The Economist: Weak Latin American Presidents as Proxies for Powerful Predecessors

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Juan Manuel Santos, Dilma Rousseff, Lenin Moreno, Iván Duque, Alberto Fernández and now Luis Arce, the new president of Bolivia, are what a recent Economist article calls “proxy presidents”, leaders who came to power thanks to the patronage of stronger leaders who “made” them president.

The number of cases in Latin America is now significant and is the result of two factors: on the one hand, the boom of raw materials and economic growth in the first part of the 21st century, which favored the emergence and consolidation of strong populist leaderships, and on the other, the legal limits to the number of mandates, which they did not want or could not breach, choosing then to sponsor their own candidate, a substitute.

The article begins with the most recent case, Luis Arce, the Bolivian president, who has already said that Evo Morales has no function in his new government. However, The Economist indulges in debate. It mentions that on the day Arce took office, Morales arrived from Argentina and was welcomed by “the masses who adore him”.

And although it states that Arce designated only one Minister (the Minister of Defense) linked to Morales in his cabinet, it recalls that the latter governed for 13 years as “an increasingly authoritarian socialist” and that, according to many Bolivians, in a short time he will be “breathing down the new president’s neck”.

Another recent case, says the magazine, is that of Alberto Fernández, who in 2019 accepted an agreement with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – to whom he is not related, the article clarifies – to win the presidential election with her as a candidate for vice-president. And the next may be Ecuador: Rafael Correa, the country’s strong man between 2007 and 2017, wants to return to power through a “substitute”, Andrés Arauz.

Men’s Gambit, Queen’s Gambit

The problem is that sometimes the “gambit” fails to turn out the way it was expected. Lenin Moreno, the current president of Ecuador, was Correa’s vice-president and had his backing, but when he took office he became a harsh critic of his former boss and during his government, Correa, who lives in Belgium, was convicted “in absentia” for corruption.

Similarly, albeit not identically, was the case of Álvaro Uribe, who after two terms as Colombia’s strongman supported the candidacy of his former Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, who became his main enemy.

In Brazil, Lula da Silva elected Dilma Rousseff to “keep the presidential chair warm for him”, awaiting his third term, but then Dilma made a move and decided to seek reelection, and won, but was subsequently ousted by a political trial for non-compliance with fiscal responsibility laws.

The problem may be even worse if the candidate or the substitute candidate accepts the rules of the strong man or lady, because they become a weak president, while their patron exercises power with no responsibility.

For The Economist, these are the cases of Colombia, with Iván Duque, and Argentina, with Alberto Fernández.

Duque has been in office for 26 months and has yet to make his mark. While Álvaro Uribe, who “made” him president, is seeking to abolish a special tribunal to investigate war crimes that Santos included in a “Peace Agreement” with the Colombian guerrillas, Duque should advocate the implementation of that same agreement before the United Nations.

Colombia’s security has deteriorated, its current and former Ministers of Defense are Uribe’s men, and Uribe’s people campaigned for Donald Trump in Florida, U.S.A., but it will be Duque who must deal with Joseph Biden, who defeated Trump.

Alberto Fernández is a politician with more substance than Duque, the magazine says, but he is having trouble projecting his authority. His vice-president, described in the article as a “leftist populist,” controls the Buenos Aires metropolitan area and he, with the longest quarantine in the world, only slowed rather than reduced the spread of the coronavirus.

These are signs of a “growing political weakness,” says the article, which also points out that the government has restructured its debt with bondholders, but has not capitalized on that achievement by launching a credible economic plan, perhaps – the article speculates – because of the difficulty in reaching an agreement with its vice-president.

Furthermore, the article says, the Argentine president “is paying a high political price for a judicial reform plan that seems designed to save his vice-president from corruption charges.”

The Fernández’s case is but one example of the problem of substitute presidencies, reflects The Economist: “The interests of their sponsors are not necessarily the same as those of the country. Uribe seems to be pursuing a personal vendetta and wants to install another substitute presidency in 2022 and continue to polarize Colombian politics. Correa also wants revenge and, like Cristina Fernández, wants to control the judicial system.”

The recently inaugurated Arce, who was Evo Morales’ Minister of Finance, has said that the latter “will not change”. So while the new Bolivian president has a cabinet with only one Minister close to his ex-boss, he will soon have to decide “whether to impose his authority or lose it”.

Source: infobae