The Andean Republics, like many nations in Hispanic America, have a historical tradition of electing charismatic presidents who use their electoral success to subjugate legislatures and dominate political parties. Over the last couple of decades, presidential candidates have extended this approach by abandoning legacy parties to create new political instruments that would be considered campaign offices in more established political systems. Legacy parties were always subject to domination by presidential candidates, but they also represented a collective of like-minded individuals seeking to promote an economic and social agenda. In contrast, ‘campaign parties’ are created solely to elect a single individual.

In the immediate aftermath of the military era, politicians affiliated with legacy parties dominated the electoral landscape in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, while in Colombia the two main political parties extended their influence by fielding candidates from political dynasties adept at climbing the ladder of a caste-bound political system. Increasingly, dark horse candidates in all four countries won elections after they emerged from new parties created by dissident politicians for the explicit purpose of launching a presidential campaign.

The decline of the legacy parties led to a more open electoral process. Alternative pathways to presidential power include the private sector or multilateral development agencies, typically after the aspiring statesman has served in a high-profile cabinet ministry. These entrepreneurial candidates embraced the campaign party model because it has proven to be a successful way to win presidential elections; however, it has failed to provide them with sufficient legislative representation to build an effective governing coalition. This failure is directly linked to the transitory nature of campaign parties, which lack a cadre of previously elected officials who might independently attract votes in open-list proportional systems.

The most successful presidential candidates have emerged from social movements that exploited voter frustration with dysfunctional political systems, entrenched inequality and endemic corruption. Importantly, these were the only candidates whose parties successfully won majorities in legislatures, which they used to rewrite their constitutions and capture the judicial system in order to perpetuate their rule (Table 7.14).  Two countries, Venezuela and Bolivia, have experienced a consolidation of their political parties when a charismatic leader won a legislative majority, forcing opposition parties to form coalitions to protect themselves, and their constituencies, from authoritarian governments.

Political combat and chaos as governance

Peru and Ecuador have unicameral legislatures that theoretically should simplify the task of organizing a governing coalition; however, assemblies reflect the broad dispersion of votes typical of first-round elections. Frequently, the president’s party will not be the largest, which undermines his ability to manage a legislative agenda and, in some cases, will lack sufficient votes to protect its leader from impeachment. Although their constitutions require a super majority (66 per cent) to remove a president, since the legislatures are unicameral, they also preclude a two-stage process that might provide representatives with an alternative that includes a vote of censure but avoids the drama of regime change.

Peru has initiated impeachment proceedings seven times since 2000: Alberto Fujimori was impeached in absentia (2000); Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned before an impeachment vote (2017); Martín Vizcarra faced two impeachment proceedings before being removed (09/2020, 11/2020) and Pedro Castillo was successfully impeached on the third attempt (11/2022). Ecuador has removed four presidents: Abdalá Bucaram, by impeachment (1997); Jamil Mahuad, who resigned under pressure (2000); Lucio Gutiérrez by impeachment (2005); and Guillermo Lasso, who dissolved the National Assembly after it initiated an impeachment process (2023). Few would argue that such executive turnover is beneficial for managing a national economy.

Presidents are not without constitutional powers of self-defence, and in both Ecuador and Peru, they can dissolve their legislatures under certain circumstances. In Ecuador, the ability to dissolve the National Assembly is referred to as muerte cruzada, because if the legislature initiates an impeachment process that is likely to be successful, the president can dissolve the assembly and call new national elections. This has only occurred once, when Guillermo Lasso (2021–2023) resigned and called new elections after his administration was paralyzed by civil protests and legislative gridlock.

In Peru, the constitutional prerogative to dissolve Congress is rooted in a recent historical event, when Alberto Fujimori used extra-legal powers to dissolve Congress and reorganize the state (autogolpe). He subsequently incorporated the controversial rule into the 1993 constitution. Although rarely exercised, it has exacerbated political conflict ever since. For example, Martín Vizcarra dissolved an obstructionist Congress in 2019, although the newly elected legislature immediately empanelled impeachment proceedings, which he survived once – but not twice.  Pedro Castillo was in the process of dissolving Congress when he was arrested and deposed in 2022.

The political conflict between the executive and legislative branches has cast Peru as a caricature of an unstable democracy. Congressional gridlock is exacerbated by the inability of the country’s largest political party (Fuerza Peru) to win the presidency, despite making the runoff elections in four consecutive cycles. Entrenched antipathy toward the Fujimori family has ensured (to date) that the opposing candidate will win the presidency, but the party’s electoral base also guarantees that its current leader (Keiko Fujimori) will have sufficient representation in Congress to obstruct the policies of the incoming administration.

