A Clenched Fist
NEED TO KNOW
A Clenched Fist
ECUADOR
When Daniel Noboa took over the presidency of Ecuador in November 2023, there was hope that the young outsider could turn the country, bruised and battered by criminal gangs, around.
Now almost 15 months later, polls show that Ecuadorans are quickly running out of patience with the young heir to a banana fortune: He may not win the first round of elections on Feb. 9 outright and may have to compete in a run-off election in April.
For most of last year, Noboa was on track to easily win reelection, with polls showing him as a frontrunner on approval ratings topping 50 percent.
Regular citizens initially saw Noboa as “a president who is making decisions,” under challenging circumstances, Quito-based analyst Max Donoso-Muller told Americas Quarterly. That mano dura (iron fist) stance on security was helping boost his popularity, it added.
Now, however, escalating violence, frequent blackouts, and continuing economic malaise are threatening to derail his candidacy.
Elected last year to complete the term of former President Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap election after facing mounting opposition, charges of corruption, and impeachment, Noboa won the election on a wave of optimism.
Ecuador was long one of South America’s most peaceful countries, but in recent years it has been rocked by a wave of violence from organized crime gangs operating in neighboring Colombia and Peru, using it as a transit hub to the Pacific Ocean to ship cocaine to the world.
By 2023, the country’s homicide rate had increased to 40 deaths per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the region.
When he entered office, Ecuadorians, weary of the country’s near-takeover by gangs, held out hope that the outsider would be able to challenge the political elite and find new ways to tackle the country’s security situation, energy crisis, and sluggish economy.
Since then, he has taken a tough-on-crime approach, noted World Politics Review, launching a war against gangs by engaging the military to support police and correction officers on the streets and in prisons, increasing prison sentences, and arresting thousands of suspected gang members.
When voters were asked if they supported such measures in spite of worries over human rights in a referendum last year, they overwhelmingly answered “yes.”
“We can’t live in fear of leaving our homes,” Leonor Sandoval, a 39-year-old homemaker, told the Associated Press.
In spite of his measures, it’s spiraling crime that poses the most significant threat to Noboa’s reelection. While homicides have decreased marginally since he became president, the rate is still higher than in 2022.
Meanwhile, Ecuador is grappling with a severe drought that has drastically reduced hydroelectric power generation. In some parts of the country, residents have cuts lasting up to 14 hours a day.
“There shouldn’t be power cuts,” Brandon Samueza, who lost his job at a factory after blackouts reduced his employer’s earnings significantly, told Al Jazeera. “A government should be prepared … the fact that they have not done anything to adjust speaks badly of the government.”
Part of the political blowback on Noboa is due to his championing of an electricity reform law last year that did nothing to alleviate the problem, analysts said. And in a country still struggling to recover from the pandemic, the situation is severely harming companies and the economy.
Meanwhile, other candidates have been gaining in the polls.
Although there are 15 other candidates on the ballot, polls suggest Noboa will face off against former assemblywoman Luisa González of the Citizen Revolution Movement, a leftist party led by popular, self-exiled former President Rafael Correa, who was convicted of corruption, a charge he decries as political.
Noboa defeated González in 2023’s runoff election with 52 percent of the vote to her 48 percent. González was briefly running ahead of Noboa last fall but he’s the frontrunner again – for now.
Still, analysts say that the election is hard to predict because of the gangs.
“I think that violence will intensify because drug trafficking gangs, which did particularly well during Correa’s government, will intensify their actions so that the population thinks that Noboa failed in his attempt to control them and opts for the Correa candidate,” Walter Spurrier of the Guayaquil-based consultancy Grupo Spurrier told Bnamericas.
He added that Noboa made a mistake by sparking hope that the war on the gangs would be short-lived: “The fight is a long one.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
The Other Front
ISRAEL/ WEST BANK & GAZA
The Israeli military blew up over a score of buildings in the West Bank city of Jenin this week, part of a counterterrorism offensive launched last month to destroy “terrorist infrastructure,” a mission Palestinian officials are denouncing as “ethnic cleansing,” the Washington Post reported.
Footage from local media showed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carrying out controlled demolitions Sunday on 23 structures as part of Operation Iron Wall which began last month.
The IDF said it had “dismantled” the structures after scanning hundreds of buildings for weapons, explosives, and other elements of terrorist activity.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported evacuating trapped civilians, while the Palestinian Authority (PA) Health Ministry confirmed at least five deaths in Jenin, including a 16-year-old.
Since the operation began, Israeli forces have killed more than 50 Palestinians in the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tamun, with 15 more killed in drone strikes. The IDF has also acknowledged mistakenly killing a number of civilians, including a toddler, according to the Times of Israel.
More than 100 suspected militants have been detained, and Israeli troops have seized 40 weapons and neutralized over 80 explosive devices, Israeli officials said.
The PA condemned the recent Israeli military action and called on the United States to intervene. The PA Health Ministry reported that 70 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year, including 10 children, one woman, and two elderly individuals.
Israel’s intensified operations in the West Back come amid broader tensions stemming from its conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.
Since then, the IDF has arrested about 6,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 2,350 linked to Hamas. More than 858 Palestinians in the territory have been killed in that period, with Israel saying that the majority were combatants or rioters engaged in attacks.
While the West Bank remains volatile, ceasefire negotiations regarding Gaza continue.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the US to discuss the next phase of a truce with Hamas, focusing on the release of remaining hostages and talks on a long-term resolution.
