Latin America has lived in environments prone to non-party populism for the past 25 years. The so-called “outsiders” or “lone wolves” have been protagonists in its most recent political history.
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In the case of Venezuela, the nightmare is not over. Peru has seen several of these individuals overthrown or imprisoned, with the consequence of having turned the democratic system into a patchwork quilt. In the case of Ecuador, these examples have not been able to destroy democracy, but they have fractured it. There are more examples, such as Nicaragua, that demonstrate this situation.
This article aims to show these typologies and the examples that should lead us to think that Colombia cannot fall into scenarios of this level because the consequences are known and demonstrated.
Breaking up democracies
The coming to power of populists who are not part of the institutional environment or of movements or parties generates a distortion in the democratic model. This distortion materializes in the concepts that Moisés Naím listed in his book The revenge of the powerfulsuch as populism, polarization and post-truth.
In several countries in the region, people who were not part of the political order were elected in the last 25 years and ended up representing the three distorting elements of power that Naím lists. To this we must add the authoritarian continuation in some of these regimes. The arrival of these charismatic leaders has two scenarios of action. The first is that the leadership can constitute elements of authoritarianism that imply the co-optation of the democratic system in its entirety. The Venezuelan and Nicaraguan cases are examples of this category. Elsewhere, we see it in Russia, Türkiye and Hungary.
The second type of leadership has to do with those leaders who fail to impose themselves on the established political and legal order, but who try to break through it at all costs. In these cases, those who lead these processes find themselves forced into institutional enclosure that leads to prosecution by judges for wanting to violate the rule of law or to exile. The refrain of their defense is none other than attacking the same State and the Judicial Branch that they represent through a bizarre theory called lawfarewhich has been used by several of these charismatic leaders to attack the Judicial Branch and build an ideological immunity over its management. Ecuadorian and Peruvian cases could be the rule.
Authoritarian leaderships
The characteristic of this type of leader is that they are democratically elected. They come to power with the idea of demolishing the previous political order. To do so, their first objective is to call a national constituent assembly that allows them to re-establish the institutions, dismantle the Judicial Branch and the control bodies and take over the electoral body.
The case of Venezuela is the most palpable. Coup leader Hugo Chávez, pardoned by the same party institutions he tried to overthrow, came to power amid massive discontent against the country’s democratic institutions. As former President Carlos Andrés Pérez said, they wanted to elect an avenger. Without parties and in an election that pitted him against a former beauty queen and a languid businessman, the coup colonel won the elections. From then on, everything was destruction. He swore an oath on a “dying Constitution,” called a constituent assembly and altered the functioning of the country. Chavez’s arrival in 1999 lasted 14 elections that included the three electoral frauds that have left his successor, Nicolás Maduro, at the head of the country 25 years later.
In Latin America, another similar case is that of the Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega, who came to power through an electoral process in 2007. His control of the regime is total, and democracy has been buried.
Another example – this one failed in its final stage – was that of former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, who became president of the country in 2006 and immediately called for a constituent assembly and changed the rules of the game. His debacle after being re-elected twice was that his vice president Lenin Moreno, elected after his administration, did not lend himself to allowing the return of Correaism, generating a recovery of the country’s democratic environment.
Correa eventually went into exile in Belgium and was convicted of corruption in his country.
Added to the previous case is that of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who broke the country’s institutional and partisan structures. After coming to power, he applied the same recipe: attacking the judicial institutions and establishing a self-coup d’état that brought down the system that preceded it. His regime lasted for 10 years, until the very system he designed excluded him. In the end, he was convicted of crimes against humanity.
Other cases of this type of analysis are Hungary, Turkey and Russia. In all three countries, leaders have come to power through the ballot box and then proceeded to demolish the institutions that elected them, establish a new Constitution or modify the existing one in its axial axes, persecute the opposition and seek re-election. These processes are not democratic because the electoral bodies are part of the model reformed by their majorities.
Anarchic leaderships
These too are democratically elected. They are charismatic, but their popular bases are diffuse and difficult to unite around an authoritarian project.
Their speeches are anarchic and criticize the established powers without having the majorities or sufficient popular support to summon or destroy the established regime.
In the end, without speeches and without respect for the same institutions, they end up falling into solitary positions. Their end is prison, dismissal or exile. These leaders end up prosecuted in most cases for corruption and put an end to their political careers, without leaving behind any party or movement. They have no project.
Among these people, we can highlight the case of former Ecuadorian President Abdalá Bucaram, who was elected in 1996 and held office for six months. He was dismissed for mental incapacity and prosecuted for corruption. He ended up seeking asylum in Panama.
As can be seen, political outsiders have similar characteristics when they come to power. Either they try to stay at all costs or they cause damage to the democratic system.
Another in Ecuador was President Lucio Gutiérrez, who came to power after leading the coup against President Jamil Mahuad. This military coup leader was elected president of the country in 2002 and removed from office in 2005.
In Peru, the case of former President Pedro Castillo recently stood out. He attempted a self-coup without any institutional support and ignoring the Peruvian Constitution of 1993, seeking to dissolve Congress, intervene in the Judicial Branch, the Constitutional Court, arrest the Attorney General and convene a new Congress with constitutional powers. The justice system, as it should have, reacted and he was arrested.
As you can see, the outsiders Politics have similar characteristics when they come to power. Either they try to stay at all costs or they cause damage to the democratic system.. The best thing, in these cases, is that democratic maturity leads citizens to reject these siren songs. Colombia must be alert in 2026.
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