hard
talk
forum Let the voters decide. Executives should
Patricio Navia
Limit the power of presidents,
not their term in office.
Let them run. The problem following a trend that began with In most countries—except for Mex-
is not presidential re-election. The then-President Alberto Fujimori’s ico and Costa Rica—term limits do
problem is presidentialism. interpretation of the 1993 Peruvian not generally apply to legislators or
As long as Latin American democ- constitution. Subsequent reforms in to local and provincial officeholders.
racies continue to be based on insti- Argentina in 1994 and in Brazil, un- (Venezuela eliminated them with its
tutional arrangements—both for- der the first Fernando Henrique Car- recent referendum.)
mal and informal—that concentrate doso administration (1994–98) consol- To be sure, allowing officeholders
power in the executive, democratic idated the trend. Today, the practice other than the executive to seek re-
development will be undermined. of limiting leaders to two consecu- election is generally seen as a good
This concentration of power carries tive terms has extended to all major and convenient feature in well-func-
the seeds of instability that will hin- countries in the region, with the no- tioning democracies. It increases re-
der, if not reverse, democratic con- table exceptions of Mexico and Chile. sponsiveness and places the correct
solidation, regardless incentives on office-
of whetherpresidential holders to be account-
termlimitsareimposed. able to their constit-
It underlines both the uents. Without the
perils of authoritarian- possibility of re-election,
ism and the lack of ac- representatives lack the
countability that accom- incentive to serve those
pany governance in the who voted them in. The
region. prospect of re-election
In recent months, the i mplies that represen-
debateoverpresidential tatives can be “fired”
re-election has been fu- by constituents who
eled by the open effort feel they have not been
to eliminate term lim- served well. Efforts to in-
its championed by Ven- troduce term limits were
ezuelan President Hugo initially framed as pro-
Chávez and the more moting responsiveness.
concealed campaign Butitturnsoutthatthey
by Colombian President do not have a significant
Álvaro Uribe to do the effect in limiting polit-
same. Recent constitu- ical careers: officehold-
tional assemblies in Ec- ers who are term-limited
uador and Bolivia have simply switch to other
set presidential re-elec- elected positions to con-
tion limits at two terms, (Con TInUEd on PAgE 20)
18 Americas Quarterly SPRING 2009