Meanwhile, in Qatar, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with senior Hamas officials, who accused Israel of stalling humanitarian aid efforts and hospital reconstruction in Gaza.
A Big Stick
SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa on Monday rejected accusations by US President Donald Trump over a newly adopted land confiscation policy, after the American leader threatened to cut off aid to the country over the issue, Reuters reported.
The dispute stems from a new land expropriation law that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed last month.
Under the law, authorities will be allowed to take land for “a public purpose or in the public interest.” Special conditions must be met before land can be expropriated, such as whether it has longtime informal occupants, whether and how it is being unused, if it is held purely for speculation, or if it is abandoned.
Officials said the legislation is aimed at addressing the racial disparities in land ownership that persist three decades after the policy of Apartheid ended in 1994.
But over the weekend, Trump claimed that South Africa is “confiscating land” and “certain classes of people” were being mistreated, describing it as a “massive human rights violation.” He said he would cut off all future funding to the African nation until “a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
Ramaphosa and other officials countered that the government has not confiscated any land while urging the US president to engage in dialogue to have a better understanding of the issue.
He also played down the slashing of aid, noting that US funding accounted for 17 percent of South Africa’s HIV/ AIDS program and that there was “no other significant funding” from the United States.
In 2023, the US committed roughly $440 million in aid to South Africa, with the majority of the amount going to counter HIV/ AIDS.
Even so, the controversy brought to the forefront the issue of land reform in South Africa, where it remains a very politically charged topic. For decades, the country has tried to address the legacy of colonial and apartheid eras that led to Black South Africans being dispossessed of their lands and denied property rights.
Ramaphosa’s coalition partners objected to the signing of the bill, with some warning that it threatens private ownership, according to the BBC.
South African-born billionaire and Trump ally, Elon Musk, also waded into the matter by describing the new laws as “openly racist,” a charge South African officials dismissed.
The Debt of Nations
CANADA
A group of First Nations in Canada is taking the federal government to court and seeking billions of dollars in compensation to cover previous losses and protect future generations, accusing the state of failing to uphold the financial commitment promised in a 175-year-old treaty, the Guardian reported.
The case centers on the Robinson treaties signed in 1850 by a group of Anishinaabe nations living on the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Superior and the British Crown. The agreements established payment obligations of the Crown regarding 35,700 square miles of land belonging to the Anishinaabe.
They also included an “augmentation clause,” according to which the Crown would increase annual payments “from time to time” as the land produced more wealth and prosperity – “if and when” the payment could be made without causing a loss to the Crown.
Between 1850 and today, the lands and waters covered in the treaty generated large revenues for private companies and the province of Ontario. But the annuities due to the Anishinaabe remained fixed at $4 Canadian dollars ($2.75) per person – the price agreed to when the treaty was signed – and it was never increased.
In July, Canada’s Supreme Court unanimously released a decision criticizing the federal and Ontario governments for dishonoring the contract and leaving First Nations people to battle with poverty, poor health, and shorter life expectancies while the surrounding communities, industry, and government exploited their land and resources and kept all of the profits.
The court ordered Ontario and the federal government to settle the conflict with the Anishinaabe nations and present them with a reimbursement offer within six months, CBC News reported.
While Eric Head, spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada believes the government offer of nearly $2.5 billion to be fair, chief of Gull Bay First Nation, Wilfred King, said the sum did not live up to the wealth Ontario and the government earned from the land as they “condemned” the Indigenous communities to “intergenerational poverty.”
It is still unclear how much money the First Nations are due but some believe it could be as much as $86 billion.
The Ontario Superior Court will set the sum owed in a hearing set for June.
DISCOVERIES
Practice Makes Perfect
A new glove-like robotic exoskeleton will make it easier to practice the piano version of the fast-paced “Flight of the Bumblebee” orchestral piece by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
In a new study, a team of roboticists at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. and the NeuroPiano Institute in Kyoto, Japan, banded together to develop a novel technological approach to help pianists mastering their craft.
Previous research and evidence have suggested that musicians can reach a “ceiling effect,” when their skill levels reach a plateau – whereupon additional training does not always result in continuous improvement, according to TechXplore.
Most training techniques focus on isolated or repetitive exercises. Instead, the researchers explored whether passive training with an exoskeleton could allow musicians to break through this so-called ceiling while also introducing musicians to new movement patterns.
For their experiments, researchers recruited 118 trained pianists who had already encountered the ceiling effect. They each wore the special glove, which was designed to control individual finger movements independently to simulate real playing motions.
The robot exoskeleton then performed what researchers refer to as passive training – where it controlled the fingers of only the right hand – guiding them through various movements at different speeds.
After the training, the team asked the volunteers to remove the exoskeleton and play the same musical piece to see if there was any difference – and significant differences were found. Researchers reported that pianists saw their maximum keystroke speed increase substantially after a 30-minute session with the device, wrote Interesting Engineering.
The boost remained even after the exoskeleton was removed, suggesting long-term motor skills benefits. Still, the authors added that only fast, complex movement patterns led to skill enhancements, while slow or simple movements did not improve performance.
More research could lead to the development of new techniques to enhance training sessions for future musicians, but could also be used in other applications.
“The proposed hand exoskeleton robot has diverse application prospects, including rehabilitation of neurological disorders that degrade manual dexterity and the haptic transfer of complex motor skills from teachers to students,” the researchers wrote in their study.