Mexico: Tax Poverty

by Sergio Sarmiento.

In Mexico is a constant, politicians make mistakes but people pay for them.

President Calderon has launched a budget for 2010 that was characterized by a widespread rise in taxes and creating new taxes. If the initiative was passed by Congress, would be a new excise tax of 2 percent above the current 15 percent IVA (Value Added Tax) and that would also apply to food and medicine. The top rate of income tax would increase from 28 to 30 percent. It would raise the excise duty currently charged on beer, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Would also apply a new tax of 4 percent to telecommunications such as the internet, pay television and telephony, plus the 2 percent consumer and 15 percent IVA would tax burden in this sector over 21 percent.

The reaction of raising taxes in times of crisis has been typical of the Mexican governments in times of difficulty. In the last major crisis in 1995, Ernesto Zedillo regime raised the VAT from 10 to 15 percent. The government has found at times of economic problems the opportunity to increase their income regardless of whether they leave the national economy prostrate.

These new tax increases are proposed only two years after the republic's government pushed through a "tax reform" was supposed to be final and relieve the public from dependence on oil prices. The reform of 2007, which included a new income tax IETU called, was a failure. So today the government again raising taxes and creating new ones.

To align the IVA on all goods and services at a reasonable rate of, say, 10 percent, it might be beneficial. But the new excise tax of 2 percent above the 15 percent VAT, further complicates the payment of taxes and does not eliminate the technical problems of the zero rate of IVA on food and medicine.

The maximum rate increase of the ISR (Income Tax) becomes a new blow to investment and to work at a time that Mexico needs investment and just work out of the crisis. The special tax increases have distorting effects on markets. The new tax on telecommunications is a brutal blow to the only segment of the economy that is growing. With a tax burden of more than 21 percent will be impossible to increase the spread of the Internet, which is indispensable to have a more competitive economy.

President Calderon said that these taxes are meant to combat poverty. Experience tells us, however, that the only poverty that attacks government spending in Mexico is the bureaucrats and officials and contractors working for the public sector. Meanwhile, the economic impact of this tax increase in times of crisis will be a general impoverishment of the Mexicans.

Girls school attacked in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Suspected Islamist militants blew up a girls school close to the main city in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said. The school was empty at the time of the blast and no one was injured.
A timed explosive device is believed to have caused the explosion that badly damaged the school on the outskirts of Peshawar, police officer Hamdullah Khan said.

al-Qaeda and Taliban militants hold sway across much of northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan and have often targeted girls schools in both countries because they believe that women should not be educated.

The military has launched large offensives across parts of the region in an attempt to rein the militants in, but they remain strong in much of the mountainous, lawless zone.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said Tuesday that the global fight against terrorism requires not just a military solution but also gaining the trust of civilians in regions where insurgents operate.

"No war against terrorism can be won without the support of the people," Gilani told a crowd in the eastern city of Multan as part of Eid al-Fitr celebrations at the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

Winning over the hearts and minds of the civilian population was crucial in assisting the military offensive in the northwestern Swat Valley that ousted Taliban militants from power in July, Gilani noted.

The army launched the Swat offensive in April after local Taliban leaders, who had imposed their harsh interpretation of Islam on residents there, violated a peace deal with the government and expanded into Buner, a district within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.

Gilani also said Pakistan will not allow terrorists to plot attacks on its soil against other countries, including archrival India.

The comment came a day after the leader of a banned Pakistani Islamist group that India accuses of carrying out attacks on its financial capital late last year was placed under house arrest again.

Pakistani police prevented Hafiz Muhammad Saeed from leaving his home Monday. Saeed is a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi says masterminded the commando-style assault that killed 166 people in Mumbai last November.

Yahya Mujhaid, a spokesman for Saeed, condemned the arrest as illegal and unconstitutional.

Pakistan detained Saeed in December, but a Pakistani court freed him from house arrest in June saying there was not enough evidence to hold him.

The prime minister said Tuesday that more evidence tying Saeed to the Mumbai attacks was needed for a criminal case to proceed.

"The government has taken Hafiz Saeed in custody, but further action against him depends on proof available," Gilani later told reporters.

