67 - Colombian Voters Select Leftist, Kenyan Voters Contemplate Cannabis
Colombia elected left-leaning Gustavo Petro as its new president yesterday. Petro, with slightly more than 50 percent of the total vote, defeated Rodolfo Hernandez, a Trump-like, bravado-mouthed, millionaire business tycoon with distinctively autocratic instincts. Petro, more in the manner of Sen. Bernie Sanders, and equally rumpled-looking (but younger), was a guerrilla soldier before he came in from the cold and was elected mayor of Bogota. (More about them both, and about Colombia, in this Newletter’s edition last Friday, June17, #66, “An Upcoming Choice in Colombia.”)
Petro proposes a wholesale transformation of Colombia’s economic and political system, redistributing incomes to the poor – 87 percent of the population – and removing power from the conservative political elites who have ruled Colombia for much of this and the prior centuries. He seeks to end the country’s dependence on oil and coal exports, wanting to shift toward renewal energy projects and greater protection for the Amazon rainforest. If Petro has his way, taxes will rise on the rich, and much more will be spent on uplifting social programs.
But Colombia is as polarized as the United States, and the fact that Petro defeated Hernandez, a populist-rightwing demagogue, by less than 4 percent of the total vote, demonstrates problems ahead. Petro, to accomplish anything of his radical program, will also have to reduce corrosive corruption and curb heavy violence in a country that still has rebel outlaws, persistent cocaine trafficking gangs, and great iniquities between urbanites and rural villagers.
Petro selected Francia Marquez as his vice-presidential running mate. She is an environmentalist and a social justice activist, of Afro-Colombian heritage. She, like Petro, represents a facet of Colombia’s citizenry that has never before reached the pinnacle of national political prominence. On the campaign trail, she spoke of class and race in a manner never before enunciated during Colombian elections.
Together, the new president and vice-president may be able to propel the kind of social change momentum in their own country that Democratic Party progressives promote in the United States. But establishments, especially in South America, have always managed to fight back successfully. So Petro and Marquez will have battles ahead, especially with the stark specters of Venezuela to the north and Brazil to the south.
The Kenyan Election and Cannabis
Since it made sense to follow up on Colombia’s election, an election in Kenya deserves to be placed on our radar screen even though it will not be held until early August. But in addition to two long-time political contenders – former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and current Deputy-President William Ruto -- George Luchiri Wajackoyah has entered the race with innovative and racial ideas about how Kenya should cope with its very serious inflationary pressures, high unemployment, and oppressive public debt.
Wajackoyah wants to legalize and merchandize cannabis and farm snakes for their venom. Malawi is already trying to commercialize cannabis growing in order to help its farmers emerge from poverty. Wajackoyah has the same goal.
Wajackoyah, trained as a lawyer, estimates that a sack of 90 kilos of cannabis is worth $3.4 million; with a mere 2,000 sacks of cannabis Kenya could repay all of its creditors and put real income into the hands of the poor. He is campaigning on Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp with that simple meaningful message, and gathering support.
It is not the psychoactive marijuana that Wajackoyah is promoting, but hemp, long employed for its rope-like qualities. It contains high levels of cannabidoil (CBD), now widely used in the United States and across the globe for medicinal purposes. Wajackoyah reckons that a $70 billion world market for CBD will open up for Kenyans if he is elected and his plans mature. “Kenyans will be so rich that they will only be working four days a week,” Wackajoyah told his followers last week.
Additionally, Kenya’s latest presidential contender also wants his country to establish farms on an industrial scale to milk snakes of their venom. He says that venom to treat bites is worth $120 per gram, with the global market worth $1.5 billon. Kenya could easily, he contends, make sufficient money from venom sales to defray all of it loans from China.
Now a bearded 61, Wajackoyah was a police training officer and investigator in Kenya before gaining a number of diplomas and degrees at universities in Britain and the United States, including a Ph. D. from Walden University, a for-profit institution in Minneapolis. He has practiced law in Nairobi for twenty-five years. He is from western Kenya and, as an orphaned youth, spent several years on the streets of nation’s capital.
Politically, Wajackoyah has come from nowhere to be a factor in the August race. His social media performances have given him pervasive name recognition and favorable attention from independent voters. But beating Odinga, who has sought the presidency several times and has a firm political base in western Kenya, and Ruto, who has a strong following in central Kenya, will be difficult. If he manages to make a run-off second election later in August, however, Wajackoyah will have injected new ideas and new approaches to a Kenya that has only known rather stale contests between deeply politicized camps.
Replacing Russian Coal
Because Europe has banned imports of Russian coal and South Africa has abundant quantities of (low quality) coal, there is a good chance that Africans can now profit from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Already South Africa is the world fifth largest exporter of coal; it is already shipping coal from Richards’ Bay on its Indian Ocean coast to ports in Europe and now is ramping up to give Europe more of what it will no longer purchase from Russia.
So far, South Africa is supplying Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain, countries that never purchased South African coal previously, and France, which has ramped up its imports from South Africa seven-fold. With unemployment in South Africa approaching 37 percent, substituting South African for Russian coal is (despite the environmental hazard) a real plus for African miners and handlers.