Global Development: Views from the Center

DISENCHANTMENT WITH DEMOCRACY AND HOW IT MAY BE EVALUATED

There have been many articles published recently that discuss the disenchantment with democracy in Latin American and African countries where this form of government is barely coming to life.

In a pole published in April 2005, created by the United Nations the year before, the following results were obtained:

54.7% of Latin American citizens are willing to support an authoritarian form of government if it resolves economic problems.

38.6% of Latin American citizens agree that the president may go beyond the law.

All methods of measurement show that there is a great degree of dissatisfaction with current democratic systems.

70% of Mexican citizens do not trust their legislative representatives.

The purpose of this paper is to locate the role of the institutions and governments that determine certain funds towards developing countries with the intention of improving their socioeconomic and democratic levels.

Throughout decades millions of dollars have been have been used to improve the economic situation in Latin America, the results do not reflect the amount and quality of help that has been received.

In Latin America there is an excessive interest in establishing economic integration processes, bilateral and multilateral agreements, commercial contracts, preferential commercial zones, and agreements on inversion flow. Nevertheless, the positive effects of these agreements and processes that hope to gain further development and wellbeing have been limited.

I believe the success of these aid and development strategies depends on the capacity for societies to construct a solid and trustworthy institutional foundation that consolidates citizens’ rights and enforces its control capacity over governors.

This can be achieved if there are trustworthy electoral organisms that guarantee clean elections and impartial results in the different levels of government a country has (federal, state, and municipal). This would give citizens the elements to demand results from those elected to govern.

Democratic success is not achieved when there is only electoral institutions that guarantee clean election in the federal level of government. There has to be the same guarantee in state and municipal elections because it is in these levels that poverty grows and where civil rights are more easily limited.

What would you think of creating an independent organism with the ability to certify, accredit and supervise electoral organisms in the three levels of government, federal, state and municipal?

Certification and accreditation is not something new. There is the certification and accreditation of universities, countries debts are evaluated, economies are also evaluated and classified (IMD Annual Report, Switzerland).

First stage: It evaluates the independence of the electoral organization and the local government as well as the professionalism of its members.

Second stage: This organism emits a result of its evaluation.

Third stage: A correlation is made between the organizations grade and the amount of economic aid it receives.

Once a result or certification is given the economic aid may be destined towards those electoral organisms that are deigned trustworthy and independent.

The more an organization is considered trustworthy the more citizens may watch over the funding it receives and if these are being used for the right purposes.

This proposal is not limiting to the use of one electoral system. Its purpose is to guarantee true elections in all levels of government and that those who govern do so by direct election of the citizens.

As an example I will comment on the situation in Mexico.

In our country there is an organism that evaluates elections at a federal level and its name is “Instituto Federal Electoral”. This organism is independent and the citizens at a federal level that evaluate the election, how it is managed and if the results are reliable as well as the degree of credibility they have.

We are not doing as well in the organisms in charge of the supervision of elections in the 32 states. The majority are not independent and don’t evaluate local elections impartially.

What we have; state electoral councils, state electoral commissions, and state electoral institutions. The majority of these depend on the secretary of local government.

One example is the state elections in Yucatan in the year 2000. During elections there were three organisms that evaluated the process, one elected by the governor and the other two formed by political parties.

There are states like Oaxaca and Chiapas in which a great number of municipalities have no respect for the individual and secret vote.

I think it is important to evaluate how many and to what degree these organisms are autonomous.

If we cannot achieve the autonomy of these organisms in the states and municipalities then we will never be able to make our electoral processes transparent. We will never have good, reliable and responsible governors.

The more transparent the electoral process is the easier it will be to supervise and evaluate the good use of economic resources that organizations and countries destine toward the support of local government.

Juan Ignacio Duran Reza

Consejo Cívico de Instituciones de Nuevo León, A.C.
Monterrey, Nuevo León, México

Tel. Fax. +52 (81) 8378-0737

June, 2006

jaunduran@prodigy.net.mx

Juan.duran1@gmail.com