All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell. Rebellion on the farm
Almost a decade ago, in January 2014, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, created in Mexico in 2010 but forged by the Bolivarian axis, held its second summit in Havana. Raúl Castro was the pro tempore president.
The final document, without embarrassment on the part of those present, made a firm appeal “strengthen our democracies and human rights for all”. That document bore the signatures of 29 regional leaders, including the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro, the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, the Argentine Cristina Kirchner, the Ecuadorian Rafael Correa, the Bolivian Evo Morales and of course the Cubans.
It is possible to suppose that the levity of proclaiming those crucial principles of the system while blatantly ignoring them in practice has vanished condemning that body to irrelevance.
Now they’re trying to recast it in an effort that doesn’t look set to fix it gap between facts and words. Silence is usually loud and the 7th CELAC summit on Tuesday next week in Buenos Aires could confirm this idea.
Lula da Silva will be the figure of greater importance in that meeting. This is for various and objective reasons. He was crowned president for the third time in the economy of the second hemisphere, and he expresses his intention – it would be necessary to see if there are any possibilities – to restore order to a region which is experiencing a phase of unprecedented institutional chaoswidely spread from one country to another.
Coup attempt
The Brazilian president also comes with a unique experience of these damages. He just suffered a brutal coup attempt from a fundamentalist sector linked to his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro which understands, as postulated by that president, that the Constitution or institutional limits are malleable issues and that real power lies elsewhere.
That leadership has fueled a absolute polarization in the countrywith a public disdain of the Executive towards justice and with an attempt to dominate it by adding at least five of its own justices to the Supreme Court to guarantee an automatic majority.
The fanatical followers of that former president have revived this contempt for the magistrates and the story of a fraud without evidence demand that the military take power and overthrow Lula because they do not agree with the result of the October elections. Anarchy in its most excessive expression. But one more for our territories.
There should be no greater lesson in defending institutions than the danger of losing them. But that experience can be a factor in discomfort. The Brazilian president will meet in Buenos Aires Maduro, a veteran autocrat in those same anti-republican practices with the addition kidnapping, tormenting and murdering dissidents.
The Chavista leader has allies in the CELAC structure that protect those extremes at the same time that, without prejudice, they censure Bolsonaro asking Caracas or Managua for the “unlimited defense of democracy”.
The Buenos Aires summit will have some notable absences. Ortega or Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador don’t come because when he travels alone he goes to the United States, but Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel does, another challenge that will convince them to persist the formula of silence
The Cuban leader has just demolished what little remained of the symbolic value of the Revolution in that country with a sentence of years in prison against a large group of young people who protested, as in Chile, Colombia or Ecuador, against the inflationary adjustment of the economy and dollarization which amplified the poverty of the people. To solve this mess they demanded democracy. The hand of imperialism, denounced the regime.
The debate is positive but it is unclear how Lula or his fellow Democrats in the region will resist these leaders and their methods. If they defend the independence of the judiciary, they could confuse their Argentine colleague, Alberto Fernández, who is attempting the same thing with the Court control operation desired by Bolsonaro with the highest court in his country and for similar reasons to dismiss the sentences.
In case evidence is lacking, a draft decree was recently uncovered in the home of a key ally of the former Brazilian president, Anderson Torres, proposing intervene in the electoral tribunal at the head of a Supreme Court magistrate and then cancel the election.
ignorance or stupidity
“Ignorance or stupidity” senior Brazilian government sources told this reporter when they try to translate the movements of their Argentine neighbors, especially for the irritating habit of the Pink House to meddle in the politics of other countries as happened with Pedro Castillo, proclaimed president from Buenos Aires before the Peruvian justice did it.
A case much cited in those Brazilian summits, as well as that of Public support for Ecuadorian electoral rival Guillermo LassoAndrés Arauz, blessed by the controversial Rafael Correa.
According to Lula, and his Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira confirmed it in a long interview with this newspaper, Maduro and Ortega “are dictators”. They wouldn’t be the only ones. The characterization arises from the notion that democracy requires the alternation and more than two successive periods “builds a dictatorship”.
Far from ideological conditioning, the Brazilian came to present this vision to the Colombian far right Alvaro Uribe when he also tried to impose justice on stay in power. Complex issue in the Buenos Aires meeting with the assistance of Evo Morales, the aforementioned Cuban leader and his Venezuelan partner who will perhaps dissolve into another convenient silence.
The problem is that the Chilean Gabriel Boric or the Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou, to cite a couple of examples, are not the same as many authoritarian compatriots of the Bolivarian axis convinced that the law and rights arise from the vote and there are no rules or anything to respect. By equating them all as if they were equal, the debate dissolves.
Amidst its opacities, it is clear that CELAC, comprising 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, is a labyrinth of intertwined opinions and positions. This tangled reality stems from the growing crisis of the republican system and representation in the region that it has become an armed and unarmed Meccano according to the taste and needs of those who take power.
On that street has the area pieces of coherence lost that democracy would require to survive. Lula has just drastically experienced the danger of this flaw.
No less an example of the absence of initial agreement in principle, such as that implied, for example, in the OAS Democratic Charter, an organization highly despised by many of next week’s guests, is provided by the crisis suffocating Peru.
In that country, controversial President Castillo announced last December the closure of Congress, the establishment of a government by decree and a state of emergency that limits individual freedoms. a classic hit like the ephemeral one carried out against Hugo Chávez in April 2002 or the one detailed in the paper found in the house of Bolsonaro’s ally.
No one accompanied the fujimorist madness of the Peruvian president, and in the following two hours he was fired and arrested. Lula da Silva was one of the few leaders who clearly reacted to that episode, stating that Castillo “was fired by law” because he violated the law.
Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia and Argentina, on the other hand, have defended the troubled former president, suggesting that if Congress besieges you as happened to this fragile president, then shut it down, just like Justice if their failures are not aligned with what the leader requires.
©Copyright Clarin 2023
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.