World

Rodolfo Hernandez, a millionaire businessman and ex-mayor under investigation for corruption, has made poverty and government graft the focus of his campaign for the Colombian presidency.

Hernandez, 77, finished in a surprise second place in a first election round on May 29 and will face leftist former Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro in a runoff on June 19.

At a meeting last week with fellow businessmen in the northeastern city of Bucaramanga, his political stronghold, Hernandez warned that growing inequality could lead to a class war in Colombia.

“If these guys (the poor) one day decide to come for us, there won’t be enough trees to hang us from,” he told industrial-scale palm growers.

“We need to live as brothers. I am not saying equals, because that we will never be, it is impossible. But yes, we must improve the lot of the poor,” he said.

Poverty affects nearly 40 percent of Colombia’s 50 million people, who largely blame corruption and nepotism for their plight.

In an interview after the meeting, Hernandez told AFP how he sees the problem and what he intends to do about it with his small Anti-Corruption League party holding only two seats on Colombia’s near 300-member Congress.

Q: Is there a class struggle in Colombia?

A: “There is no class struggle, but there could be one.  

“In a country where 22 million of our 50 million people live in conditions of poverty and extreme misery, it would not be strange for any given political activist to foment a revolt rather than think about how to bring those 22 million into the economic fold. “

Q: How can it be avoided?

A: “By getting politicians to stop stealing. While people pay taxes (politicians) are increasing the country’s debt, doing tax reforms and not solving the problems. 

“It means these political administrators must be expelled and imports must be reduced in favor of (domestic) job creation…

“Everything is about (global) competitiveness and that is what we have to do. We have the water, we have the people, we have everything, but these politicians don’t give them the chance.”

Q: Your rival has also proposed limiting imports. What makes you the man to do it?

A: “The others (politicians) have not worked. When have you ever seen a politician working, producing? The politician is fixated on the payroll, applying a form of bureaucracy called nepotism. That is what has destroyed us. I want to make one proviso: Not all politicians are bad, but almost all.”

Q: In your opinion, what caused last year’s anti-government protests?

A: “This is not a class struggle but about politicians ignoring the demands of the people. What did the people in Cali ask for? Free, high-quality education and jobs. The government did not listen and was pushed until it all exploded and 100 people died. 

“In the end, the president agreed to everything they had asked for, but too late. Why did we not act beforehand? It’s like in football: anticipation. The government has to anticipate problems, not wait for them to hatch, because then it hits out, and people die.”

(Note: According to the UN, 46 people died during the protests, 28 at the hands of the security forces.)

Q: What will you do if you cannot pass laws through Congress?

A: “That is not important as long as we have public opinion… A democratic debate, that is what we need. No violence, only reason and the law. Politicians who feel watched by citizens will approve everything, they are cowards.”

The World Bank has sharply slashed its annual growth forecast for China, warning in a report Wednesday that Covid disruptions could further slow recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.

China is the last major economy wedded to a zero-Covid policy, using rapid lockdowns, mass testing and strict movement restrictions to eliminate outbreaks — but it has tangled supply chains and dragged economic indicators to their lowest levels in around two years.

Growth in China is projected to slow to 4.3 percent in 2022, the World Bank said in a report on Wednesday, marking a steep 0.8 percentage-point drop from the December forecast.

This “largely reflects the economic damage caused by Omicron outbreaks and the prolonged lockdowns in parts of China from March to May,” the report said, referring to the highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus.

In those months, restrictions on dozens of cities including the manufacturing hubs of Shenzhen and Shanghai as well as the breadbasket province of Jilin battered business operations and kept consumers at home.

“In the short term, China faces the dual challenge of balancing Covid-19 mitigation with supporting economic growth,” said Martin Raiser, the World Bank country director for China, Mongolia and Korea.

“The dilemma… is how to make the policy stimulus effective, as long as mobility restrictions persist.”

Activity is expected to rebound in the latter half of 2022, helped by fiscal stimulus and more easing of housing rules, the World Bank said. 

But domestic demand will likely recover gradually and only partly offset the earlier pandemic-related damage, it added.

– ‘Old playbook’ –

The World Bank’s forecast adjustment came as concerns grow that China may not meet its official growth target of around 5.5 percent this year.

Premier Li Keqiang has warned that the challenges today are in some ways “greater than when the pandemic hit” in 2020, and the government has rolled out a series of measures to try and jump-start the economy.

The Chinese government has also launched a major infrastructure push this year, but the World Bank warned this was a precarious path.

“There is a danger that China remains tied to the old playbook of boosting growth through debt-financed infrastructure and real estate investment,” it said Wednesday.

“Such a growth model is ultimately unsustainable and the indebtedness of many corporates and local governments is already too high.”

The latest forecast also assumed that China’s zero-Covid policy will be “maintained in the short term to avoid stressing its health care system”, meaning the possibility of recurrent disruptions.

The World Bank has also cut its global growth forecast to 2.9 percent, warning that the world economy risks falling into a harmful period of 1970s-style “stagflation” in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Rights groups and families of a British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert who went missing deep in the Amazon after receiving threats pleaded Tuesday for authorities to accelerate the search operation.

