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Written by Jelena
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Monday, 02 November 2009 14:31 |
The crisis in Honduras highlights the need to pay more attention to fragile and weak democracies before they present more serious challenges, says the European Partnership for Democracy. The international community’s strategy “entails clear risks both for democracy in Honduras and more generally for the regional political and institutional equilibrium,” writes the EPD’s Carlos Hernandez Ferreiro in a new report. A manifestation of deeper political trends in the region, the crisis illustrates how the failure to adequately consolidate or at least enhance the quality of Latin American democracy, particularly by addressing issues of social inequality, has facilitated the rise of the neo-populist Left, organized regionally in the shape of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.
The Honduran crisis is a “perfect example” of the conflict between the “extension of personalized political leadership” and the delicate political and institutional balances between different powers in Latin American states:
Whereas countries such as Brazil, Uruguay, Chile or Peru, have managed to avoid his path through a sound combination of political and institutional reform, it is clear that the rise of the Bolivarian Project in the region poses, beyond the histrionics of its political leadership, relevant questions to the way democracy works in Latin America, particularly when it comes to issues such as inequality.
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The crisis in Honduras highlights the need to pay more attention to fragile and weak democracies before they present more serious challenges, says the European Partnership for Democracy. The international community’s strategy “entails clear risks both for democracy in Honduras and more generally for the regional political and institutional equilibrium,” writes the EPD’s Carlos Hernandez Ferreiro in a new report.