Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in The Miami Herald
February 17, 2006

By the end of 2006, 12 countries in Latin America will have newly elected or re-elected presidents. Three have already settled their presidential elections: Honduras, where last November the opposition won; Chile, where the incumbent coalition’s Michele Bachelet became the first woman in the region to gain the presidency on her own right; and Bolivia, where Evo Morales coasted into office.

Election days in Costa Rica and Haiti did not immediately yield winners.

In Costa Rica, opinion polls badly misjudged voters’ preferences. Though Oscar Arias was the 20-point favorite over Ottón Solís, Costa Ricans cast their ballots to a virtual tie on February 5: 40.51 percent for Arias and 40.28 percent for Solís. A recount is slowly under way. The winner would take office with a bare-bones plurality that dictates prudence.

Arias — whose National Liberation Party (PLN) has alternated power with the incumbent Social Christian Unity Party — cannot govern as if he’d just won another election. Solís — whose maverick Citizen Action Party (PAC) would mean an end to the two-party monopoly on the presidency — cannot take for granted that he has, in fact, buried traditional politics or that his anti-CAFTA campaign would doom the free-trade agreement which Costa Rica has yet to ratify. Arias’ PLN captured 25 out of 57 seats in the legislature; Solís’ PAC has 17 seats.

On Feb. 7, Haiti held its presidential election. Two years ago, Jean-Bertrand Aristide left office under pressure by an armed uprising, the United States and France. The United Nations sent peacekeeping forces and an interim government has been in place since then. Exiled in South Africa, Aristide remains the most popular politician.

At first, René Préval — whose presidency (1996-2001) was marked by pragmatism — seemed to have won a majority in the field of 35 candidates. Though allied with Aristide and his Lavalas Party in the past, Préval drew his distance by declaring the U.N. forces should stay in Haiti for as long as they are necessary. Préval rallied the votes of the poor and the destitute.

With 90 percent of the ballots tabulated, electoral authorities claimed that Préval had fallen short of a first-round victory with 48.7 percent of the votes. His closest rival was running well behind with 11.8 percent. Some 8 percent of the ballots tallied were reported missing or destroyed which raised cries of fraud from Préval himself. Tens of thousands of Haitians took to the streets and retreated only after Préval called for order.

Fortunately, all concerned heeded Organization of American States Secretary General José Miguel Insulza’s sound advice to marshal ”good will and cooperation.” A political agreement was reached and René Préval is now president-elect. Haiti is sorely lacking in the public trust needed to have withstood a second-round election peacefully. In contrast, Costa Rican institutions — recent corruption scandals notwithstanding — still muster the allegiance of most citizens. Either candidate there will be accepted as legitimate.

Public trust is an imperative of democracy. Consolidated democracies gradually accumulated it by making politics more inclusive, distributing the benefits of growth and treating citizens equally under the law. Limited inclusion, widening inequalities and selective treatment by the judicial system constitute serious impediments to a culture of public trust in most Latin American democracies.

The citizens of Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela have yet to cast their ballots.

In Mexico and Nicaragua, electoral outcomes might be called into question. Ecuadoreans have often taken to the streets to force the resignation of their presidents. Will the one elected in November complete his term? Though the conservative Lourdes Flores is now comfortably ahead, many Peruvians harbor an undercurrent of anger that may yet propel one of her radical opponents.

Colombia and Brazil should not be problematic in terms of the citizenry accepting electoral results. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez has stacked the rules in his favor, the opposition is hopeless, and the common fabric is badly frayed.

Elections in Latin America are usually free and fair. Public trust, however, isn’t just an electoral function. Good governance and an inclusive economy must also nurture the citizenry if Latin American democracy is to consolidate. That’s the tall order that lies ahead.