The landlocked, Southern Cone country is experiencing the same, if not worse, corruption scandals, social protests, approaching economic stagnation, and rising levels of violence widely reported on as just about every country of Latin America and the Caribbean. So why isn’t anyone paying attention?
Was the death of South American rock idol Gustavo Cerati yet another example of Venezuela’s interminable collapse?
Part one of a two-part series, Doctor Perez here looks at the events leading up to the September 6 elections, their implications for the second-round presidential elections and the potential for long-term institutional reform (difficult). The second post will examine the political situation boiling in Guatemala’s neighbors, Honduras and El Salvador.
As the tragicomedy of the 2015-2016 election season plays out, falsehoods, hyperbole and mean-spirited attacks among contenders will proliferate. The issue of trade (along with illegal immigration) will be the proverbial whipping boy in this contest. While the contenders choose not to be fully informed of the facts, there is no excuse for individual citizens not to be.
Brazil’s president is facing protests from both the left and the right, with an approval rating of only 8 percent. The protests are calling for impeachment based on charges of rampant corruption, but politically that isn’t likely to happen. Why? Impeachment requires a two-thirds majority vote from both Houses: unlikely to happen when politicians from all of the major parties are facing corruption charges themselves.
How tolerant are citizens across the Americas of LGBT political rights and marriage equality? While support for political rights is higher than support for the rights of LGBT couples to legally wed, the results track largely with levels of economic development in the region, with two notable exceptions.
Los resultados de las elecciones primarias, abiertas, simultáneas y obligatorias (PASO) que se realizaron el 9 de agosto en la Argentina, dejaron al candidato único del oficialismo, Daniel Scioli, unos puntos por debajo de las aspiraciones de triunfar luego en la primera vuelta del próximo 25 de octubre. En dos meses la política argentina puede producir muchas novedades. Pero lo que está claro es que el escenario para la primera vuelta presidencial en este momento está abierto.
Venezuelans are having children at higher rates than their counterparts in other countries, despite the economic crisis (aided, perhaps in part, by the condom shortage). The resulting non-working, dependent population will make it increasingly difficult for the government to sustain its high levels of redistribution, even if oil prices improve. Ultimately, demographics may be what doom the Bolivarian revolution.
August marks the beginning in a decisive stage in Venezuela’s electoral process and, quite likely, the future of elections in the polarized country. Three scenarios seem the most likely, with only one of them remotely positive for the country’s vitiated democracy.
Those who stoke fear every time an extra-hemispheric rival to the U.S. gains influence in the Western Hemisphere are missing the real challenges. While these “BackYardistas” exercise their Cold War reflexes over growing Chinese, Russian and Iranian influence in Latin America, the broader challenge is how those powers are remaking the global liberal order.
