DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA?
By Ronald J. Bird

Ecuador, Friday, 20 October 2006. The first round of Ecuador’s national elections took place last Sunday with a plethora of candidates vying for the voters’ attention. There is a presidential system in Ecuador something akin to the one in the USA. A president and a vice-president are elected as a team by direct popular mandate under universal suffrage. There is no Electoral College to skewer the popular vote. But Ecuador is also not simply a plain-vanilla, two-party state: there are many parties. To ensure therefore that the new administration has a recognisable popular mandate, runoff elections are held until someone gets a clear majority.

The first electoral round culled two clear leaders for the presidential run-off race: Àlvaro Noboa, the candidate of the conservative right, and Dale Correa, the moderately left-wing contender. The former polled approximately 28% of the popular vote (roughly 5 million electors in a total population of about 13.5 million), Correa about 25%.

Neither candidate is off the political scale. That said, however, the candidates could hardly be more different in platform, geographical stronghold, personal background, personal wealth, political experience and even outward appearance. True to classical democratic theory (if not always in practice), the electorate in Ecuador will now have clear alternatives when they enter the polling booths next on 26 November.

On my right, representing the status quo, Noboa

Noboa is considered to be the richest man in Ecuador. His heartland is the Costa region, his money comes from huge plantations of bananas, his base is the huge harbour town of Guayaquil, a city of 2.6 million, as well as the smaller towns and villages along the Pacific Coast. Here he led the pack with some 37 percent of the popular vote. He represents the old-money oligarchy and is therefore pro-capitalism, pro-American, pro-Catholic and pro-status quo. He has run for president before and has been in governments, so he can be considered to be as corrupt as the rest of the Old Guard who have traditionally run the government for their own pockets including an important share of oil revenues.

Although in his late-50’s and married to a glamorous young blonde, Noboa himself is physically short and overweight with greased-back thinning hair, thick 60’s-style dark-rimmed spectacles, and a short bull neck. Not photogenic at all although he must have some sort of allure. He has the international outlook of the inherited-wealthy and has spent time in Europe.

Ask the locals why Noboa should have done so well and some of them answer it is because he is already so rich that he won’t need to steal from the poor. A “devil you know” approach?

And, on my left, the contender, Dale Correa

By contrast, Correa is in his late 40’s and strikingly good-looking. He either has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois he studied economics at Louvain in Belgium. The papers have reported both and maybe he did both. Certainly, his wife is Belgian; he has four young children, the youngest also photogenic like his dad. Correa went to the same private-high school as Noboa in Guayaquil but a few years later. No silver-spoon child, he and his siblings were raised by a widowed, single mother in Guayaquil; some consider him a social interloper for pulling himself up by the bootstraps and by Noboa and others, as a brash political ingénue. He served in a past government as Minister of Economics but resigned in protest and struck out on his own. His base is Quito, the capital city, a city of 1.6 million, along with some of the prosperous provinces in the north (e.g. Otavalo).

Correa sees himself as a progressive with an urge to put an end to the prevalent corruption in Ecuador (locals are, admittedly, more than a little cynical about anybody who says this), spread the oil wealth more widely and encourage small and medium-sized businesses to create employment in tourism and agriculture. He is opposed to TLC (trade liberalisation) through a free-trade agreement with the Norteamericanos. He would also close the small but touchy American air base at Manta. (It was granted at the time of American support during the financial crisis in 1999/2000 and is restricted only to use for seaborne drug interdiction/defoliant-spraying missions into Colombia. But the base is an affront to some Ecuadorian’s national pride. Beyond that, there is also a worry that the air base will drag the country out of its neutrality in the Colombian drug and rebel wars.)

In fact, Correa strongly favours free trade, but on a regional basis only. He has not only openly professed his ties to Chavez in Venezuela and the new direction that Chavez has taken, and he is not shy about his friendly attitude to Castro’s Cuba as well. His opponents beat with this and, despite his moderation and lack of histrionics, call him a wild man just like Chavez. He pumps hard for the apparently still very-much-alive quest for a Bolivarian Gran Colombia, i.e. the political union of Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

