On June 15, Juan Manuel Santos emerged as the victor of a close and contentious battle for the Colombian presidency. He ran on a campaign promise to continue the peace talks he started with the country’s main leftist guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in November 2012. His re-election, Santos declared, was proof that Colombian voters had given him a mandate for peace and wanted to complete the process. Santos’ second-round victory relied in large part on the support he received from most of the established segments of Colombia’s political left, which, though historically not a major [...]
As the top judicial body in the American justice system, the U.S. Supreme Court is no stranger to setting legal precedents that reverberate for generations. However, more often than not, those rulings have little impact outside of U.S. borders. Last Monday, however, the high court reached a decision that might very well change the face of international finance for years to come. By ruling that Argentina must repay $1.3 billion to a group of persistent creditors, the nine justices potentially delivered a blow to emerging market economies dependent on international debt markets and put America’s global financial power on display [...]
Colombians re-elected President Juan Manuel Santos for a second term on June 15, in what is being described as a referendum on his government’s peace negotiations to end the half-century-long guerrilla war with the FARC. The election was close until the very end, with pre-election polls predicting differing results. In the end, Santos won a little more than 50 percent of the votes while his challenger, former Finance Minister Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, gained a little over 45 percent, providing a close yet nonetheless decisive mandate for the incumbent president to continue with the peace process. With this in mind, some [...]
