Latin America Has Seen 14 Governments Disrupted in the Last 30 Years

05/16/2016 - 09h37

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LUIZA OLMEDO

FROM SÃO PAULO

In less than 30 years,14 Latin American presidents have not completed their terms -averaging one every two years, according to a survey done by Folha.

In the early 1980s, the majority of countries in the region functioned under authoritarian regimes. Today, all of them, with the exception of Cuba, are democracies, at least formally. The challenge, now, is maintaining the stability of elected presidents.

Heirs of the North American presidential model, Latin American constitutions foresee impeachment as the only way to remove a leader, aside from resignation.

For Paulo Peres, political scientist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, it is a measure that should be reserved "exclusively for when the president commits serious crime".

Nonetheless, in the last three decades, nine nations in the region had presidents who did not serve their terms until the end. Among the South American countries, only Uruguay, Chile and Colombia did not see their administrations disrupted during this period.

In the United States, in two centuries, there were only two cases that called for the opening of impeachment proceedings: against Andrew Johnson, in 1868, and Bill Clinton, in 1998 -both were absolved. Richard Nixon, involved in the Watergate scandal, resigned in 1974, before being judged by the Senate.

Of the 14 presidents in the region who saw their terms disrupted, seven were removed through Congress, by way of impeachment proceedings. And among the seven who resigned there are those who left their roles in order to avoid being indicted, such as the Guatemalan Otto Pérez Molina, in 2015.

The Brazilian Fernando Collor was the first to undergo impeachment proceedings in the region, in 1992. There are, however, more severe cases of instability.

In Argentina, during the economic and political turbulence of 2001, the country had five presidents in ten days. And in Ecuador, also due to economic instability, for ten years no president managed to finish his term. One resigned and two underwent impeachment proceedings (one of them accused of insanity).

Translated by SUGHEY RAMIREZ

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