A series of elections in Latin America this year, either held already or scheduled to take place, are testing the robustness of democracy in the region. The results will show whether increasing social tensions, partly as a result of the ongoing pandemic, can be channelled through existing political systems.

Overall, the outlook for the region is complex and challenging. Haiti and Nicaragua give particular cause for concern, but El Salvador and Honduras should also be watched closely. In Chile, by contrast, a process to rewrite the constitution brings hope of a truly democratic renewal.

The good news is that Latin America’s troubled democracies continue to go to the polls to decide their future. In most cases, this seems to be a guarantee of the political representation and legitimate government that people badly need for the hard times ahead. Here’s what to look out for.

Ecuador

Presidential elections in Ecuador, already disputed, marked the beginning of what will be an intense year. After a fractious first round on 7 February, it was decided that Andrés Arauz, a left-winger, would make it through to the run-off, with 32% of the vote. But it was unclear at first whether his opponent would be Guillermo Lasso, a banker, or Yaku Pérez, an indigenous leader.

Both received around 20%, with Lasso eventually coming out ahead of his rival. Yet the close race for second place has puzzled voters and led to accusations of fraud, which has helped undermine the legitimacy of the result as well as that of the National Electoral Commission.

Had Pérez made it through to the second round, it would be hard to predict the overall winner. Lasso, a right-winger, is likely to lose to Arauz, who is said to be a proxy of Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa, who has been convicted of corruption and is on the run in Brussels, but whose correismo movement retains significant popular support.

Pérez, as the candidate of the country’s indigenous movement and an environmental campaigner, would give Arauz a closer run. He has alleged fraud and is demanding a recount, with the results to be confirmed by the courts. Yet he offers a democratic renewal that neither the correistas nor the anticorreistas (embodied by Lasso) wanted. Both these currents represent the continuation of orthodox yet destructive economic policies that have prevailed over recent decades, bringing recession along with social and environmental problems, plus high debt and control of macroeconomic decisions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

El Salvador

There was no clean start to the year in El Salvador, either. On 28 February, legislative and local elections resulted in a landslide victory for candidates backed by the current president, Nayib Bukele. The president, who won power in a surprise victory in 2019, promising to fight violence and corruption with his new party Nuevas Ideas, but has since moved in an authoritarian direction, has therefore tightened his grip on power.

Bukele, a youthful populist, will certainly exert greater control over Congress, which he already threatened a year ago when he arrived at the National Assembly escorted by troops, to bully legislators. February’s election spells irrelevance for ARENA and the FMLN, the two traditional parties of left and right, who have been crushed at the ballot box. Plurality in Salvadoran democracy is now at stake.

Peru

In April, presidential and legislative elections will be held in Peru, which has just been through a turbulent political period, with four presidents having held office since March 2018. The current president, Francisco Sagasti, who was chosen as interim president by Congress in November 2020 amid consensus for a rapid transition to new elections, is not standing for office.

Sagasti’s three predecessors were deposed by scandals and intense street protests. The new contenders appear to be George Forsyth, a former soccer player with populist leanings, and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori. Keiko has already served a prison sentence for corruption, while her father is currently in jail for human rights violations.

Also running, with some support, is the nationalist Daniel Urresti, a former army general and interior minister accused of murdering a journalist in 1988. He is running for a second time. Other candidates out of the current total of 17, on both left and right, have fewer skeletons in their cupboards but less chance of success. In any case, it doesn’t seem likely that the election will bring an end to instability in a country that has been badly hit by the pandemic, and where deep constitutional reform is demanded by civil society.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

A series of elections in Latin America this year, either held already or scheduled to take place, are testing the robustness of democracy in the region. The results will show whether increasing social tensions, partly as a result of the ongoing pandemic, can be channelled through existing political systems.

Overall, the outlook for the region is complex and challenging. Haiti and Nicaragua give particular cause for concern, but El Salvador and Honduras should also be watched closely. In Chile, by contrast, a process to rewrite the constitution brings hope of a truly democratic renewal.

The good news is that Latin America’s troubled democracies continue to go to the polls to decide their future. In most cases, this seems to be a guarantee of the political representation and legitimate government that people badly need for the hard times ahead. Here’s what to look out for.

Ecuador

Presidential elections in Ecuador, already disputed, marked the beginning of what will be an intense year. After a fractious first round on 7 February, it was decided that Andrés Arauz, a left-winger, would make it through to the run-off, with 32% of the vote. But it was unclear at first whether his opponent would be Guillermo Lasso, a banker, or Yaku Pérez, an indigenous leader.

