One thing is clear about the coup d’état in Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya was illegally overthrown by the Honduran Congress and military, backed by elements within the business class and landowning oligarchy. It matters not whether one believes the argument that the president himself might have been culpable in provoking his removal from office, in that by seeking to extend his term in office, he would effectively have been carrying out a coup against the constitution. All the countries of the hemisphere, including Caricom, along with the Organization of American States, the European Union and the United Nations, have correctly condemned the upheaval of the constitutional order in Honduras.
Now, as attempts are being made to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis, tensions are mounting within that country and in the Central American region, even as the debate on the nature of democracy heats up across the Americas.
In Nicaragua, on the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution last Sunday, President Daniel Ortega called for constitutional changes, which would extend the term limit of the president and allow him to stand for re-election. Nicaraguan law does not allow for consecutive terms or more than two terms in all. This is Mr Ortega’s second term, which will come to an end in 2011. It is now seemingly his intention to seek a public referendum on the matter, much as President Hugo Chávez did in Venezuela in February this year. Unsurprisingly, the Nicaraguan opposition is not in favour of such a move.
Observers are drawing parallels with Mr Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian’ model of ‘participatory democracy,’ whereby the people are allowed more direct involvement in the political process and the leader uses popular referendums as a decision-making tool for enacting legislation instead of relying on elected parliamentary representatives. It is a contentious model, for thus does populist authoritarianism seek legitimacy, even as constitutional checks and balances are circumvented.
There is no doubt, however, that leaders such as Mr Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales enjoy huge popularity among the poor and traditionally marginalized sectors of their countries. And even though their critics charge that their plans to seek indefinite re-election are anti-democratic, their supporters counter that all that they are doing is seeking to strengthen the role of the state to protect the interests of the defenceless and establish new models of public property, equity, social justice and indigenous rights, in the face of the vested interests of Latin America’s oligarchies.
To a certain extent, all this is justified and necessary. However, it would seem that the Chávez model is to create an egalitarian system at the cost of the institutions that guarantee democracy and individual liberties. On the other hand, the traditional liberal model of democracy has tended to favour individual rights, particularly the sanctity of private property, at the cost of social and economic equality. This paradox is at the crux of the current debate on democratic governance in Latin America.
Can the two models be reconciled? President Lula da Silva seems to have made some progress in this respect in Brazil, through fiscal reforms which simultaneously promote economic growth and more equitable distribution of wealth, balancing institutional stability with social justice and the need to grow the middle class.
But Mr Chávez’s ‘twenty-first century socialism’ is more radical. Indeed, he seems to have taken aim at the very institutions that guarantee democracy, but which he feels have denied the masses their due, at the same time that he is seeking to seize private property in the name of the state. It is an approach to social and economic re-engineering fraught with all sorts of dangers and he may well have failed in his experiment by now, had he not had Venezuela’s massive oil wealth at his disposal.
In the case of Honduras, expelling the elected president was a clear violation of the constitutional order. Such reactionary behaviour has only served to help Mr Chávez gain legitimacy in the region and strengthen his argument against the credibility of existing democratic institutions and the grip entrenched elites have on them in Latin America. That is not to say, however, that the subversion or manipulation of existing judicial, legislative and executive institutions by Mr Chávez and his disciples should be condoned in any way. The separation of powers, even if imperfect, is perhaps the most effective barrier against creeping authoritarianism and dictatorship, and ultimately the strongest guarantee of the rights of the people.
A balance has to be found. The liberal, representative model of democracy has to find a way to give the masses a bigger voice and a feeling of true inclusion. On the other hand, if the masses are not to become putty in the hands of authoritarian leaders, they need to be shown that democracy can offer them social justice, basic rights, equal protection under the law and a more equitable distribution of income. And this can only be done if the basic institutions of democratic governance are reformed and strengthened, not only to protect the poor, but to provide them with the instruments of legal and economic empowerment necessary to feel more secure as citizens, and not prey to exploitation by elites and demagogues alike.
