A New(ish) Beginning

Four and a half months into my life in Rwanda and I’ve managed to say virtually nothing about my life here so far! My intention was to round out my experience working on the Obama campaign with one further entry detailing the micro-managed, super-focused, hugely rewarding and in the end massively successful two months that I spent in Las Vegas but the task of writing that piece has seemed so overwhelming that all I have to show for it is two months of silence. So I’ve decided to skip that and move on to the present.

Where to start? Let’s begin with the personal. That large house I referred to a few posts ago which was one of two options I was considering to move into is now my home. My bedroom, whence I’m writing this, is large enough for a huge bed and could comfortably accommodate a table tennis table and a pool table besides. I’ve no doubt this is the largest bedroom I will ever inhabit and would probably compare favourably in size to the entire flat I lived in before leaving London. It’s ridiculous. I share the house with three people, all girls and all Canadian. That they are all girls is entirely unsurprising; the NGO crowd here is overwhelmingly female (clearly not a problem, at least not for the minority gender). That they are all Canadian is much more so albeit that they’re an interesting mix: one Scottish-Canadian; one Eritrean-Canadian; and one US-Dutch-Canadian. In Kigali though one mostly comes across Americans, Belgians, Germans and Brits. And virtually no French. For those who don’t know the history, these last have not entirely covered themselves in glory in their dealings with this country and continue to shoot themselves in the foot diplomatically by pursuing government officials for war crimes and generally being on the wrong side of the argument. However I’m teetering into the political sphere about which I will unfortunately have to be less talkative than I was in Peru. (Incidentally the trial of Alberto Fujimori which I discussed a fair amount over a year ago is due to come to a close very shortly. A conviction is likely assuming the trial doesn’t collapse on the technicality that he’s in ill health and his absence from the courtroom for 12 days would entail starting all over again.)

Work at the Clinton Foundation is fantastically fun and extremely rewarding. And constantly in flux. Amusingly in some ways it’s very similar to what I was doing at Goldman Sachs, i.e. sitting in an office working with Excel all day. In important ways though it’s very different. Whereas my work at GS for six years was almost entirely inward facing, here I am daily in meetings with Ministry officials and every couple of weeks am out in the field meeting with regional health managers. At GS it was always difficult to explain to people what I did, particularly to those who didn’t work in finance, which led some to think I really worked for the intelligence services, but here it’s essentially very simple. We are here to help the Rwandans build up their capacity to successfully manage their own affairs and to do ourselves out of a job.

Unfortunately success isn’t going to come rapidly and someone will likely still be doing what I’m doing by the time I’m considering retirement but you would go mad in this line of work if you didn’t consider and accept the long view. And in Rwanda things happen. I’m constantly hearing from my NGO colleagues who work across African countries that there’s a level of thought, coordination and direction here that isn’t to be found anywhere else on the continent. From the Big Man on down there’s a will to pull this country up and to do so in a systematic, government-driven and clean way. It’s impressive to behold even for someone as inexperienced as me who has nothing with which to compare it. Of course the Rwandans have no resources. There’s very little to drive tax revenue so the country is massively dependent on foreign funding. And as previously said, this will not change anytime soon. But there is the will and there is the understanding of how to do it even if with other people’s money. It’s extremely exciting to be a part of. Over time I want to talk more about the challenges and the opportunities, the hopes of this tiny little over-populated country, the expectations of the international community and the tensions that result when the two rub each other the wrong way. There are endless anecdotes that constantly have us thinking about how to improve and make more effective our work to help Rwanda. The goal is nothing short of colossal.

Recent Peruvian History: An Update

Hot off the press this morning, the Minister of the Interior in Fujimori's cabinet at the time of the dissolution of Congress and the Judiciary in April 1992 has been sentenced to ten years in prison for having participated in and backed what is referred to in Peru as the "autogolpe" (self-coup). Nine other members of the cabinet from that time have been given four year suspended sentences for having been secondary accomplices.

Fujimori himself cannot be tried for this crime as the terms of his extradition from Chile only allow him to be charged for specific offenses, two related to alleged human rights violations and five related to alleged corruption. Fujimori's trial on these charges is to start on 10th December.

A Primer on Recent Peruvian History

In amongst the microfinance discussion, it would be remiss of me not to mention the political dimension here in Peru. As Jeffrey Sachs repeatedly says in his rather good book The End of Poverty, you cannot think about altering the economic situation of a country without giving ample thought to all the factors which affect it: political, geographical, historical, infrastructural, personal.

