packed with Hernandez’ supporters and it ruled in 2015 that the constitutional ban was inferior to a citizen’s right to seek re-election, a decision that infuriated opposition leaders.

“Here in Honduras there is no democracy; there is a dictatorship,” Zelaya told The Associated Press late Saturday. “The hypocrisy of the Honduran elite is evident … the people will have to decide at the ballot box.” Now a leader of the main opposition alliance, he warned of possible irregularities in the vote.

Hernandez has used the military to help crack down on crime since taking office four years ago, and his campaign website boasts of praise from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has lauded Hernandez “for his leadership in addressing security and governance challenges.”

The president also has reached out to evangelical Christians and warned that his rivals would carry Honduras toward a Venezuelan-style crisis – alluding to the fact Zelaya had been backed by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“God our Lord is with us, and we would not do anything without his divine protection,” Hernandez said in a final campaign video posted on his Facebook page.

“We will take a step forward to confront those who seek chaos and those who, allied with foreign forces, try to drag us to a system that has brought only pain and suffering to other societies,” he added.

The 15th of 17 children, Hernandez was born in a small, mountain city in western Honduras. He attended a military school, studied law at the national university and says he obtained a master’s degree in public administration from the State University of New York. He was the head of Congress before winning the presidency in 2013 elections.

In addition to people in Honduras, tens of thousands of Hondurans were eligible to cast ballots in seven U.S. cities: Atlanta, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Washington.

Sunday’s general elections are the tenth in Honduras since the country returned to democracy in 1980 after almost two decades of military regimes.

The leftist Opposition Alliance Against Dictatorship is running television host Salvador Nasralla, while the traditional Liberal Party is running Luis Zelaya, a middle-of-the-road candidate. There are another six candidates from tiny opposition parties, but the president remains the clear front-runner.

One issue that could hurt Hernandez is the perception of corruption.

A convicted drug trafficker testified in a New York courtroom this year that he met with Hernandez’ brother Antonio to get the Central American country’s government to pay its debts to a company that the trafficker’s cartel used to launder money.

Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, ex-leader of the cartel known the Cachiros, testified that Antonio Hernandez asked him for a bribe in exchange for government contracts. The brother has denied that allegation.

And in September, the son of a former president from Hernandez’s party, Porfirio Lobo was sentenced in New York to 24 years in prison after revealing his role in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Fabio Lobo, 46, pleaded guilty in May 2016, admitting he worked with drug traffickers and Honduran police to ship cocaine into the United States.
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