Bolivarian Gran Colombia

Newcomers to this part of South America will be surprised to hear that the idea gets any hearing at all. The concept of a Gran Colombia has been around since the days of emancipation from Spanish rule. It was born with the ideals of French Revolution and grew to maturity when Napoleon created a practical opportunity by conquering Spain and Portugal. For all intents and purposes dead, the idea is apparently still revered in patriotic Ecuadorian song and story. Back in the second quarter of the 19th Century it was frustrated by local conservative economic and religious interests who feared an end to their oligarchy. But the fear and resentment of American hegemony in Latin America as well as the stifling influence of Latin America’s traditional rulers has either kept the idea alive or fanned it back into life. Some of the modern Gran Colombian candidate-countries have rich petroleum resources (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia) and can use it to peddle their influence (Chavez in particular). The proponents tend to be left-wing/progressive and eager to usher in a new era. (Already Bolivia has a left-wing indigenas president (Morales); Venezuela has Chavez. Peru has recently got rid of Fujimori, a dictatorial conservative, in favour of a more middle-of-the-road president, Colombia is governed by Uribe, a centrist.)

Free Trade

There is already vestigial regional-free trade through, on the one hand, MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela; Bolivia is joining; Ecuador, Peru are only Associate Members at present; Brazil is striving for a political and economic leadership role in South America in competition with Venezuela and the USA) and, on the other hand, the early stages of the American-sponsored FTAA (Free Trade for the Americas) as well as Central American Free Trade (CAFTA). MERCOSUR has been around for a while. But, both FTAA and CAFTA now seem stalled. The moderate governments of many poorer Central and South American countries were eager to find access in the First World for their agricultural and, in the case of Brazil and Argentina, for example, for their industrial products as well. The Americans were eager to gain more muscle for their “leadership” in Latin America.

But, although the treaties have been signed by some countries, most have failed to ratify them. As far as Ecuador is concerned, Washington has anyhow put off indefinitely any free-trade discussions with Ecuador because of what the USA sees as the nationalisation of Occidental Oil’s operations in Ecuador. Without going into detail, Ecuador wants the very one-sided royalties deal with “Oxi” renegotiated in light of the current high price of crude. They also want compensation for significant environmental damage in the Oriente’s jungles and much stricter eco rules going forward. Oxi has been unresponsive, Quito took over their ops though not their ownership, then sat back and waited for talks to begin. But, Oxi, not surprisingly, clearly has lines to the Bush White House. Washington is just ignoring Quito. No doubt they are also waiting for the election results.

The Liavathon distracted

In another sense, however, and quite aside from local oil issues in South America, the United States has allowed itself to become completely absorbed by the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel). Almost as importantly, its foreign policy has now become almost completely militarised; they don’t even talk the language of trade. Local voters and governments have become more afraid of America’s now naked and expansionist imperialism. Regardless of party affiliation, nobody here seriously expects the next U.S. administration to talk any other talk or walk any other walk. The genie is out of the bottle.

Moreover, since it was the USA which torpedoed the WTO’s Doha Round of trade liberalisation last summer by its refusal to reduce the huge subsidies to its agri-business, it appears that the Bush Government is no believer in the efficacy of friendly and unfettered trade as a basis for international relations.

Washington might not like it, but American distractions and different wave-lengths may have opened the door wider for those who resent American domination. Latin America’s experience with neo-liberal globalisation has anyway not been entirely happy. Becoming more vocal and gaining in impact, the ideological opponents are those favouring: more government involvement in economic development; more national self-determination; more progressive, just and widespread social security, health care, education and housing; and a more equitable distribution of wealth. If this resembles the “Social Contract” that Americans and Europeans created over the 100 years until about the time of the Vietnam War, the only surprise is the speed with which American, Canadians and Europeans are trying to jettison it.

Stratified Ecuador

Ecuador is a rich country with many poor people. At the top is a small coterie of extremely wealthy land-owning plutocrats who control the power, move their money out of the country in a flash if they feel threatened and have excellent access to Washington. There is no question about how these people will vote in the runoff election at the end of next month. They might have few actual votes, but their money provides them with lots of influence (campaign contributions, TV time, payoffs, etc.). In any society like Ecuador’s, there are also the “Tory working-class” or their equivalents in a peasant society. Significant numbers of even impoverished people will tend to vote for their social betters and hope their own precarious economic situation will not get any worse.

