Monday, May 4, 2009

Pete Seeger Now!, Ecuador's Election: WhyThe Left Continues Winning

'Splendid' is the word that prevails as I listen to Democracy Now's tribute
to Pete Seeger, mostly created at Sunday's massive birthdate salute in
Madison Sq. Garden. Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Ani di Franco, Billy
Bragg, Bernice Reagon, Michael Franti offer thoughts, then Pete himself.
Interspersed with the music. When I got home last night, there were two
messages from friends at the concert. It was that great. This program is
one not to miss. -Ed

http://www.truthout.org/050209A

Ecuador's Election Shows Why Left Continues Winning in Hard Times

"We should not be surprised if most Latin American voters stick
with the left through hard times. Who else is going to defend their
interests?"

by: Mark Weisbrot
The Guardian UK: May 1, 2009

Washington's foreign policy establishment has been proven wrong. Latin
America is more stable and democratic than ever.

A few months ago I ran into an economist who was formerly head of the
Bolivian Central Bank in the La Paz airport. He had been reading Roubini,
the New York University economist whom the media has nicknamed "Dr. Doom",
and was predicting a very gloomy economic future for the hemisphere, the
region, and especially his own country.

I didn't agree about Bolivia, which has more international reserves
relative to its economy than China. But it was striking to see the same
thing in all the countries that I visited: opposition economists and
political leaders everywhere reminded me of communists in the 1930s, praying
for the collapse of the capitalist system - in this case, somewhat
ironically, so that they could rid themselves of the left governments that
the voters had chosen in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay,
Ecuador and elsewhere.

In all of these countries the vast majority of the mass media, to
varying degrees, shares the opposition's agenda and in many cases appears
willing to present an overly pessimistic or even catastrophic scenario in
order to help advance the cause.

But despite the worsening of the world and regional economy, the left
keeps winning in Latin America. The latest left victory was that of
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, an economist who was first elected at
the end of 2006 and was re-elected last Sunday under a new constitution.
This gives the charismatic 46 year-old four more years, and he can be
re-elected once more for another term.

There are a number of reasons that most Ecuadorians might stick with
their president, despite what they hear on the TV news. Some 1.3 million of
Ecuador's poor households (in a country of 14 million) now get a stipend of
$30 a month, which is a significant improvement. Social spending as a share
of the economy has increased by more than 50 percent in Correa's two years
in office. Last year the government also invested heavily in public works,
with capital spending more than doubling.

Correa has delivered on other promises that were important to his
constituents, not least of which was a referendum allowing for a constituent
assembly to draft a new constitution, which voters approved by a nearly
two-thirds majority. It is seen as one of the most progressive constitutions
in the world, with advances in the rights of indigenous people, civil unions
for gay couples, and a novel provision of rights for nature. The latter
would apparently allow for lawsuits on the basis of damage to an ecosystem.

Many thought Correa was joking when he said during his presidential
campaign that he would be willing to keep the U.S. military base at Manta if
Washington would allow Ecuadorian troops to be stationed in Florida. But he
wasn't, and the base is scheduled to close later this year. He also resisted
pressure from the U.S. Congress and others in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit
that Ecuadorian courts will decide, in which Chevron is accused of dumping
billions of gallons of toxic oil waste that polluted rivers and streams. And
in an unprecedented move last November, Correa stopped payment on $4 billion
of foreign debt when an independent Public Debt Audit Commission, long
demanded by civil society organizations in Ecuador, determined that this
debt was illegally and illegitimately contracted.

In the United States, these policies have mostly been dismissed as
"populism" or worse. A New York Times editorial in November 2007 entitled
"Authoritarians in the Andes" summed up the foreign policy establishment
view that Correa, Bolivia's President Evo Morales, and President Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela were "increasingly interested in grabbing power for
themselves." For Correa and Morales, wrote the Times editorial board, "their
confrontational approach is also threatening to rend Bolivia and Ecuador's
fragile social and political stability."

The Times (and Washington's foreign policy establishment) have proven to
be wrong, as Ecuador and Bolivia are now more politically stable than they
have been for decades. (Ecuador has had nine presidents over the last
fifteen years). They are also more democratic than they have ever been.

In fact, most of Latin America is going through a democratic transition
that is likely to prove every bit as important as the one that brought an
end to the dictatorships that plagued many countries through the first four
decades of the post-World War II era. Ironically, the region's economic
performance was vastly better in the era of the dictatorships, because the
governments of that era generally had more effective economic policies than
the formally democratic but neoliberal governments that replaced them.

A few years ago there were fears, backed by polling data, that people
would become nostalgic for the days of real (not imagined) authoritarian
governments because of the much greater improvements in living standards
during that era. Instead, they chose to vote for left governments who
extended democracy from politics to economic and social policy.

The left governments have mostly succeeded where their neoliberal
predecessors failed. Partly they have benefited from an acceleration in
world economic growth during most of the last five years. But they have also
changed their economic policies in ways that increased economic growth.
Argentina's economy grew more than 60 percent in six years and Venezuela's
by 95 percent. These are enormous growth rates even taking into account
these countries' prior recessions, and allowed for large reductions in
poverty. Left governments have also taken greater control over their natural
resources (Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela) and delivered on their promises to
share the income from these resources with the poor.

This is the way democracy is supposed to work: people voted for change
and got quite a bit of what they voted for, with reasonable expectations of
more to come. We should not be surprised if most Latin American voters stick
with the left through hard times. Who else is going to defend their
interests?

--------

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, in Washington, DC. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of "Social
Security: The Phony Crisis," and has written numerous research papers on
economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

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