CENTRAL AMERICA: Governability – Myth and Reality

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Nov 19 1996 (IPS) - The concept of governability in Central America seems to get lost between the myth of the perfect democracy and a social and legal instability that pushes some sectors toward dreaming of a return to the dictatorships of the past.

In a conference on justice and citizen security in Central America that concluded last weekend in Honduras, experts warned that the region’s fragile democracies required swift action to strengthen institutions and ward off new expressions of social unrest.

But rather than theoretical reforms in terms of justice and human rights, concrete measures leading to real change are needed, the experts underlined.

Central Americans “have formal democracies with electoral aspects, believing that with elections every four or six years we have governability,” said former Guatemalan president Ramiro De Leon.

“People wonder what the results of democracy are and why do they vote, if the problems of poverty, violence and crime persist. That pushes them to a dangerous longing for the dictatorships” of the past, he added.

Warning of a return to such forms of authoritarianism, De Leon stressed the need to foment democratic governability based on a legal system that responds to the concerns of the population.

What are necessary, he said, are legal reforms that go beyond merely structural aspects, to eradicate the widespread problem of prisoners without sentencing, prevent human rights violations and make it impossible for judges, prosecutors and investigators to ignore — or be ignorant of — the law.

Former Costa Rican president Rodrigo Carazo said the region is caught in the last throes of the 20th century, an “end of patience” with injustice, impunity, corruption and neoliberal structural adjustment programmes. In terms of governability, “we are caught up in a myth…with the loss of credibility of politicians and their parties.”

Carazo said ingovernability, seen as the absence of justice, “seems to be a way of life in Central America,” where surveys have revealed that at least half of the roughly 30 million inhabitants say they do not believe in their politicians.

The problems of governability in the region, based on shortcomings of the legal system and a lack of security among inhabitants, was the centrepoint of the conference held under the auspices of the government of Spain and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

The conference announced the financing of a four-year regional programme to promote governability and prevent new expressions of social discontent in the area, through the strengthening of legal systems and human rights offices.

Conference participants criticised the application of the death penalty in El Salvador and Guatemala, and attempts to introduce it in Honduras and Costa Rica.

Ignacio Berdugo Gomez de la Torre, the rector of the University of Salamanca in Spain, called capital punishment an attack on democracy and human rights. No democratic nation “should permit such an abominable act as the taking of a human life. Laws must be strengthened and enforced.”

The conference recommended greater participation by civil society in the measures towards governability that the region must undertake, in order to prevent a distancing from that ideal which would allow a return to a dictatorial past.