Ranting about Latin American elections
BBC:
The average voter wants to know which candidate will put food on their table, keep them from getting mugged and provide a better future for them and their children. The vast majority of voters don't care whether they're voting for the left, right, center or off the spectrum. While no voter wants a puppet for a president, they also care very little about which side of the ideological line their president will line fall on the international stage.
If this was about a left-right divide, you couldn't explain why both Colombian President Uribe and Bogota Mayor Garzon have such high approval ratings and high crossover appeal in spite of being on the exact opposite sides of the political spectrum. You couldn't explain how a socialist is about to win the Chilean election with the backing of pro-free market business groups. You couldn't explain how Chavez remains popular even as a vast majority of Venezuelans reject socialism as an ideology. You couldn't explain how the Aleman and Ortega wings allied in Nicaragua or why Saca remains popular in El Salvador even as the right's share of the vote continues to decline.
I know very well that journalists want a framework to simplify and explain their stories and this left-right battle appears on the surface to fit their needs. But even as they discuss the US-Venezuela divide, they fail to see other regional presidents from both the left and the right cooperate on a number of issues. While they talk about whether the "leftists" will be more like Chavez or Lula, each politician on the left and right responds more to their local electorate than to some external model. Kirchner follows a different path, as do Bachelet, Lewites and AMLO.
The elections in Latin America will create changes with a regional impact over the next 12-18 months, but each of these elections is local. Each has its own issues and politicians and is almost completely uninfluenced by the regional view. To argue that Mexico's or Peru's election will hinge on the US-Venezuela bickering is the same as believing France rejected the EU constitution because Bush was reelected.
Politics is local and politics is immediate. Local economics, local security and local hope are the issues on each ballot, not some sweeping question of international left vs. international right. Understand that, and you'll understand the upcoming elections.
Twelve presidential elections are due to take place in Latin America between November 2005 and the end of 2006. They include seven of the region's eight most populous countries: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Ecuador.Wrong. The key issue for the BBC and other media is the "left-wing trend" in politics. That's not what Latin America cares about.
The key issue is whether the recent left-wing trend in the region will continue, and if so, what will be the likely nature of any new left-leaning government.
The average voter wants to know which candidate will put food on their table, keep them from getting mugged and provide a better future for them and their children. The vast majority of voters don't care whether they're voting for the left, right, center or off the spectrum. While no voter wants a puppet for a president, they also care very little about which side of the ideological line their president will line fall on the international stage.
If this was about a left-right divide, you couldn't explain why both Colombian President Uribe and Bogota Mayor Garzon have such high approval ratings and high crossover appeal in spite of being on the exact opposite sides of the political spectrum. You couldn't explain how a socialist is about to win the Chilean election with the backing of pro-free market business groups. You couldn't explain how Chavez remains popular even as a vast majority of Venezuelans reject socialism as an ideology. You couldn't explain how the Aleman and Ortega wings allied in Nicaragua or why Saca remains popular in El Salvador even as the right's share of the vote continues to decline.
I know very well that journalists want a framework to simplify and explain their stories and this left-right battle appears on the surface to fit their needs. But even as they discuss the US-Venezuela divide, they fail to see other regional presidents from both the left and the right cooperate on a number of issues. While they talk about whether the "leftists" will be more like Chavez or Lula, each politician on the left and right responds more to their local electorate than to some external model. Kirchner follows a different path, as do Bachelet, Lewites and AMLO.
The elections in Latin America will create changes with a regional impact over the next 12-18 months, but each of these elections is local. Each has its own issues and politicians and is almost completely uninfluenced by the regional view. To argue that Mexico's or Peru's election will hinge on the US-Venezuela bickering is the same as believing France rejected the EU constitution because Bush was reelected.
Politics is local and politics is immediate. Local economics, local security and local hope are the issues on each ballot, not some sweeping question of international left vs. international right. Understand that, and you'll understand the upcoming elections.
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