In the northwest, police acting on a tip recovered arms, ammunition and explosives Tuesday hidden near Kohat town — the scene of a suicide bombing Friday that killed more than 30 people, police chief Dilawar Bangash told The Associated Press.

IFE

Mexico: A very expensive electoral system.

By Sergio Sarmiento

Even when in 2010, there will not be federal elections, the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE, by its initials in spanish), its asking for a budget of 9.239 millions of pesos for this year. Of these gigantic quantity, 6.215 millions will be spent by the IFE, while three thousand millions will be separated between the political partys.

The IFE says that this budget is a reduction of their expenditure of more than 12.800 millions of pesos of 2009. But they omit in showing that in 2009 there was federal elections and in 2010, there will not be anyone. The fact is that we have created a burocratic and political monster that lives of bleeding a poor country that should use this resources for something more productive.

This costs are only the oficial. Besides there’s a lot of money that enters in the campaings in a suspicious way, and honestly sometimes illegal. The goverments give money to the parties they have risen, but they don’t recognize this. Besides, there’s the enormous real cost of the 32 millions TV and radio spots that were transmitted during the campaing. The IFE functionaries and the politicians say to us that these spots are free. But there’s nothing free in this world. The real cost of these spots easily duplicates the formal cost of the elections.

So we have expensive elections that costs more to the taxpayers that in anyother place in the world. There are elections more expensive, of course, like the ones in the US, but the costs are paid by the people involved in the campaing by private contributions. There are others that are paid with the money of the public treasury, like in many countries of Europe, but their costs are infinitely inferior than ours. Our politicians have gaved us the worst of the worlds. A electoral system paid by the taxpayers, but with similar costs of the countries with a private system.

The IFE has defended their expenditure in the past stating that an important part of this is dedicated to the maintainance of the electoral roll and the electoral ID Cards, which are the most expensive ones in the world. With the rising of a new oficial indentification for the mexicans, which is in the law since 4 decades ago but just now has been approved by the federal government, the electoral ID card will be unnecessary, such ID Card has filled the necessity or requiement to count with an official ID card recognized in the whole country.

The IFE is opossing that the Secretary of Government turn alive this proyect of the new identity card because they don’t want to lose the enourmous quantity of money that has managed for the actual ID Card, which has the disadvantage as national identity, because it stops being emitted during electoral and campaing times.

Not even the wealthier nations of the world will have the luxury of having an electoral system so expensive and inefficient such as the mexican. The fact that we have it, that we are able to spend 9 thousand million of pesos, much more than any other country in campaing times, reveals us that there’s something fundamentally evil in the mexican political system.

UN rights expert calls for urgent reform of justice system in Haiti

4 September 2009 – Demand for justice outpaces the much-needed reform of the justice system in Haiti, the independent United Nations expert on the situation of human rights in the small Caribbean nation has underscored.

“When Haiti’s population sees the reform of the Haitian National Police proceeding at a fast pace, but the justice system is still marked by deprivation and limited resources, they are legitimately entitled to ask for the reasons behind this disparity,” Michel Forst told reporters in the capital, Port-au-Prince, before wrapping up his visit.

Although there were high hopes for the laws designed to reform the judiciary, progress appears to have been halted with their passage, he said. “There is still a long way to go before the country has a penal system that adheres to the rule of law.”

Mr. Forst pointed to progress in reforming the police, who are wearing new uniforms, driving new cars and include many more women in their ranks, but noted that the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, still reports that law enforcement officials are behind violence and corruption.

Overcrowded conditions in prisons constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, he said, welcoming the construction of new detention centres and the influx of funding from international partners.

In a new report on Haiti released yesterday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that while there is substantial reason to believe Haiti is moving away from its past of conflict towards a brighter future of peaceful development, there is still a need to strengthen State institutions and constitutional reform, among the current challenges.

“Further efforts to curb corruption and impunity are also critical,” stressed Mr. Ban, adding that an effective response “to violent incidents during the elections of 19 April would help to shore up public confidence in the democratic process.”

His report underscored the critical contribution MINUSTAH and the UN Country Team can make to stability in Haiti, especially as the emergent Haitian police force is still strengthening.