Both received around 20%, with Lasso eventually coming out ahead of his rival. Yet the close race for second place has puzzled voters and led to accusations of fraud, which has helped undermine the legitimacy of the result as well as that of the National Electoral Commission.

Had Pérez made it through to the second round, it would be hard to predict the overall winner. Lasso, a right-winger, is likely to lose to Arauz, who is said to be a proxy of Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa, who has been convicted of corruption and is on the run in Brussels, but whose correismo movement retains significant popular support.

Pérez, as the candidate of the country’s indigenous movement and an environmental campaigner, would give Arauz a closer run. He has alleged fraud and is demanding a recount, with the results to be confirmed by the courts. Yet he offers a democratic renewal that neither the correistas nor the anticorreistas (embodied by Lasso) wanted. Both these currents represent the continuation of orthodox yet destructive economic policies that have prevailed over recent decades, bringing recession along with social and environmental problems, plus high debt and control of macroeconomic decisions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

El Salvador

There was no clean start to the year in El Salvador, either. On 28 February, legislative and local elections resulted in a landslide victory for candidates backed by the current president, Nayib Bukele. The president, who won power in a surprise victory in 2019, promising to fight violence and corruption with his new party Nuevas Ideas, but has since moved in an authoritarian direction, has therefore tightened his grip on power.

Bukele, a youthful populist, will certainly exert greater control over Congress, which he already threatened a year ago when he arrived at the National Assembly escorted by troops, to bully legislators. February’s election spells irrelevance for ARENA and the FMLN, the two traditional parties of left and right, who have been crushed at the ballot box. Plurality in Salvadoran democracy is now at stake.

Peru

In April, presidential and legislative elections will be held in Peru, which has just been through a turbulent political period, with four presidents having held office since March 2018. The current president, Francisco Sagasti, who was chosen as interim president by Congress in November 2020 amid consensus for a rapid transition to new elections, is not standing for office.

Sagasti’s three predecessors were deposed by scandals and intense street protests. The new contenders appear to be George Forsyth, a former soccer player with populist leanings, and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori. Keiko has already served a prison sentence for corruption, while her father is currently in jail for human rights violations.

Also running, with some support, is the nationalist Daniel Urresti, a former army general and interior minister accused of murdering a journalist in 1988. He is running for a second time. Other candidates out of the current total of 17, on both left and right, have fewer skeletons in their cupboards but less chance of success. In any case, it doesn’t seem likely that the election will bring an end to instability in a country that has been badly hit by the pandemic, and where deep constitutional reform is demanded by civil society.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

But given that, in the end, Al Qaeda and its people had no real capacity to overthrow Western democracy, seeking a new enemy was the solution proposed by far-right populism, a rising political movement around the world, which took advantage of the mature phase of globalization and the great financial crisis of 2008 to deepen the resentment of those left out.

China was to blame for the ills of globalization and the lack of jobs, and the migrants were also targeted as responsible for steeling jobs, especially Latino migrants. But, to these external enemies we had to add an internal enemy, and Donald Trump, an outsider who won the elections in 2016 against all odds, found it in his political rivals: the Democrats.

Trump, a dubious and abusive character who grew up in the shadow of real estate scams and television fame, embodies a perverse part of the American dream that claims that anyone can become rich and famous in the land of opportunity and that there is nothing perverse about conquering power for your benefit and that of your family at any price.

Trump handled the immense power given to him by the White House arrogantly and disdainfully, and dazzled millions of Americans with his lying and manipulative rhetoric, using any means to exalt his figure above everyone and everything. But his transactional view of human relations, based on a ruthless epic where anything goes in a zero-sum game, and where lying at all costs and crushing people is part of the progress in business and life. That can serve to build a real estate empire, where speculation and massive tax evasion is the engine of profit, but it does not serve to govern a country.

It is not understood how the Republican Party, the “Great Old Party” of Abraham Lincoln, could have been thrown into the hands of such a psychopathic character and not see the danger that it represented for democracy and its institutions. During Trump’s four years, we have witnessed the worst of politics, which consists of blindly flattering the leader with unwavering personal loyalty, with the sole objective of thriving and retaining the position.

But, when the moment of truth came in a democracy, represented by the ballot box and the possibility of alternation in power, all the masks fell. And Trump said, as he did say in the 2016 election, that if he were not the winner, there could be only one reason why: massive fraud. His Republican colleagues heard him shout this attack on democracy, and they fell silent. That is why they are also guilty of what happened now.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.