Alan Crawford, Bloomberg News
BERLIN
EnergiesNet.com 09 2022
After what looked like the dawning of a new era, Latin America’s “pink tide” suddenly appears to have reached its limits.
During a particularly brutal pandemic, with scant government resources to help people and businesses survive the economic collapse, voters began turning to the left.
Radical leaders were elected in Peru, Chile and most recently Colombia on pledges to tackle glaring inequalities and address climate change.
The high water mark of change may have arrived.
A planned new constitution for Chile to deliver a more progressive and inclusive legal framework is facing defeat in a referendum this weekend. That would be a significant blow for Gabriel Boric, who made a rewrite of the Augusto Pinochet-era charter a priority when he came to office as Chile’s youngest-ever president.
In Peru, Pedro Castillo’s government stumbles from crisis to crisis, with barely a week going by without him losing a cabinet minister to some scandal.
Gustavo Petro has only just been sworn in as Colombia’s first leftist leader and already the challenges look daunting.
An attempt on the life of Argentina’s leftist vice president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, yesterday came at a time when the country is bitterly polarized after years of economic crisis and political infighting.
True, polls suggest that former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is on course to beat far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, to the Brazilian presidency next month. But whatever your views of Bolsonaro, the return of a 76-year-old former jail inmate is hardly indicative of a healthy democracy.
Source: DataFolha, Xp/Ipespe and PoderData
It’s not that the right is in any better shape.
Rather, it points to increased political volatility stemming from the pandemic and years of social neglect now being compounded by surging consumer costs.
That’s a lesson governments elsewhere might want to take on board.
bloomberg.com 09 02 2022
