NewsWhore
09-23-2010, 11:50 AM
Diario Libre's gifted editorial writer Ines Aizpun writes today on President Leonel Fernandez's most recent 10-day travels in the US.
"Since the dawn of time, it has been said that politicians would pursue merchants so they would pay for their election campaigns. In modern history, businessmen pursued politicians seeking a contract. Postmodernism brings a new model, so dangerous and recent that it is premature to speculate where it will take us: politicians and large economic groups are becoming associates. There are no longer agreements, there are partnerships. Contracts are not awarded or commissions distributed... there are shared business projects.
Where does free competition fit in this model? Who defines the conflict of interests? Who has access to the true information if the economic and political groups are merging? Who is going to fight corruption, nepotism, trafficking of influence if they are installing a corporation?
Exaggerated? Not so much, we are already seeing the first operations; we do not know if they will be stable or just attempts of a sui-generis model condemned to extinction because it is against nature.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, the President seems strangely discouraged. He gives excuses, unusually for him. He avoids referring to the eternal problems of those he governs. (Perhaps we had not thought before that climate change has something to do with the corruption in his government.)
And he finishes his speech with an "At last." That sounds as a sad sigh of one who needs a vacation. And then right then... he takes them."
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#5)
"Since the dawn of time, it has been said that politicians would pursue merchants so they would pay for their election campaigns. In modern history, businessmen pursued politicians seeking a contract. Postmodernism brings a new model, so dangerous and recent that it is premature to speculate where it will take us: politicians and large economic groups are becoming associates. There are no longer agreements, there are partnerships. Contracts are not awarded or commissions distributed... there are shared business projects.
Where does free competition fit in this model? Who defines the conflict of interests? Who has access to the true information if the economic and political groups are merging? Who is going to fight corruption, nepotism, trafficking of influence if they are installing a corporation?
Exaggerated? Not so much, we are already seeing the first operations; we do not know if they will be stable or just attempts of a sui-generis model condemned to extinction because it is against nature.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, the President seems strangely discouraged. He gives excuses, unusually for him. He avoids referring to the eternal problems of those he governs. (Perhaps we had not thought before that climate change has something to do with the corruption in his government.)
And he finishes his speech with an "At last." That sounds as a sad sigh of one who needs a vacation. And then right then... he takes them."
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#5)