Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in The Miami Herald
January 15, 2009

In 2009, Latin America’s electoral calendar speeds up. Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Uruguay hold presidential elections. In Argentina, Mexico and El Salvador, citizens cast ballots in legislative contests. Referendums are set to take place in Bolivia and Venezuela. I’ll highlight a first set here, a second in the Jan. 29 column.

• El Salvador: On March 15, Salvadorans elect their next president. In mid-December, Mauricio Funes — the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) candidate — held a 10-to-15 point advantage over Rodrigo Avila from the ruling Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA). Funes, a 50-year-old civilian and social democrat, couldn’t be more different from Schafik Handal (1930-2006), the FMLN’s 2004 candidate, once guerrilla leader and mostly unreconstructed communist.

Should Funes win, there would be no downplaying his victory. ARENA would end two decades in power. The FMLN would have to prove its mettle governing. El Salvador would inaugurate an opposition president, the ultimate test in young democracies. If the FMLN bests ARENA in Sunday’s legislative elections as polls indicate, it would be a good omen for Funes.

• Uruguay: Frente Amplio (FA) may not retain the presidency after all. In 2004, amid an economic debacle, Tabaré Vázquez defeated the traditional parties. As the economy recovered, Vázquez’s popularity soared as did the FA’s likelihood of victory this October. Now the tables have turned somewhat as the economy slowed and the president’s approval has fallen below 50 percent for the first time. What’s more, the FA is split over its next presidential standard bearer. The party congress backed a more leftist candidate over Vázquez’s centrist choice. On June 28, the FA rank-and-file will decide in a primary.

• Chile: On Dec. 11, Chileans vote in the next presidential election, though the second round won’t be until January 2010. After nearly two decades at the helm, the ruling, center-left Concertación may well lose. The center-right Alliance for Chile defeated the Concertación in last October’s municipal elections by two percentage points. Alliance presidential candidate Sebastián Piñera reacted with glee: “For the first time since we won democracy, the Alliance beat the Concertación.”

Right now, Piñera — who voted against Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite and leads the center-right National Renewal within the Alliance – is in an enviable position. Former president and Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, the most likely Concertación candidate, is not particularly strong. By retaining disgruntled Christian Democrats, Frei could pull it off. At the same time, a majority may decide it’s time to give the opposition a chance to govern.

The wild card, however, could be a possible change in voter registration before the presidential election. In Chile, voting is obligatory for registered voters, though registration itself is voluntary. The Concertación and the Alliance appear to be on the cusp of agreeing on automatic registration, which might mean up to 3.8 million new voters. For different reasons, each believes itself to be the primary beneficiary of expanding the electorate.

A wise dictum says: ”Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” After a long stretch, ARENA and the Concertación may soon be told by Salvadorans and Chileans to learn the opposition’s ropes. In Chile, an Alliance victory would mostly be par for the course. A Piñera presidency wouldn’t fundamentally differ from the Concertación’s four governments. A Piñera win would, nonetheless, bring to power the more conservative Independent Democratic Union where pro-Pinochet sentiment still lingers.

Democratic roots

A loss would sting, but the Concertación would naturally assume its new charge. ARENA is a question mark in the sense that it has never been defeated, either at the polls or in the horrific civil war of the 1980s. El Salvador, moroever, lacks Chile’s institutional and democratic roots.

If Funes wins, ARENA should still take some solace. Whether it likes it or not, the FMLN wouldn’t be able to stray far from the course set by ARENA in the past two decades.

If the FA nominates the more leftist candidate, the traditional parties may return to power in Uruguay. That wouldn’t be especially tragic either but it’d be sad that the Frente Amplio didn’t learn the basic lesson that elections are won at the center.