‘Rebut impeachment critics abroad’:

Lat/Am

Brazil’s new Foreign Minister, Jose Serra, has ordered diplomats to rebut any government, media or international organization that criticizes the impeachment of suspended President Dilma Rousseff, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

The nine-page document cited a dozen examples of censure of the impeachment process that removed Rousseff from office this month made by governments and other entities to which diplomats needed to respond in defense of Brazil’s political process.

“The press, academics and members of civil society and also leaders of international organizations and government representatives have manifested frequently in improper and ill-informed ways about Brazil’s domestic politics,” the memo said.

It singled out recent criticism from Ernesto Samper, secretary general of the Union of South American Nations, Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, as well as the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba and El Salvador.

It said Brazil’s political process should be actively defended by the diplomatic corps. (RTRS)

Serra

Recordings hit Temer allies:

Secretly recorded conversations hit two more key allies of Brazil’s acting president Wednesday, leaving the country wondering if there are more taps that could affect the interim government after only 13 days in office.

The audios involve prominent members of the fractious Brazilian Democratic Movement Party led by Michel Temer, who took over the presidency after the Senate suspended President Dilma Rousseff pending an impeachment trial.

The first recording has Senate President Renan Calheiros proposing in a conversation with a former senator to weaken one of the key tools prosecutors have used to catch politicians and businessmen in a sweeping corruption scandal at the big state oil company Petrobras.

The second audio reveals former President Jose Sarney promising to help the same ex-senator overcome the probe into what prosecutors say was a multibilliondollar bribery scheme involving Petrobras contracts. In it, Sarney also says “certain conditions” were negotiated with the opposition to replace Rousseff with Temer, her vice-president.

Transcripts and audio recordings of the conversations, published by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, seem likely to feed widespread suspicions that top lawmakers are trying to stifle the Petrobras investigation. They also could bolster Rousseff’s contention that the impeachment process was more of a political solution to the Petrobras scandal than a punishment for her alleged violation of fiscal rules. (AP)

Judgment day for Operation Condor:

Participants in Operation Condor, in which six South American dictatorships collaborated to torture and assassinate their opponents, will face judgment Friday, four decades after their actions and three years into their trial.

The Argentine court trying 18 former army officers is the first to address the crimes committed under the repressive plan, in which the military regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay helped each other track down and kill leftist dissidents.

The plan, which had the backing of the United States, began in the 1970s at the height of the Cold War, and is blamed for scores of executions and kidnappings -- 89 in Argentina alone.

Prosecutors based their case partly on declassified US intelligence documents showing how the South American regimes worked together to identify political exiles in neighboring countries and kill them or send them back to their home countries.

The documents go into grisly detail about the bureaucracy of repression -- such as the formal authorization Uruguay’s intelligence services had to assassinate opponents in Argentina or ask the ruling junta there to take them out. (AFP)

Opposition draws scant crowds:

Protesters seeking to oust Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro staged fresh street rallies Wednesday but drew scant turnout, a setback the divided opposition blamed on repressive tactics and a spiraling economic crisis.

Some 500 Maduro opponents gathered in eastern Caracas, waving the red, yellow and blue Venezuelan flag and banners denouncing the daily woes a crippling recession has wrought on the country: shortages of food and medicine, power cuts and violent crime.

But the numbers remained relatively small, especially given that nearly seven in 10 Venezuelans say they want the leftist president to go.

The rally’s leader, former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, said many Venezuelans could not protest because “most of them are right now queuing for food and medicine.”

Other protesters blamed fears of government repression a week after demonstrators braved tear gas during a march against Maduro and the state of emergency he has imposed. Those disturbances raised fears of deeper unrest in Venezuela, where anti-government rallies in 2014 led to riots that killed 43 people.

“I am marching in fear, but I am marching,” said one demonstrator, Daniela Huizi, referring to the threat of government repression.

But experts also pointed to problems and mistakes in the opposition’s court.

The low turnout partly reflected divisions between Capriles and other, more radical leaders in the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), a shaky center-right coalition held together mainly by shared hatred of Maduro, political analyst Benigno Alarcon of Andres Bello Catholic University said. (AFP)