There is also a relatively small but savvy and well-educated middle class in Ecuador. Such people live from current income rather than (largely inherited) wealth. But they were nearly wiped out by the financial crisis five or six years ago. The only mobility these people can exhibit is geographical: many individuals left for the USA or Europe when inflation went out of sight and the banking system went down taking middle-class savings and small-business loans with it. The overseas boltholes in the USA/Canada and the EU have largely now been closed (leaving only expensive and risky illegal means). At home, things are perhaps going better for the moment. But, as a voting group, they are wary and could go either way in the runoff election, small business people, shopkeepers and tradesmen perhaps throwing their weight behind Noboa of the right, with teachers, civil servants, students, etc. turning to Correa on the left.

A Classic Democratic Campaign

In classical democratic theory, of course, voters should always be offered clear choices. The theory is honoured more in its absence in countries like the USA or, for that matter, in most of Europe too. Candidates there all tend to be well-groomed, well-mannered, look-alike centrists who are becoming more cheese-paring conservative by the year.

By contrast, Ecuador’s run-off system this time round has produced a clear choice between a conservative, don’t-rock-the-boat, elect-your-social/economic betters, pro-capitalism and pro-American oligarch versus a youthful, modern and dynamic, time-to-try-something-new, progressive and experimental candidate who apparently is not afraid to strike out in new paths of independence. Indeed, he has shown himself even willing to grasp the third rail of Latin American politics (i.e. Cuba and Venezuela).

Much will depend now upon how the remaining roughly half of the voters will vote next month. The other four main candidates still obviously have a role to play as power-brokers. They are mostly centrists – i.e. Christian Democrats, Christian Socialists.

The Indigenas Wild card

One wild card is the indigenous vote. Noboa and Correa each received about a third to two-fifths of the popular vote in “their” metropolitan areas. The third-strongest candidate, though below twenty percent of the overall popular vote nationally, was …… Gutierrez. He may have “swept” the Oriente, but this is meaningless politically because, although the jungle is the largest geographical portion of Ecuador and rich in oil, it is very sparsely settled. More significantly, however, he was a strong runner-up in the Serrano and made a decent showing along the Costa. He himself is an indigena; certainly, the native people backed him strongly. He is not an internationalist and wants to protect the small farmers from an avalanche of American (or European) subsidised agricultural products as has happened in free-trade Mexico, for example. He wants more justice for the native people (they represent about …% of the population and are increasingly feeling their political mettle).

Clearly, Correa and Noboa will be soliciting Guterriez’s help to swing the indigenas vote. Rightist Noboa has said he is opposed to free trade in agriculture; this might endear him to the small farmers and since bananas enter the USA with little or no duties he himself has no great personal incentive to push for TLC in foods. But he is unlikely to find it in his heart or amongst his backers to find the will to shake up the class and caste barriers in Ecuador that work to keep the native people poor and downtrodden. Correa touts free trade though, of course, not with the USA and only along regional lines. On the other hand, he is certainly progressive enough to bring native rights into his platform. How the centrist presidential also-rans will decide will likely also depend upon the personal deals they cut for themselves with either Noboa or Correa.

The Home Stretch

The candidates will now perhaps have to choose their words more carefully. Already the battle has changed from policies and platforms and become more characterised by personal invective. Noboa accuses Correa of being an ally and friend of those heathen revolutionaries and shit-disturbers, Castro and Chavez. The usual scare tactics. And anyway, he adds, Correa is too green and needs to get a little more experience under his Gucci belt. Correa underlines his independence from Big Brother in Washington and his desire to kick-start the economy. He reminds one that he is a self-made man, not a money-aristocrat. And he’s certainly no crypto-toady or stalking horse for the Americans, he says, implying that Noboa is.

While an international team of Latin Americans acted as independent observers of the first vote, labelling it as fair and democratic, with over a month to go the parties are starting to get tense. The tone has degenerated somewhat and there are accusations of voting irregularities. The candidates will be appearing on television again. Out in the boondocks, no doubt, they will be focussing on the marginal constituencies while also negotiating in smoke-filled rooms with runner-up candidates to collect the now uncommitted remaining half of the voters. Expect to see the centrist candidates as senior ministers in any new government.

Clearly Ecuador has some big decisions to make in the next few weeks. Perhaps any new government will be corrupted by the lolly once they are in power or frustrated by the realities of governing. For the moment however, the good news is that democracy in the form of general elections appears to be alive and well in Ecuador.