Is Brazilian democracy about to collapse?
Yes, it is. That's why a socialist from Sao Paulo was elected.
Let me see. The fact that the same guy has been elected twice in a row is evidence that democracy in Brazil is about to collapse? Doesn't that not make sense?
Yes, it does. When he was first elected, the Brazilians were very unhappy...there was considerable unrest. His election calmed them down because he was seen as the 'little' people's choice. However, he has been criticized for not moving fast enough and people are becoming restless again.
If they are electing their leaders fairly and at regular intervals its proof that their democracy is working, not failing, right?
No. Pay attention........Brazil goes in and out of democracy. Same with Argentina and Chile and all the rest of the South American countries. When the military doesn't like what they see in those countries, they intercede. Currently Brazil has been a democracy since 1985......a fairly long stretch.
Here's an article that gives a brief overview:
LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS
For many, democracy has been disappointing
Voters become disenchanted as old promises of new prosperity remain unfulfilled
By JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle South America Bureau
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - If democracy were a game of sheer numbers, Latin Americans would be celebrating a historic triumph.
After decades of domination by dictators, the land that runs from northern Mexico south to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, has become governed almost wholly by freely chosen leaders. For nearly 20 years, elections have taken place like clockwork. In a 14-month cycle that began last November and ends in December, 12 new heads of state will have been selected.
But just as a raucous wedding can give way to a rocky marriage, elections often have produced governments that have been inept or unfaithful to the people who elected them. Many voters feel betrayed because they think democracy has failed to generate widespread prosperity, reduce crime or bridge the huge gap between rich and poor.
The honeymoon with democracy is over.
"We have democratic governments. What we don't have are government institutions able to deliver what the people really want," said Jose Miguel Insulza, a Chilean who heads the Organization of American States. "That is why democracy is in doubt today in Latin America."
Unlike Europe and the United States, where democracy exists alongside great wealth, Latin America is a region where broad political freedoms rub shoulders with widespread poverty. Although all Latin Americans except Cubans freely choose their leaders, millions don't have jobs, and nearly half live on less than $2 a day.
Crime runs rampant. Corruption scandals have disgraced presidents and small-town mayors alike. Outraged citizens have taken to the streets, and in the turmoil 11 elected presidents have been forced out of office in the past 15 years.
"These governments have been a disaster," said Fany Soliz, a schoolteacher in La Paz, the Bolivian capital, where protesters have forced out two presidents in 28 months.
Soliz barely scrapes by on her $280-a-month salary. Many of her pupils, she says, come to school on empty stomachs because their families cannot afford breakfast.
Though Soliz and fellow Bolivians have elected presidents since 1985, their per capita income, a basic measure of economic progress, has decreased under democracy, and 63 percent of them live in poverty.
"Who wouldn't want change?" she asked.
In Mexico, just six years after President Vicente Fox's election ended seven decades of one-party rule, opinion polls show a majority of people frustrated with the democratic transition and ambivalent about July's presidential vote. Fox's administration has failed to get most of the president's agenda through the opposition-controlled Congress and prevail in court actions against former officials accused of human rights abuses or corruption.
"There are few expectations," says Luis Nava, who works with Citizens Movement for Democracy, a civic organization. "This has created disappointment and disinterest in politics. There's a weariness."
Way it used to be
Some Latin Americans look back fondly on the era of military rule, a period when economic growth rates were far higher than today. One of the few regionwide studies on the subject, a 2004 U.N. survey of 18 Latin American countries, showed that a majority of people would willingly support an authoritarian regime in exchange for economic progress.
"We have witnessed the deepest and broadest advance of democracy since the independence of our nations. But what has been won is by no means secure," Dante Caputo, a former Argentine foreign minister, wrote in the introduction to the U.N. report. "Democracy appears to be losing its vitality. If it becomes irrelevant to Latin Americans, will it be able to resist the new dangers?"
Fair elections have led to increased voter turnout, averaging just more than 70 percent for legislative and presidential balloting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
In some countries, however, casting ballots is mandatory while in others more and more disillusioned voters stay home. At 65 percent, for example, Costa Rica recorded its lowest turnout during the Feb. 5 presidential election.
Elsewhere, democracy has been compromised by election-day chicanery.
Riots broke out following the Feb. 7 presidential vote in Haiti, where some polling stations were ransacked and U.N. troops found hundreds of smashed ballot boxes in a garbage dump. Last week, leading candidate Rene Preval, who had charged that "mass fraud and gross errors" had denied him the majority needed to avoid a runoff, was named president.
A fundamental dilemma, many experts contend, is that democracy took root and raised expectations at precisely the moment that the forces of economic globalization curtailed the powers of governments.