The president of Peru is currently Alan Garcia and this is his second go at running the country. He was previously in charge between 1985 and 1990 and left office with hyperinflation causing economic havoc and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) causing havoc of a different kind. Strong evidence for not electing a 36 year old to head the government it might be suggested. With the country needing some strong direction Alberto Fujimori, a half Peruvian half Japanese politician whose birthplace is disputed (he claims Lima, others claim Japan and it's of importance because only people born in Peru are allowed to run for president) beat writer Mario Vargas Llosa in an unexpected victory in 1990. Interestingly five years later Fujimori beat Javier Perez de Cuellar, former United Nations Secretary General in the 1995 elections.

Fujimori turned out to be quite the authoritarian during his two terms. He succeeded in bringing the economy under control and eventually in crushing Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA. On the other hand, because Vargas Llosa's party retained control of Congress after the 1990 election and since Fujimori was finding it hard to get anything done during his first term, he simply dismissed the entire Congress and judiciary in 1992. ("If only...", Bill Clinton must have been saying a few years later when he faced the same problem.) At the end of his second term, Fujimori tried to circumvent the 1993 constitutional two-term limit which he himself had introduced and ran in and won the 2000 election against Alejandro Toledo. The ruse only lasted until evidence of political bribery eventually forced Fujimori to resign the presidency from the safety of Tokyo.

Worse than the political machinations however were the extra-judicial torture and murders. In 1993 Fujimori became close to an army Captain by the name of Vladimiro Montesinos who alerted Fujimori that certain elements of the army were planning a coup. Montesinos later became the head of Fujimori's security apparatus and was responsible for fighting the terrorists as well as for the political espionage and bribery. The findings of the CVR (Truth and Reconciliation Committee) after the downfall of the Communist terrorist groups found that up to 70,000 people were killed during the fighting. Most of these were innocents in the battles between government forces and the terrorists and their blood was not only on the hands of the terrorists. The tactics used in bringing the terrorists to their knees as well as the bribery landed Montesinos with a lengthy prison sentence with Fujimori similarly awaiting trial on human rights abuses. He was extradited from Chile in September 2007 and the trial is scheduled to start in December.

This is likely to be an unwelcome distraction for the Garcia administration as Fujimori still commands considerable public support. I was recently in the centre of Lima and saw a huge banner hanging from a hotel exclaiming "Fujimori Libertad". This time around Garcia is attempting to cast himself as the economically responsible type and is attracting foreign investment to the country as well as looking to get a Free Trade Agreement signed with the U.S. which is likely to be passed by the U.S. Senate in December, having already passed the House of Representatives. It is likely to sail through the upper house of the U.S. Congress as it did the lower house because from the U.S. point of view Peru is an important ally against the "red tide" of Chavez (Venezuela), Ortega (Nicaragua), Correa (Ecuador) and Morales (Bolivia).

For the good of the country, Alan Garcia needs to be careful to attract investment to all areas of the country and not just around the big cities and the mineral and gas deposits. A little bit of money can achieve big results in a country like Peru and a little bit of patronage can go a long way. When I was visiting Puno last month, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, I met with the head of one of the floating islands of Los Uros who told me at least three times that the solar panels they had attached to their houses providing them with electricity were provided by Fujimori. "And what has Garcia done for you?", I asked. "Nothing."

The danger is that Garcia's political base is along the coast north of Lima and in the centre of the country. Outside of those areas but particularly in the south Ollanta Humala, a man the U.S. would lump in with Chavez and the rest, is the popular politician. In the first round of the most recent presidential election in 2006, Humala came top with 33%. Given that an outright majority is required to win the presidency, a second round was held in which Humala lost to Garcia who had lapped up the votes of the third placed finisher from the first round.

Peru has fantastic advantages relative to some other developing nations. Natural wealth (copper, other metals, natural gas), agriculture (top exporter of asparagus in the world, potatoes, maize, fish), access to the sea, an entrepreneurial workforce and significant tourism. Inflation has been below 4% since 1999 and GDP growth averaged 5.7% between 2002 and 2006. What Peru requires for development, to the advantage both of the poor and the country, is leadership which will, in addition to keeping the economy ticking over, ensure that the benefits of increasing wealth are distributed widely. That's not to say the leaders should tax the rich and kill the entrepreneurial spirit. More that the right combination of fiscal, monetary, trade, diplomatic and social conditions are needed to increase the general wealth of the country, which are best managed by a centrist party with an active and targeted social agenda rather than a more extreme party of one wing or the other with misplaced ideas of how to run an economy and a country.