Bolivian President Evo Morales at a press conference at the government palace, La Paz, Bolivia, Feb. 24, 2016 (AP photo by Juan Karita).
On Sunday, Feb. 21, Bolivians rejected a referendum that would have allowed long-serving President Evo Morales to run for a fourth term in office, continuing a recent trend across Latin America of citizens voting for change. As the country’s first president of indigenous descent in a nation where between 40 percent and 62 percent of the citizenry self-identify as indigenous, Morales remains popular but is term-limited and must leave office in 2019. The president anticipated victory. What he did not factor in, apparently, was being overtaken by Latin America’s anti-incumbency wave. Since his first election in 2006, Morales has assiduously [...]
A delegate gives an unmarked ballot to a voter at a polling station during the constitution referendum, El Alto, Bolivia, Feb. 21, 2016 (AP photo by Juan Karita).
Last weekend, Bolivian voters went to the polls and did something remarkable: They told their sitting president—a popular and successful one—that they will not allow him to remain in power for as long as he wishes. The voters’ rejection of a constitutional amendment that would have allowed President Evo Morales to run for a fourth consecutive term came as a painfully unexpected blow to a politician grown accustomed to landslide victories and popular adulation. The vote sent shockwaves across Bolivia. More importantly, it sent an important message to other politicians with autocratic tendencies in the region: Latin American democracy is [...]
A sign that reads in Spanish "fight to return Cristina's leadership" during a protest against President Mauricio Macri's economic measures, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 17, 2015 (AP photo by Victor R. Caivano).
When Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, presented a serious proposal to foreign bondholders last week, he took one more step along a path that leads away from the country’s dozen years of leftist populism at the hands of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner. In fact, Macri’s offer to creditors, whatever its ultimate fate, represents a blow to the very structure of Kirchnerismo, whose economic and foreign policies he is dismantling with breathtaking speed. Macri’s election in 2015, as is now evident, follows a global trend of dissatisfaction that favors candidates from outside [...]
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