Veteran freelance journalist Dom Phillips, 57, and respected Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira, 41, went missing early Sunday while traveling by boat in Brazil’s Javari Valley, near the border with Peru, where Phillips was researching a book.

As the 48-hour mark passed, speculation swirled around whether they could have fallen victims to an accident or foul play.

As of Tuesday night, authorities had no reports on their whereabouts but Amazonas state civil police said they were questioning a “suspect” and that four other people had testified as “witnesses,” though no arrests were made.

Local Indigenous activists said the pair received threats last week for their work in the remote region, which has seen a surge of illegal logging, gold mining, poaching and drug trafficking.

Loved ones were holding out hope the pair would be found.

“I want to make an appeal to the government to intensify the search,” Phillips’s Brazilian wife, Alessandra Sampaio, said in a video message.

“We still have some small hope of finding them. Even if I don’t find the love of my life alive, please find them,” she said, choking back sobs.

The Brazilian government expressed its “grave concern,” and said police were taking “all possible measures to find (the men) as quickly as possible.”

But the authorities faced accusations of failing to act urgently enough.

The Ministry of Defense said in a statement that since Monday the army had deployed 150 soldiers who are “specialists in jungle environment operations, who know the terrain where the searches are being carried out.”

But three Indigenous rights groups in the region earlier said in a joint statement that just six state police officers were actively working on the operation, and urged the government to deploy helicopters and a task force.

“The Brazilian government was very slow to act, in a situation where acting quickly is absolutely essential,” the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Brazil office said in a statement.

Brazil’s federal police later said they had deployed a second helicopter to aid the effort.

– Bolsonaro response criticized –

President Jair Bolsonaro drew criticism for appearing to blame the missing men, both of whom have extensive experience in the Amazon rainforest basin.

“Two people in a boat in a region like that, completely wild — it’s an unadvisable adventure. Anything can happen,” Bolsonaro said.

“Maybe there was an accident, maybe they were executed.”

The far-right president has faced accusations of fueling invasions of Indigenous lands in the Amazon with his pro-mining and pro-agribusiness policies.

Pereira, an expert currently on leave from Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI, has spent much of his career fighting such invasions — making him a target of frequent threats.

– ‘Anguished’ wait –

The men’s families urged the authorities to act fast.

“Time is a key factor in rescue operations, particularly if they are injured,” Pereira’s family said in a statement.

It said his partner, three children and other relatives were in “anguish.”

Phillips’s sister Sian posted a video message online, fighting back tears.

“We are really worried about him and urge the authorities in Brazil to do all they can,” she said. “Every minute counts.”

A group of about 40 reporters and friends of Phillips appealed to Brazilian authorities in a letter published in O Globo newspaper to expand the search effort.

In addition, 11 press organizations requested an emergency meeting with the justice minister and other high-level officials to get a progress report on the hunt.

Phillips, who is based in the city of Salvador, had previously accompanied Pereira in 2018 to the Javari Valley for a story in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, where he was a regular contributor.

The 85,000-square-kilometer (33,000-square-mile) reservation is home to around 6,300 Indigenous people from 26 groups, including 19 with virtually no contact with the outside world.

FUNAI’s base there, set up to protect Indigenous inhabitants, has come under attack several times in recent years.

In 2019, a FUNAI officer there was shot dead.

The region has seen a surge of illegal mining, logging and poaching in recent years, and its remoteness makes it a haven for drug traffickers, said Fiona Watson, research director at Indigenous rights group Survival International.

“You’re talking about dense tropical forest,” she told AFP.

“The operation to try and locate Bruno and Dom is immensely challenging.”

Russia claimed its forces have taken full control of residential neighbourhoods in eastern Ukraine’s Severodonetsk, as President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed the “heroic defence” of the Donbas region will persist against the odds.

The strategic city is currently the focus of Russia’s offensive after their forces were repelled from other parts of Ukraine following the February invasion.

Intense street fighting has raged for days, with the situation on the ground changing rapidly. 

Russia claimed Tuesday residential areas had been “fully liberated” but that Ukrainian forces still hold the industrial zone and surrounding settlements.

Ukrainian officials later countered that the Russians weren’t in control of the city, and Zelensky struck a defiant tone in his daily video address late Tuesday.

“The absolutely heroic defence of Donbas continues,” he said.

“The occupiers did not believe that the resistance of our military would be so strong.”

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, are the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the Lugansk, which together with Donetsk forms the Donbas region. 

After being repelled from Kyiv, Russia is seeking to capture a vast swathe of eastern Ukraine.

The war’s impact continued to reverberate, with the World Bank cutting its global growth estimate to 2.9 percent — 1.2 percentage points below the January forecast — due largely to the invasion of Ukraine.

The toxic combination of weak growth and rising prices could trigger widespread suffering in dozens of poorer countries still struggling to recover from the upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic, the bank said.

“The risk from stagflation is considerable with potentially destabilising consequences for low and middle income economies,” World Bank President David Malpass told reporters.

“For many countries recession will be hard to avoid,” Malpass said.