In the 1980s and '90s, the magic bullet for Latin America was viewed widely as a one-two combination of free elections and free-market economics pushed by the U.S., World Bank and International Monetary Fund — policies known as the "Washington Consensus."
But by reducing trade barriers, cutting budget deficits and selling off state-run industries, Latin American officials largely surrendered control over their own economies, says Fernando Cepeda, a former Colombian foreign minister.
"That's why governments in Latin America are struggling," he said. "They can't manage the levers of power because they no longer have the levers of power. Yet people still expect their governments to be all-powerful."
Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, points out that between 1960 and 1980, when military rulers largely held sway, the region's per capita income jumped by 82 percent. By contrast, in the next 20 years, when Latin Americans turned to democracy and free markets, per capita income grew by just 9 percent. And between 2000 and 2004, it grew by only 1 percent.
According to the International Labor Organization, the region's 10.8 percent urban unemployment rate is nearly double what it was in 1990. Even when jobs are created, it says, seven of 10 are for such low-paying work as selling ice cream on street corners.
"The region's enthusiasm for the Washington Consensus has waned," says a new report by the Inter-American Development Bank. "It is now in search of a new paradigm that offers better economic results, more stability and greater equity."
Bypassing traditional political parties and center-right candidates, many voters have opted for fresh faces. Today, leftist presidents govern seven countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Some U.S. officials are sounding the alarm about the leftward tilt and voicing concerns that these new governments will mimic Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro, by nationalizing privately owned companies, clamping down on civil liberties and fomenting anti-American sentiment. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went so far as to compare Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has emerged as a strident opponent of Washington, to Adolf Hitler.
"He's a person who was elected legally — just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally — and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and others," Rumsfeld said at the National Press Club in Washington earlier this month.
Chavez, while visiting Castro in Havana, replied: "Let the dogs of the empire bark. That's their job. Ours is to achieve the true liberation of our people."
Enough political skill?
Aside from Chavez, many of the region's leftist leaders are quite moderate, insists Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy in Washington. The leftist presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay all were imprisoned by military regimes in the 1970s and '80s, Isacson said, and their emergence is a heartening sign of political maturity.
But some critics contend the new generation of leaders does not have the political skills to put the countries back on track.
In Peru, Alejandro Toledo, who was born into poverty, shined shoes when he was a child and later studied economics at Stanford, won the presidency in 2001 as a political outsider.
But his administration has been hobbled by scandals — including Toledo's admission that he fathered an illegitimate child and his decision to increase his monthly salary to $18,000 — and accusations of corruption against his wife, his lawyer and his vice president, who was forced to step down.
"Toledo promised so much, but he's done nothing," complains Mario Tapia, a construction worker in Lima.
Although political corruption long has plagued Latin America, analysts say that disclosures of dishonest dealings seem more common today. They explain that after years of censorship, the region's media are mostly free, and journalists pounce on the slightest missteps of government officials.
In Brazil, for example, reporters have tracked every twist and turn of a vote-buying scandal involving the ruling Workers Party. The accusations have stained the image of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union leader once hailed as a hero by the country's poor.
"Thanks to the free press, corruption is much more visible," says Carlos Ivan Degregori of the Institute of Peruvian Studies in Lima. Yet for many, he says, the disclosures only reinforce the sense that democracy has somehow gone awry.
Even the demilitarization of the region poses a downside.
Guerrilla wars have fizzled out everywhere except in Colombia, and demobilized rebels have entered politics. Armies have shrunk and wield far less political power. Yet many of the region's new security forces often have been unable or unwilling to enforce the law. As a result, murders, kidnappings and drug-related crimes have escalated, leaving many urban residents living in fear.
With 25.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, Latin America has the highest murder rate in the world.
In Colombia, the world's most murderous country with 61 homicides per 100,000 people, left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary forces intimidate voters and force candidates to drop out of races.
Beyond the bad news
Still, the U.N. report points to some signs of optimism for a more inclusive political climate.
Voters are electing more women and minorities. Last month, Michelle Bachelet won a runoff to become the first female president of Chile. In Bolivia, Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, won December's presidential election in the first round, unprecedented in South America's poorest country.
Most Latin Americans also draw a distinction between democracy as a system of governance and the poor performance of their leaders.
Rather than rejecting political freedoms, opposition movements are largely made of self-styled "dissatisfied democrats" who generally have declined to press for military solutions. The report attempts to explain why: "The deficits and pitfalls of democracy should not make us forget that we have left behind the fears of assassination, forced disappearances and torture."
"We must never lose sight of it, so that our children will know that freedom did not emerge spontaneously," it says.
Mexico City Bureau Chief Dudley Althaus and Lima, Peru, correspondent Lucien Chauvin contributed to this report.
chron.com
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