participatory systems

couple of questions

Thank you again for reading ‘Actions Create Consequences’. A number of you have sent responses recently which delights me, even when they are criticisms. Debate requires give and take. We all have views so can we support them with logical arguments? Our society functions best by exchanging ideas as we are not a dictatorship but a participatory system. There are few things I say as passionately as that we need this vital exchange of ideas to make us a better country. I fully understand this is a minuscule addition to that exchange but I am starting where I can—and each of you is increasing our thought process.

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One of eight presidential candidates died in Ecuador last night. This assassination a fortnight before the voting in this nation led to an emergency declaration. Fernando Villavicencio was an outspoken opponent of organised crime and corruption, both deeply pervasive problems in this nation of 18 million situated along the Equator. From its major port and largest city, Quayaquil, to the interior-situated capital Quito, Ecuadorans face various forms of corruption and organised crime driven by both internal and foreign players. They also inhabit a beautiful country.

Ecuador thus had a major burble in their election process. Will democracy, not always at its healthiest here, survive or will it be an excuse to scuttle the voices of the average Josefina and José on the street?

Vested interests Latin America and so much of the world prefer non-participatory means to determine governments. No country seems immune from this phenomenon Some countries are only beginning to face the undemocratic scourge but it’s always just below the surface in most countries. Why are we seeing it?

Political assassinations have plagued Latin America at times, particularly when organised crime elements are involved. Colombia saw multiple presidential candidates murdered in spectacular fashion in 1989 as the incumbent leadership worked with George H.W. Bush’s administration to eradicate cocaine cartels. It was far from successful but disrupted politics further than the corrupt infusion of cash. Villavicencio’s murder perhaps by comparable elements, or whomever is guilty, is another sad instance.

Military coups, as discussed last week in distant Myanmar, invalidate any sense of genuine ‘popular will’ by changing the rules of the game to favour either entrenched interests and/or splinted factions within those interests. Few regions have as long a history of golpes de estado as does Latin America, a trend begun with the Independence era when military officers arrogated to themselves decisions for what society needed rather than trusting civilians to decide following an electoral campaign.

Ecuador has had its share political trauma. Golpes de estado, usually driven by disgruntled military officers, dot the nation’s history. In recent years, nationalist politicians with decidedly leftist views further splintered the population along the Indigenous and mixed race lines. It’s hard to imagine this particular national election would have settled the future to everyone’s satisfaction.

Merely a decade ago, the nation’s leadership hued to supporting the Bolivarian Revolution built around leftist nationalist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías. Chávez Frías passed away a decade ago but it took several years for his movement to fizzle out because the arguments about foreign exploitation rang true to so many Ecuadorans. The politics included supporting national regulations against foreign exploitation but the government in Quito ultimately confronted the same problem so many non-democratic regimes confront: it was not attracting foreign investment or support because of the personalist nature of the governments. Personalist rule can be pernicious, autocratic, undesirable, and unpredictable. Business likes knowing what it is getting into. They can go elsewhere is things are too harshly skewed against them. Investors like to know the rules of the game before the kickoff.

This is not merely a Latin American or Myanmar challenge. Just this week CNN noted that Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel al-Sisi promised to make his nation wealthier but has failed miserably. Egypt today is struggling to address the acknowledged unemployment rate of 10% with fully a third of the 106 million population under the poverty line and more than 60% of the nation under the age of 30. These statistics fuel political upheaval for virtually any regime.

Al-Sisi, however, is a former general who claimed 97% of the vote in a 2014 presidential election. He governs the nation as a dictatorship, brooking no public opposition to his choices. At age 69, he shows no sign of leaving office soon as did another former Egyptian general-turned-president Hosni Mubarak who governed the Mediterranean nation between 1981 and 2011 before violent protests ultimately forced him out. The ‘elections’ of Egypt have always been thinly-veiled pretenses to allow a former general to maintain office in conjunction with supporters filling their personal bank accounts from state coffers.

What is the similarity between al-Sisi and the Boliverian nationalists of Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia? The private sector around the world avoids these states because business invests and operates in places with predictable and welcoming policies which will generate profits. Businesses are not controlled by governments in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Canada although governments are passing prohibitions against investment in China and Russia for specific reasons. The profit motive drives business.

In democracies, however, profits drive behaviour rather than government demands. The conditions of non-democratic, pernicious rulers without accountability is not worth the risk entailed for the majority of businesses considering these investment options. As a result, these non-democratic nations find attracting industry and foreign investment quite difficult. Over a sustained period, that makes economic growth increasingly difficult as internal parties take national resources for their personal use and nothing replenishes what the countries need. The downward spiral is virtually impossible to break without decades’ determination and a complete reform of the political process.

When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, many crowed that democracy was inevitable as Communism proved unsustainable. While golpes slowed for the following generation, they did not end. The use of non-participatory methods continued perpetuating the poor economic performance so common in the less developed economies. Exogenous shocks such as the 1998 and 2008 global financial crises only made things worse.

Ecuador is not unique in this sad tale as its assassination yesterday reminds us that too often violence can substitute for political exchange. No one should assume organised crime would have a valid role in a participatory system but it would seem the criminals assumed their actions acceptable within the overall political melieu. In 2016 and 2021, two British Members of Parliament, one from Labour and the other from the Tories, died violently. The murders were both classified as terrorism but the 2016 assassin of Jo Cox was a White Supremicist, an odious belief system making inroads into acceptability of political systems across the democratic world.

Where will this lead democracies? Where are states going without participatory norms in place?FIN