Columnists of the EFE agency
Latin America faces a decisive November with an electoral cocktail in which five countries – Nicaragua, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile and Honduras – are at stake to maintain the current political course or to take a turn. The month will open and close with two presidential elections in Central America: some highly controversial in Nicaragua and others in which Hondurans will choose the successor to the controversial government of Juan Orlando Hernández, flooded by corruption.
In between, attention will shift to South America. Argentina’s legislatures are presented as a pulse of the opposition to the weakened government of Alberto Fernández, while Chile will renew its Parliament and choose the future president, although it will probably need a second round in December. In Venezuela, meanwhile, the opposition will go to regional and local elections after four years of absence from the polls.
Next Sunday, Sandinista Daniel Ortega will seek his third consecutive reelection in a process of “extreme concern” surrounded by a “climate of repression”, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), or “a malicious plan to end the democracy ”, according to the Nicaraguan Observatory Urnas Abiertas. Criticisms joined by the United States, the Organization of American States (OAS), the UN and the European Union when they warn of a progressive political and social deterioration in the country, particularly since the popular outbreak against Ortega in 2018, described by the Government as an attempted coup and that left hundreds of protesters dead, imprisoned or missing.
In Argentina
Rather than worry about maintaining the majority in Congress, the Government of Alberto Fernández is thinking of maintaining power after the presidential elections of 2023, and this despite the importance of the next elections, in which 127 of the 257 seats will be renewed. in the Chamber of Deputies and 24 of the 72 in the Senate. It is a task that does not look easy after the results of the primaries held in September, in which the ruling Front of All was surpassed by the opposition bloc Together for Change.
“The safest thing is that they will lose control of Congress, which would lead them to lose control of budget allocation, in the middle of a process of restructuring foreign debt. (…) This would give the Fernández government a very limited margin of maneuver, ”says Gerardo Sánchez, professor at the Center for Research and Economics of Mexico (CIDE).
After promising that they will correct what they did wrong; reshaping the Cabinet at the request of the vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, extending social plans and raising the minimum wage, the Government faces the electoral appointment weighed down by the economic recession, the galloping deficit, an inflation that is close to 53% and a questioned pandemic management.
Venezuela and Chile
The third weekend of the month, the attention will be divided between the north and the south of the region. Venezuelans are called to regional and local elections to which the bulk of the opposition, including the sector led by Juan Guaidó, will attend for the first time since 2017, after his absence in the 2018 presidential elections and the 2020 parliamentary elections, which He “handed over” to Chavismo 92% of Parliament.
The elections will take place in very delicate circumstances for Chavismo, after the recent extradition to the United States of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, alleged figurehead of Maduro, and a second and imminent extradition to the United States, from Spain, of former General Hugo Armando “el Pollo” Carvajal.
At the other extreme, Chile will attend a presidential election full of uncertainty and thinking about December 19, when it will almost certainly have to go to a second round.
The worn-out president Sebastián Piñera, who cannot stand for reelection, faces the scandal caused by the revelations of Pandora’s papers with a political trial that could lead to his dismissal; a social crisis unleashed in 2019 and preparations to draft a new Constitution. His legacy hangs over the aspirations of the seven candidates, none of whom have a chance of being elected in the first round, according to polls.
Those most likely to go on to the “ballot” do not belong to the political coalitions that have governed the country since the end of the dictatorship in 1990. They are the 35-year-old ex-left student leader Gabriel Boric, who is ahead in the polls, and the far-right José Antonio Kast. A close fight in a momentous election for a country that has been in political turmoil for two years. “The Chilean political model has worn out in the last ten years almost completely, and that is why it is good to have a new Constitution, because that of (Augusto) Pinochet (dictator between 1973 and 1990) could no longer hold out,” says Professor Eric Langer.
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