Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in Small State
Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Less than a month after his historic inauguration, Paraguay’s president, Fernando Lugo, is denouncing an alleged coup plot to remove him from office.

Last April, Lugo unseated the Colorado Party from the presidential palace, where it had ruled for six decades. But the party still holds a majority in parliament, and Lugo’s legislative agenda has apparently run up against stiff opposition during his first weeks in office.

Yesterday, Lugo said he had discovered a plot “contra la libertad de nuestro pueblo” (“against the freedom of our people”). Speaking at a press conference in the Palacio de Lopez, flanked by top generals, he suggested that his predecessor, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, may have been involved in the coup plot, “comportamiento incompatible con la aspiración de todo el pueblo paraguayo de vivir en democracia y en paz” (“behavior incompatible with the hopes of all of the Paraguayan people to live in democracy and peace”), the Paraguayan daily newspaper ABC Color reported. The mastermind of the alleged plot, Lugo assserted, was a former political rival, retired Gen. Lino Cesar Oviedo, the Associated Press reported.

Democracy has been flourishing in Latin America in the two decades since the Cold War ended, with all nations but Cuba now living under democratically elected regimes. But being elected president in this region does not guarantee a full term in office. According to Boston University Prof. David Scott Palmer, 15 elected leaders, in nine countries in this region, have not finished their term since 1995, most often forced out by violent street protests or “creative interpretations” of the constitution.

The opposite problem — elected leaders extending their terms beyond legal limits — also continues to plague Latin America. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has refused to rule out a third term in office, despite a clear constitutional prohibition. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won a third term in 2006 thanks to constitutional amendments that gave him an additional six years in office. The Dominican Republic’s president, Leonel Fernández, is also “toying with another reelection,” according to Marifeli Pérez-Stable, vice president for democratic governance at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., and a professor at Florida International University. That’s particularly dangerous in a country where “authoritarian legacies are stronger and institutions far weaker,” Pérez-Stable wrote in a recent op-ed in The Miami Herald.

In Bolivia, meanwhile, President Evo Morales — who was embraced by the Iranian dictatorship yesterday, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling their two nations “natural allies,” Bloomberg News reported – is attempting a constitutional reform that would jettison the provision that limits him to two nonconsecutive five-year terms.

In strongly worded editorials, The New York Times has criticized Morales and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa for “playing a very dangerous game, lunging for power in the name of social reform.” The Times also cautioned Uribe against seeking a third term, warning that “the region needs democracy, underpinned by strong institutions. It does not need more strongmen — however popular they may be or indispensable they may consider themselves.”

The U.S., however, is not offering a great example these days. Sure, President Bush, supported by only 31 percent of the U.S. electorate, is stepping aside without protest. But the popular mayor of New York City, Michael R. Bloomberg (see photo above), is mulling a legal reform that would keep him in charge of his 8.3 million subjects for a third consecutive four-year term, The New York Times has reported.