Dante Perez
+ FollowDrugs Cartels and Elections in Latin America
As Latin American leaders gathered recently to address obstacles to democratic progress in the region, proposed revisions to the region’s international mandates could tackle its most threatening challenge: organized crime influencing elections though finance or coercion.
During the Second Latin America Democracy Forum in Mexico City, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza discussed the state of democratic institutions in the region. He spoke about the democracy-promoting role of the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC), which formalized a regional commitment to democracy and led to the suspension of Cuba from the OAS in 1962 by proclaiming that the peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy, and governments in the region have an obligation to protect this representative form of government.
Critics of the document however, have noted that while the Democratic Charter has been invoked to condemn coups d’état ousting democratically elected leaders, it has never been used to denounce democratically elected leaders who effectively dismantle democratic institutions once in office. Secretary Insulza has recognized this challenge, but believes it can be addressed without changing the Charter’s 2001 foundational text by broadening the scope of the Charter’s applicability.
Currently, Article 19 of the Charter states that,
[...] an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime that seriously impairs the democratic order in a member state, constitutes, while it persists, an insurmountable obstacle to its government’s participation in sessions of the General Assembly, the Meeting of Consultation, the Councils of the Organization, the specialized conferences, the commissions, working groups, and other bodies of the Organization.
Secretary Insulza has proposed that the meaning of “a serious impairment to the democratic order” could be expanded beyond the ousting of democratically elected officials and include cases of human rights violations. He also suggested the Democratic Charter should be enhanced so that it applies to cases of electoral fraud, and discussed the threat of organized crime influencing electoral and post-electoral processes.
Given recent developments, it appears this threat has already materialized in Mexico, the stage for an ongoing fight against drug cartels, which now seek to use their profits, as well as violent means, to affect political outcomes.
On November 2 in the southwest state of Michoacan, La Piedad Mayor Ricardo Guzman Romero was assassinated during a campaign event. Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared that Guzman’s killing, preceded by a notice in a local newspaper threatening anyone who voted for Guzman, is “palpable proof” that drug cartels are seeking to influence the electoral process.
Later that month, Mexican federal prosecutors began an investigation of a recorded phone conversation where a purported drug lord threatens the residents in a different city in Michoacan, demanding that they vote for his preferred candidate. The recorded voice, attributed to La Familia cartel leader Horacio Morales Baca, also claims a rival cartel financed the campaign of another party. Both of the political parties identified in the recording deny any complicity with drug cartels.
During his fifth official national address, President Calderon recognized that the intervention of organized crime in electoral processes represents a clear threat to democracy. He characterized the phenomenon as a new and worrisome fact. However, it is unclear how Mexico, or the rest of Latin America, will face such a challenge.
While the parties convening the Democracy Forum included Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the IFE’s own President Leonardo Valdes Zurita declared, somewhat fatalistically, that “it is impossible to separate money from politics,” a comment which undermines the basic premise of the Forum and implies futility in strengthening the Democratic Charter.
He then made the remark however, that “those who believe and live for democracy wish a society governed by the majorities and not by the power of money.”
At best, these are simply incongruent remarks taken out of context in the OAS press release. At worst, the Forum witnessed a Freudian slip which reveals Mr. Zurita’s belief that it is “impossible to [...] wish [for] a society governed by the majorities and not by the power of money.” Perhaps Mr. Zurita is neither cynical, nor incoherent. Perhaps he merely recognizes the enormous challenge facing Mexico and Latin America more broadly.
Currently, the IFE does not have an updated map that allows the agency to identify the sections or districts in the country that have fallen victim to drug-trafficking influence in their elections. A study commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme, suggests that such a lack of information increases the risk of enabling candidates with ties to drug cartels to run for office. Such problems plague not only Mexico, but also other countries throughout the region.
As the OAS Secretary General stated, the challenges to the Democratic Charter are not found in its contents but rather its implementation. Concretely, Latin America needs generally, what Mr. Zurita specified for Mexico: “more and more, for citizens to be informed and participate in public affairs, and demand accountability from those who have political power. We need a commitment to transparency and equality among all actors and political parties, citizens and authorities.”
If realized, such a vision would not only strengthen the electoral procedures of democracy which cartels want to participate in, but it would strengthen the substantive social and civil rights which those same cartels are threatening.
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