Despite the regularity of the electoral calendar that continues to represent the Latin American region year after year, the electoral environment in our countries continues to show worrying signs of deterioration. In addition to the chronic precariousness of electoral conditions, as is still happening in Nicaragua and Venezuela, there are other aspects that reveal the impoverishment of the democratic system beyond its formal aspects.
The democratic spirit of the candidates’ political offer, in most of the 2021 elections, shone through its absence. We refer to the proliferation of extremist candidacies, which showed all their ferocity and popular rise in the elections in Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Argentina and, more recently, in Chile. The center of the ideological spectrum and political moderation, principles highly appreciated in times of transition, is now experiencing its most bitter years in terms of electoral support.
In addition to the usual calculation of how many new presidents the preferred ideological camp has, 2021 has seen a major setback in terms of the quality of the dominant electoral offerings themselves, especially in terms of democratic governance. Examining these messages and after the electoral hangover, it is worth asking: will there be a respectful treatment of the opposition? Will there be spaces for dialogue for citizens who did not vote for them? Will these new leaders submit to the democratic controls of their mandate? Will there be respect for the human rights and civil liberties of your non-voters? Reasonable questions considering the abuses of power registered during the left and right turns, which alternated during these first two decades of the 21st century.
A special consideration should awaken the height that these extremisms are reaching, which should also be asked: what does this say about us as societies, so that the most voted are the most threatening? Should the region normalize these fighting between ultras? Certainly, since 2019, the region has been protesting and expressing its fatigue and disaffection with the political management of its rulers and the political class as a whole.
However, these generations have political systems that, although they can be improved in many ways, offer greater guarantees and possibilities than those that existed in the mid-20th century. And it is something that we are not doing right when plurality, the quality of debate public, democratic institutionality or respect for the adversary is precisely what is least characteristic of today’s electoral campaigns in the region.
New leaderships, new exclusions
Many candidacies, in addition to polarizing the electorate, continue to leave many undecided and disappointed on the margins of democracy. This generated a kind of recycling of those outraged by politics, who, after the socio-economic damage that the pandemic continues to leave, continue without achieving a minimally satisfactory representation in the available electoral offers. For many of them, there are practically no conciliatory proposals that allow a conciliatory and democratic reconstruction.
These are impoverished electoral schemes that can be summed up in the sad dichotomy: either we vote for an uncritical return to the past, or for the total destruction of the past. No ashes, no nuances, no spaces for each other. Everything or nothing. In this context, even in electoral systems where voting is mandatory, the repercussion of null votes is considerable, or if electoral legislation allows for the sustained registration of abstentionists. This electoral silence is also a political message in itself. This is a segment of the electorate that encompasses little media space, but which could constitute the social substrate of the new oppositions.
From pre- and post-election analyzes of all these months of incessant campaigning, few have noticed the increasingly notorious cleavage between democratic versus extremist candidacies in the region. It is an analytical component of second relevance for the more ideologically committed perspectives that are directly invisible to the agendas of the first hundred days of these leaders already installed in power.
Another worrying feature of this reality is the impoverishment of campaigns, as well as the fragility of these leaders’ character in the face of criticism. Speeches in which, with few phrases and clichés, the good and the bad are clearly defined. Patriots and enemies of the fatherland. Narratives in which, in addition to the acrobatic promises that defy all logic and attachment to possibilities, the opponents simply disappear from the political environment. Listening to them, they describe a kind of “promised land” without parliamentary controls, or uncomfortable questions from unaligned journalists, or discrepancies of any kind, or tight budgets.
All this fits into a political communication in which tweets, Instagram stories and hashtags replace, in some slogans, the almost extinct government programs, as well as press conferences. A message in which there are also not many proposals that are authentically inclusive and respectful of discrepancy. Approaches that, in addition to satisfying the aspirations of their supporters, in many cases constitute threats to those who are not their constituents. A regretfully transversal feature that ranges from conservatism to socialism in the region.
In 2022, the region will have elections in Costa Rica, Colombia and Brazil, political environments where tension is already visible, and in which, unfortunately, we will again see aggression and threats in campaign messages, instead of respectful democratic debate. .
Apparently, Democrats who are enemies of extremism and advocates of plurality will have to continue deciding between the “less bad” options. They will have to learn to live with the “lesser evil” among the candidacies, at least until the extremisms stop causing the furor they are raising today. We will continue to decide between AIDS or cancer, as Mario Vargas Llosa cataloged in that 2009 election for Peru. Few imagined that this terrible simile could help define the electoral options that so many Latin American countries end up having today.
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