“If there is such a thing as a good coup, this one is winning raves in the bazaars of Rawalpindi.” So read the first paragraph of a front-page story in The New York Times just a few days after the October 12 military coup in Pakistan, led by army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf, which brought an end to 11 years of corrupt and inefficient democratic rule. Recent events in Pakistan may seem irrelevant to Latin America. But in fact, there are some striking parallels.
Support for democracy in Pakistan grew thin as civilian rulers treated the state as their personal fiefdom and spent precious little time trying to improve the lives of ordinary Pakistani citizens. When Gen. Musharraf put the Prime Minister under house arrest and closed Congress, promising to bring an end to corruption and restore order and stability to daily life, Pakistanis cheered the move. Clearly, the perceived failings of democratic governance underlie popular support for the strongman solution Gen. Musharraf is offering his countrymen. In this sense, the erosion of support for democratic rule in Pakistan parallels what has happened in many Latin American countries in the aftermath of the “lost decade” of the 1980s.
The 1992 coup led by Peruvian strongman Alberto Fujimori, for example, played upon similar popular sentiment that regarded democratic institutions as corrupt and inefficient. Ordinary Peruvians longed for someone, anyone, to step in and restore order and bring some semblance of normality to their daily lives, which were under siege from economic chaos, widespread political violence and the corruption of state institutions like the police. Fujimori, not unlike Gen. Musharraf, presented himself as a strongman who was willing to overstep democratic legalities in order to put Peru’s house in order.
The “Fujicoup” was, like Gen. Musharraf’s, widely popular, precisely because it promised immediate solutions to Peru’s intractable problems. It allowed the executive to install a servile legislature and establish near-total control over the judiciary. Significant policy successes—taming hyperinflation, securing international funds, containing the powerful Shining Path guerrilla movement—gave Fujimori and his allies incredible power, allowing them to systematically gut democratic institutions and political checks and balances. The result has been the destruction of democracy even as its fa?ade remains in place.
A second case in point is the recent electoral victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. While some point to Chávez’s popularity among the poor and his spurning of neoliberal economics as evidence of his progressive credentials, in fact, Chávez too is emblematic of the “strongman solution” to seemingly insoluble problems of democratic governance. Chávez, who twice led coup attempts in 1992, achieved at the polls what he was unable to achieve then, and was elected president last December. His anti-corruption and anti-establishment message have won him broad popular support even as he has sought to centralize power in the hands of the executive. While his policies may yet prove to be progressive, the fact that democratic checks and balances are being systematically undermined should give pause to those who worry that socio-economic gains made at the expense of democratic institutions are likely to be short-lived. (Remember Peru’s Velasco?)
Even as a few countries, such as Chile and Argentina, seem to be consolidating democratic rule, the strongman solution appears to be gaining ground in the region. Witness the support of Ríos Montt’s Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG). Were Ríos Montt—one of Guatemala’s most notorious butchers—not prohibited from running by the Constitution, which forbids former dictators from becoming president, he would almost certainly walk away with the upcoming Guatemalan elections. And in Bolivia, a former dictator, Hugo Bánzer, is the sitting president.
Are societies such as Pakistan, Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia—even perhaps Venezuela—doomed to endure periods of authoritarian rule (even if dressed in electoral garb) ad infinitum? Is there a way out of the vicious circle of embedded praetorianism and weak, corrupt and ineffective democratic politics that might permit these societies to construct forms of governance that address the pressing needs of their poor majorities within the context of democratic rule?
Tellingly, the same Times article discussing the popularity of Pakistan’s coup also notes that the country’s wealth is being funneled into primarily two sources: the country’s military, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international creditors. In fact, two-thirds of Pakistan’s annual budget goes to the military and to foreign-debt service. This is not dissimilar to the situation in many Latin American countries, where the military retains significant power—over its own budget as well as a wide variety of social and political spheres—and where foreign debt continues to suck these countries’ resources dry. Perhaps those concerned with consolidating democratic governance in Latin America—and throughout the world—should focus as much zeal on these issues as they do on elections, which are a necessary, but certainly not sufficient, condition for the consolidation of democracy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo-Marie Burt is the editor of NACLA Report on the Americas.