The bank additionally announced $1.5 billion more in aid for Ukraine, bringing the total planned support package to more than $4 billion.

– Lavrov in Turkey –

Amid stark warnings of global food shortages partly blamed on the war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is set to meet Wednesday with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu during a visit to Ankara.

Talks will focus on efforts to open a security corridor to ship Ukrainian grain — cereals and wheat in particular — stuck in the war-torn country’s ports due to a Russian blockade. 

“Right now we have about 20-25 million tonnes blocked. In the autumn that could be 70-75 million tonnes,” Zelensky said Monday.

At the request of the United Nations, Turkey has offered its services to escort maritime convoys from Ukrainian ports, despite the presence of mines — some of which have been detected near the Turkish coast.

Both sides accuse one another of destroying agricultural areas, which could worsen global food shortages.

“Those who pretend to be concerned about the global food crisis are, in fact, hitting agricultural fields and infrastructure, where fires are breaking out on an impressive scale,” the Ukrainian military said Tuesday, pointing to attacks in the southern city of Mykolaiv.

– Trapped in chemical plant –

Severodonetsk appeared close to being captured just days ago but Ukrainian forces launched counterattacks and have so far managed to hold out, despite Zelensky warning the defenders are outnumbered by superior forces.

Lanny Davis, a US lawyer for Ukraine tycoon Dmytro Firtash, said 800 civilians had taken refuge in the bunkers inside Firtash’s huge Azot chemical plant in the city.

“These 800 civilians include around 200 out of the plant’s 3,000 employees and approximately 600 inhabitants of the city of Severodonetsk,” Davis said.

The Ukrainian army said Tuesday that Russian troops were also preparing to attack the key city of Sloviansk, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Severodonetsk.

Its capture would open up the route to Kramatorsk, the main city of the Ukrainian-held part of the Donetsk region.

The leader of Ukraine’s pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, on Tuesday confirmed the death of another Russian general in the fighting.

Pushilin expressed on Telegram his “sincere condolences to the family and friends” of Major General Roman Kutuzov, “who showed by example how to serve the fatherland”.

Ukraine’s forces have claimed to have killed several of Russia’s top brass but their exact number is not known as Moscow is tight-lipped on losses. 

On Tuesday, Zelensky announced the launch next week of a “Book of Torturers”, a system that will collect details of alleged war crimes and Russian soldiers accused of committing them. 

“I have repeatedly stressed that they will all be held accountable. And we are approaching this step by step,” he said.

“Everyone will be brought to justice.”

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A train bell rouses a Thai grandmother dozing in her fruit and flower stall, sending her rushing to fold in her awning before the locomotive slowly rumbles past, so close it almost touches her wares.

Six times a day at the Mae Klong Railway Market, local customers and foreign tourists scramble into nooks and crannies while vendors calmly move their woven baskets of goods away from the tracks and close their umbrellas to make way.

Hundreds of stallholders carve out a living along this 500-metre stretch of railway in Samut Songkhram, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Bangkok, selling everything from fresh produce to live turtles to clothes and souvenirs.

“Even though it looks risky and dangerous, it’s not dangerous at all,” said fruit and vegetable vendor Samorn Armasiri.

Her family has run a stall in the bazaar — nicknamed in Thai “talad rom hup”, or the umbrella-pull-down market — for five decades, and she’s never witnessed an accident.

“When the train enters, officers sound the horn and everybody packs their stuff — they know the drill,” she said.

– Big train, tiny space –

The sides of the train carriages pass directly over — with just centimetres to spare — bags of lettuce, broccoli, onions, ginger, chilli, tomatoes and carrots placed carefully on the outside of the rails.

In recent years, the spectacle had become a hub for coconut-drinking backpackers in elephant pants and Instagram selfie enthusiasts, but the pandemic hit hard.

Now, with Thailand dropping Covid-19 entry restrictions, tourism is picking up once more.

Australian Ella McDonald, on a two-day stopover on her way to Turkey, was among those marvelling at the market’s organised chaos.

“It was crazy and hectic,” she told AFP. “I was shocked at how big the train was in the small amount of space.

“It’s a unique experience. I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else in the world.”

– Not just for tourists –

Before Covid-19 hit, the market was also beloved by Chinese tourists buying durian — the pungent-smelling “king of fruit”.

Strict quarantine rules presently discourage would-be visitors from China, who once made up the largest share of foreign tourists in Thailand.

But even without them, fishmonger Somporn Thathom — a stallholder since 1988 — said business was finally picking up after two years of hardship and financial strain.

“During Covid, I barely made enough to pay my staff. I managed to sell 10 fish per day,” the 60-year-old said.

“I used up all my savings… and had to borrow money from the bank.”

Station manager Charoen Charoenpun believes the market’s authenticity ensures its popularity.

“It’s not made up. It’s not built for the tourists,” he said.

“The tourists, when they come they can see the tradition and culture of the local people of Samut Songkhram.”

But for eight-year-old Australian William, the pandemonium ensuing as the train passed through was captivating.

“The most exciting thing is when you get the train going past — just seeing the (market vendors) pack up,” he said.