POLITICS-LATAM: Voters Opt for Change – But Not Too Much

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 30 1999 (IPS) - The message sent by voters in Latin America this year was an almost unanimous demand for efforts against corruption and policies against unemployment, poverty and crime – basically, greater attention to the concrete problems of the people.

Most Latin Americans expressed their desire this year for moderate change, despite the widespread disenchantment with the ability of the prevailing neo-liberal policies to meet their expectations for social and human development in the 1990s.

Preserving stability, building on the economic strides made, and addressing pending issues like growing poverty and crime were the slogans most oft-repeated by candidates campaigning on platforms of “change.”

Inter-American Dialogue, an organisation linking former centre- left presidents from the Americas, points to scepticism regarding democracy and the free market as tools capable of satisfying demands for development.

But in no country did voters call for in-depth change at the polls this year.

In Mexico, for the first time since it came to power in 1929, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) chose its presidential candidate in primary elections, leaving behind the traditional practice by which the president handpicked the party’s candidate.

Francisco Labastida, pledging transparency and efforts against corruption and poverty, won the primaries and will run for president next year.

The anti-neo-liberal discourse of his main opponent within PRI, Roberto Madrazo, was crushed in the primaries by Labastida, who touts himself as the representative of the “party of change, but of the right changes, which do not ignore the advances already achieved and which recognise the demands to be met.”

In Argentina, President Fernando de la Rúa took office Dec 10, sporting the image of an honest, upright, moderate leader, replacing a government that after two consecutive terms in office left a legacy of economic stability, high unemployment (15 percent), and rampant corruption.

The new president, heading the Alliance comprised of the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR) and the centre-left Frepaso, also platformed on promises of change, after 10 years of government by the Justice (Peronist) Party’s Carlos Menem.

De la Rúa, representing the UCR, was voted candidate in the coalition’s primaries, beating out Frepaso’s Graciela Fernández Meijide.

Pledging austerity and restraint – contrasting sharply with Menem’s flamboyant, playboy style – while promising, however, not to substantially modify the former president’s economic policies, De la Rúa was found by voters to be more credible than his rival – the Justice Party’s Eduardo Duhalde – in the Oct 24 elections.

Meanwhile, Fernández Meijide ran unsuccessfully against Carlos Ruckauf, the Justice Party’s candidate for governor of the province of Buenos Aires – the country’s largest province.

The platforms of Labastida in Mexico and De la Rúa in Argentina were surprisingly similar on key points, like pledges of honesty and promises that the government would be put at the service of the people rather than personal enrichment.

“Acting with rectitude has been the premise of my entire life,” said Labastida after his triumph in the primaries, while De la Rúa asked all of his ministers to make a personal commitment to become soldiers in the war on corruption, and to uphold transparency in the public administration.

In Chile, meanwhile, what looked early this year like a sure victory for the centre-left ruling Coalition for Democracy’s candidate Ricardo Lagos has today become an open question, given right-wing candidate Joaquín Lavín’s unexpectedly strong performance in the first round of elections on Dec 12.

Lagos and Lavín will compete to succeed President Eduardo Frei in a Jan 16 runoff, after this month’s virtual draw.

Analysts in Chile agreed the day after the elections that the outcome of the first round should actually be read as a triumph for Lavín, who won an unexpected level of support among voters with his promise to leave behind divisive issues of the past, such as human rights cases pending since the 1973-90 dictatorship, and address “the concrete problems of the people.”

A commitment to tackle what the public sees as their most pressing problems was also the main platform of candidates in other Latin American countries.

Uruguay also went to a second round of elections to choose President Julio María Sanguinetti’s successor on Nov 28, when the governing Colorado Party’s Jorge Batlle beat out the leftist Broad Front coalition’s Tabaré Vázquez.

The conservative, neo-liberal Batlle made it to the presidency thanks to the support of the Colorado Party’s traditional rival, the National Party, despite Vázquez’s efforts to draw votes from the centre.

Jorge Elías, political columnist for the Argentine daily ‘La Nación’, said Latin American voters seemed determined to vote for a change of style, not policy, “and especially not for a change in economic policy.”

“Leftist or anti-establishment alternatives had to be decaffeinated in order not to scare off foreign investors and voters,” he wrote.

Perhaps Peru is the best example of the absence of a backlash against the negative social impact of neo-liberal reforms applied throughout the region this decade.

Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, accused of having an authoritarian style since his 1992 “self-coup”, looks set to win a third consecutive term in the April elections, even though Peru was no exception to the negative effects of neo-liberal reforms and stringent structural adjustment programmes.

Opinion polls carried out before Fujimori announced that he would run in the elections indicated that he would be supported by around half of the electorate, even though most respondents agreed that his candidature for a third consecutive term violated the constitution.

Fujimori argues that since the constitution was amended during his first term, in April he would actually be running for his second, rather than third, term under the new constitution.

The triumph of right-wing candidate Alfonso Portillo in the Dec 26 runoff in Guatemala, beating out the conservative ruling party candidate, also indicated that voters were not seeking in-depth changes, despite the fact that 60 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela could be the exception confirming the rule, although despite the constitutional assembly that drew up a new constitution, approved by referendum, and talk of a “silent revolution,” few analysts believe he plans to implement economic reforms that run against the predominant current in the region.

“Latin Americans seem to be rejecting neo-liberalism with more neo-liberalism,” according to Elías – and so far at least, voters seem to be proving him right.