Vote-buying scandals

As in Brazil, fragmented political landscapes make fertile ground for transactional behavior and corrupt acts. The best-known example of vote-buying was organized in the late 1990s by Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) and his close collaborator, Vladimir Montesinos. The scandal began when a Peruvian TV station released a series of videos that showed Montesinos paying cash bribes to members in Congress, judicial authorities, government ministers and media executives. The funds were managed using foreign bank accounts controlled by the two men, which in 2000 had a value of US$ 198 million. Shortly thereafter, the Fujimori government collapsed as citizens paralysed the country via civil protest reacting to brazen corruption.

A similar scheme in Ecuador in the 1980s and 1990s was funded by a budget item referred as Gastos Reservados, which was exposed and discontinued during the administration of President Sixto Durán (1992–1996) when it had reached a value of around US$7.6 million annually. In Bolivia, the identically named Gastos Reservados were used by four successive coalition governments that pursued controversial market-based (neoliberal) policies between 1990 and 2005. By 2005, the US$ 14 million annual expenditure paid supplemental salaries that were deposited directly into the domestic bank accounts of presidents, cabinet ministers, military officers and Congress members. As in Ecuador, the system was both quasi-legal and totally non-transparent; it became publicly known when Evo Morales swept the system away with a landslide electoral victory that transformed the country in 2005.

Landslide victories

Bolivia had a political history similar to the turmoil of Peru and Ecuador, where professional politicians from legacy parties vied with outsiders who headed campaign parties. Voter dispersion led to a series of coalition governments referred to as ‘democracia pactada’, whose participants were widely assumed to be motivated by self-interest and graft. This changed in 2005, when Evo Morales won the presidency in the first round of a national election, and his party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), won a clear majority in both houses of Congress. His success stemmed from his ability to harness a social movement rooted in the aspirations of the country’s large Indigenous populations and universal disgust for the political elite.  Morales used his electoral mandate to rewrite the constitution and launch an economic, social and political transformation. In subsequent elections, Morales obtained a supermajority in Congress, which he used to capture the judicial system and create the architecture of an authoritarian socialist state.

The country’s long tradition of political graft remained unchanged, however, and the new elite used political patronage to reward party militants, while enacting policies favouring coca growers, campesino communities, migrant settlers (Interculturales), Indigenous groups, urban proletariat and cooperative miners, amongst others. The new constitution makes it virtually impossible to remove a president; nonetheless, the country’s proclivity for street protests and regional demands for autonomy led to Morale’s ousting in 2019. An interim government organized by the opposition attempted to reverse the political transformation, but failed, and the Movimiento al Socialismo returned to power without Evo Morales. His successor, Luis Arce, has no intention of allowing Morales to return to power and now governs using the authoritarian tactics pioneered by his predecessor.

Colombia had a less volatile political ecosystem throughout most of the twentieth century, partly because the decades-long civil war forced the two legacy parties (Liberal and Conservador) to collaborate to save a threatened democracy. Although smaller political parties began to compete in elections starting in the mid-1970s, governments were always organized by one of the two major parties. That changed with the 2002 election of President Alvaro Uribe, who won 53% of the votes in the first round. The landslide victory empowered him to mount an aggressive and largely successful campaign against the Marxist militias and modify the constitution to allow him a second term as president.

Uribe’s candidacy essentially blew up the cohesion of the two major parties, and elected officials sorted themselves into new parties that vied for power. The now ex-President Uribe continues to influence national politics is the undisputed leader of Centro Democratico, which he created after leaving the presidency and which supported the campaign of President Iván Duque in 2018.  The current president, Gustavo Petro, is the first avowedly left-of-centre politician to win the presidency; he won in a runoff, however, and lacks a majority in Congress to execute his political agenda.

Venezuela was governed by two political parties throughout most of the twentieth century: Acción Democrática (AD) and the Partido Social Cristiano (COPEI). Both parties were relatively centrist and alternated in power through competitive elections, while benefitting from patronage and corruption bankrolled by Venezuela’s oil wealth. That political model, however, failed to address the inequality that marginalized large segments of the population, which paved the way for the emergence of Hugo Chávez, whose landslide victory in 1998 overturned the established political order.

Chávez was the quintessential populist demagogue and won successive elections that allowed him to rewrite the Constitution and establish an authoritarian socialist state. He used the nation’s oil wealth to finance domestic consumption, and his popularity remained undiminished until his death in 2013. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued his heterodox policies, which eventually caused a catastrophic economic collapse and triggered a mass emigration of destitute citizens. Maduro and his allies cling to power because they control the judiciary, which they have used to eliminate opposition candidates and create a parallel legislature after losing their majority in the Asamblea Nacional in 2014. There is no indication that Maduro and his cabal of crooks will allow free and fair elections in the foreseeable future.

Banner image: Stream in the Colombian Amazon rainforest. Image by Rhett A. Butler.

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Mayra Editor

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