According to Bloomberg, "the Argentine disaster does not anticipate a return from the left"

The political fortune of President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, is falling apart. First, the voters imposed on the incumbent president an overwhelming victory in the August 11 primary elections. Then the financial markets were felt, eclipsing the country's credit rating and the peso.

Now that the traditionally antiquated Peronist Argentineans are about to return to power, the International Monetary Fund has decided to launch another installment of the largest rescue loan in its history under vacuum. Macri's announcement on Wednesday of his intention to defer payments of billions of dollars of foreign debt will only reinforce the Fund's doubts.

The fall of Macri is deep. What does your misfortune mean for the like – minded conservative leaders chosen to change the course of a region plagued by unemployment, voter discontent, and decelerating economies?

The approval ratings of Conservatives Sebastián Piñera in Chile and Iván Duque in Colombia fell below 35%. Only 22% of Ecuadorians are in favor of leftist apostate Lenin Moreno. The pro-business president of Peru, Martín Vizcarra, a reformer, is trying to fight a populist congress. This week, the proportion of Brazilians who disapprove of its right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, rose from less than a third in February to more than half (53.7 percent).

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In Latin American pendulum politics, it is tempting to conclude that these problems for the ruling right translate a return of the public to candidates on the other extreme, such as Argentina. Alberto Fernandez and his mentor, the the former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. But wait. There is not much nostalgia for the so-called pink tide that took power in the last decade behind Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian revolution – now in the middle of the collapse – nor for the Brazilian economy Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose habits of capitalist friend They took to prison. This is not a resurrection: it is the remorse of the buyer.

The new right stemmed from the demand of corporations to put an end to the accusations of systemic corruption and the political establishment that had flourished, often under the supervision of the left, even as they bent the institutions as they pleased. They proposed clbadic solutions such as sound management, transparency and the magic of markets to clean up the system, restore growth and, in extreme cases like those of Brazil and Argentina, reverse the economic downturn. Instead, they took a risk with a demoralizing reformism and have now clung to their positions in the face of the terrible performance of their economies.

While the prosperity of Latin America is declining, it is important to note that voters have never had so much influence. They raise the level of candidates everywhere, regardless of their political current. Remember that the merchant bonanza of the last decade, as long as it lasted, has reduced poverty by almost half and sent millions of people into the new middle clbad, which represents 36% of the population . Expectations followed and voters turned to leaders who talked about prosperity and who failed.

While 63% of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean reported being satisfied with education in 2006, they were only 56% in 2017. In comparison, in the Organization of economic cooperation and development, this percentage was 65%. Currently 64% of Latin American and Caribbean countries say they do not trust their national governments, and three-quarters say government institutions are corrupt.

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Mistrust undermines the social pact: 54% say they can justify not paying taxes. Falsely, the slowing of the population also weakens confidence in democracy, mainly between 25% of Latin Americans aged 15 to 29 who do not know another form of government and who now feel frustrated by their few rewards.

The atmosphere confused the experts. A rising middle clbad with the power of discernment should have strengthened the checks and balances of democracy and purged the region of authoritarian illusions. However, the persistence of income inequality and the large informal sector, as well as the specter of homelessness, have undermined this concept. The current danger is that candidates who feed the bases and extremists take advantage of this insecurity to aggravate political polarization and promote the oldest of Latin American afflictions: the obsession with populism.

Populism is "the perfect combination of salt, sugar and fat" in modern Latin American democracies, says political scientist Javier Corrales of Amherst College: a sweet kitchen of slogans (the revolution of the 21st century), reinforced by endless tweets and regulations the "density of politics" (fat) and seasoned with an exciting flood of insults and free attacks on their enemies (salt), all to create a "state" of happiness "mixed politics that keeps the faithful hooked and the populists in power.

But demanding voters should not be bad news for democracy. Even a change of fortune can reduce public tolerance for false promises and empower candidates. By exacerbating polarization, the excesses of populism create their own "allergic reaction", in Corrales' words, thus inviting a beneficial democratic response. Financial markets can also play a role in punishing waste and tax incontinence.

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The leader of the presidential race, Alberto Fernández apparently took note and tried to calm the fears of the market by maintaining the dialogue with Macri – now suspended – and refusing to put pressure to restructure the external debt. Now, it seems that Macri himself has done it. This probably says a lot about the fact that Fernandez did not talk about it.

There is good reason to wonder whether this temperance campaign will last or whether it will resist the populist temptation if the Peronists return to power in Decemberas suggested by Fernández's recent incidents against the IMF. Latin American headlines in trouble, both on the right and on the left, will follow closely.

(*) The author is a columnist of Bloomberg Opinion on issues of Latin America and South America. He was a Newsweek journalist and is the author of "The Last New World: Conquering the Amazon Frontier".