Election Super Sunday in South America: the challenges …

The eyes of Latin America will be on two simultaneous epicenters this Sunday. Two electoral processes that will help new condiments to the constant regional reconfiguration, today marked by the nascent maturation of a renewed progressive pole.

Amid the multiple crises exacerbated by the second pandemic wave, Ecuador will define who will be its next president and Peru will experience a first round in a climate of citizen apathy and with an unprecedented atomization of candidates. Perspectives, keys and expectations of a day of great impact on Latin American geopolitics.

Ecuador: Transmission belt

The Ecuadorian second round shows a crystalline scenario: two diametrically opposed candidates face each other, two clearly antagonistic projects. Andrés Arauz leads the return of the so-called Citizen Revolution who reigned between 2007 and 2017 – later betrayed by Lenín Moreno – and the banker Guillermo Lasso represents the traditional right and neoliberal continuity.

Arauz goes to the bank. He triumphed in the first round with 32.7% and almost every poll gives him the winner, but not by a wide margin. With only 36 years old, could become Ecuador’s youngest president if he manages to question at least part of the votes of Yaku Pérez (19.3) and Xavier Hervas (15.6), if he manages to absorb the broad anti-neoliberal sentiment that he does not have monopolized during the election of February as a result of the Correísmo / anti-correismo Cleavage.

The jovial profile and its economic footprint open up opportunities for it to establish itself as a symbol of renewal. He has a long academic and civil service career: at 26 he was Director of the Central Bank and at 30 he was Rafael Correa’s Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent, a post he held until in 2017, when he moved to Mexico to do a doctorate in finance. Economy. He was previously a graduate of the University of Michigan (USA), also lived in Russia and is member of the Executive Council of the Progressive International, in which personalities such as Álvaro García Linera, Pablo Iglesias, Bernie Sanders and Naomi Klein participate.

Lasso paddles from behind; The 19.7% he took in February need to gain enough weight for the third to make the charm after his failed attempts in the presidential elections of 2013 and 2017. It will be necessary to see if the dirty marketing campaign led by Jaime Durán Barba, his harsh foray into TIC Tac and all the media chorus in his favor. 65 and A member of Opus Dei, he follows a path well known as a bulwark of the business world and a hierarchy of financial holding companies with capital dispersed in tax havens. Naturally, his view of foreign policy focuses on the North.

The level of abstention that there is and where the votes of Hervas – he called to vote for Lasso- and of Yaku perez. The heterogeneous indigenous movement has become a relevant political actor and although the CONAIE promotes the “ideological void vote”, its president Jaime Vargas and other sectors supported Arauz, with whom the fate of this electoral base is uncertain.

Chronic crisis in Peru

The central fact of the Peruvian presidential and legislative elections is the indecision and disinterest of the population. According to all polls, there is a squad of six candidates – out of a total of 18 – compressed by just five points difference and none reaches 15% of voting intention.

The long institutional crisis that Peru has been going through for more than two decades has deepened the discredit towards the political class and the skepticism of voters, more aware of the health emergency (it is the deadliest Latin American country due to Covid – 19) and the economic decline that exacerbated the pandemic. The result, an electoral process with unprecedented fragmentation and an unpredictable result.

Of the six candidates with chances, five are located from the center to the far right: former congressman Yonhy Lescano, liberal economist Hernando de Soto, former footballer and businessman George Forsyth, Keiko Fujimori (daughter of the dictator) and the ultra-conservative Rafael López Aliaga. The only progressive option is the psychologist and the anthropologist Verónika Mendoza, who in 2016 was third very close to the poll, is a member of the Puebla group and proposes to change the Constitution inherited from Fujimori.

Precisely since the 1990s ruled by Alberto Fujimori, the Peruvian political system has entered a self-destructive spiral marked by recurring corruption scandals. A democratic fragility that is surprising given the decadent decline of the last six presidents: all ended up being sacked and / or imprisoned, with the exception of Alan García who was not imprisoned because he committed suicide then that they were about to stop him.

As the second wave of the pandemic roughly shakes Latin America, as governments juggle restrictions and advance as best they can (and each of themselves) with slow vaccination, while majorities popular focus on survival strategies, for the electoral route. the order of the day comes a super Sunday which can, at least, bring political oxygen. A triumph for Arauz in Ecuador and Mendoza’s passage to Peruvian ballottagge would bring fresh air to the new progressive Latin American pole and the gradual restoration of regional integration.

Editor of NODAL. Author of the book “América Latina. Traces and challenges of the progressive cycle ”. He hosts the radio show “Al sur del Río Bravo”.