Global Insight
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July 23, 2012 4:09 pm
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Latin America dogged by former leaders
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By John Paul Rathbone in London
Former brokers never die, runs the old City of London saw, they just trade away. But what of former presidents?
Nowhere is it easy to step down from being the “most important” person in a country to being a “formerly important person”. The old joke is that ex-presidents are like Chinese vases: beautiful, valuable and also near-useless. For some, the psychological comedown is too much.
Lately, such difficulties have been particularly on view in Latin America, a relative newcomer to the democratic comity of nations and thus the difficult task of being, or managing, an ex-president.
Moíses Naím, a foreign policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cites the example of Brazil. This month, its two most successful ex-presidents demonstrated the different ways of being an “ex”.
In one corner stands Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president from 1995 to 2002, who on July 10 was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize by the US Library of Congress for a lifetime of intellectual achievement. The Nobel Prize of social sciences, the Kluge comes with a similar $1m bounty.
In the other corner stands Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. Lula, as he is popularly known, has been undergoing treatment for throat cancer. His convalescence has helped his heir, Dilma Rousseff and Brazil’s current president, stamp her authority on government.
But now Mr Lula da Silva is recovered and jostling again from the sidelines, prompting speculation he would like to be president again. On occasion, he has acted as if he already was.
On almost the same day as Mr Cardoso received his prize, Mr Lula da Silva presided over a meeting of the São Paulo forum, a gathering of Latin American leftists founded by his and Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ party (PT). In a speech, Mr Lula da Silva praised Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chávez, who faces a tight race in October’s presidential election.
“Under Chávez’s leadership,” he said, “the Venezuelan people have made tremendous gains ... These gains should be preserved and consolidated. Chávez, you can count on me, the PT, the solidarity and help of every leftist militant, of every democrat and every Latin American. Your victory will be our victory.”
Mr Lula da Silva is entitled to his personal opinion, especially of someone he considers a friend. But his depiction of Venezuelan reality is questionable, or at least incomplete. Furthermore, as Mr Naím points out, should a truly democratic ex-president use his power and influence to intervene in the elections of another country?
Yet it is not only leftist former leaders such as Mr Lula da Silva who find it difficult to be an ex. In Colombia, at the other end of the political spectrum, former president Álvaro Uribe has spent much of his retirement slinging mud at Juan Manuel Santos, the current president, accusing his former defence minister of being a traitor to his policies. (An apt comparison is with Lady Thatcher, the former UK prime minister, who similarly found it difficult to “let go”.)
In Mexico, every ex has to watch his back to the extent that outgoing president
Felipe Calderón was asked recently: are former Mexican presidents condemned to live outside the country?
Then there is Chile, often regarded as the model of a successful Latin American country. There, Michele Bachelet did in 2010 what presidents are supposed to do when they leave power: she took a senior UN post. But now Ms Bachelet is hinting at a return to Chilean politics, and possibly running for the 2013 election.
All these powerful ex-presidents make life harder for current ones. Yet far worse than having an ex-president is not having one.
Cristina Fernández, dressed in widow’s weeds and with economic policies that are fast running the Argentine economy into the ground, misses the guiding hand of her deceased husband, former president Néstor Kirchner. Cuba, meanwhile, has not had an ex-president since 1948 – the last time the country had democratic elections.
And then there is Venezuela. Assume that Mr Chávez, who has been battling cancer, is well enough to run in the October 7 election (he says he is cured).
Will a man who has said frequently he wants to remain in office until 2021 ever allow himself to become an ex, and lose the vote? And, even if he did, what kind of ex would Mr Chávez be? These two exigent questions will define the region’s biggest political event of the year.
Then there is Chile, often regarded as the model of a successful Latin American country. There, Michele Bachelet did in 2010 what presidents are supposed to do when they leave power: she took a senior UN post. But now Ms Bachelet is hinting at a return to Chilean politics, and possibly running for the 2013 election.
All these powerful ex-presidents make life harder for current ones. Yet far worse than having an ex-president is not having one.
Cristina Fernández, dressed in widow’s weeds and with economic policies that are fast running the Argentine economy into the ground, misses the guiding hand of her deceased husband, former president Néstor Kirchner. Cuba, meanwhile, has not had an ex-president since 1948 – the last time the country had democratic elections.
And then there is Venezuela. Assume that Mr Chávez, who has been battling cancer, is well enough to run in the October 7 election (he says he is cured).
Will a man who has said frequently he wants to remain in office until 2021 ever allow himself to become an ex, and lose the vote? And, even if he did, what kind of ex would Mr Chávez be? These two exigent questions will define the region’s biggest political event of the year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.
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