UN polls shows more than half would choose a return to dictatorship if it meant an end to poverty.

United Nations: Latin Americans have largely lost faith in democracy and would look favourably on a return to autocratic government if it offered a better life, a new United Nations report shows.

Latin America was rife with military coups and dictatorships 25 years ago but today is the only region within the developing world whose leaders are almost exclusively democratically elected.

Yet because poverty and economic inequality remain rife, more than half those surveyed said they would accept a non-democratic leader – even one who sometimes went beyond the law – if it brought them greater prosperity.

The finding, contained in “Democracy in Latin America: Towards a Citizens’ Democracy,” has been received with alarm by UN chiefs.

“The solution to Latin America’s ills does not lie in a return to authoritarianism. It lies in a stronger and deeper-rooted democracy,” said Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, in a video address played at the report’s launch yesterday in Lima, Peru.

The countries surveyed were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. More than a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line in 15 of these countries, and more than half are destitute in seven of them.

This is threatening the very survival of democracy in Latin America, the report’s authors warn.

“There is unease within democracy,” said Dante Caputo, a former foreign minister of Argentina and the report’s lead author. “Overcoming this requires that we use the most valuable instrument that democracy offers us: freedom . . . freedom to know why a system that is virtually a synonym for equality exists side by side with the highest level of inequality in the world.”

Sponsored by the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the European Union, the study involved interviews with 231 leaders of Latin American society, including 32 presidents and former presidents of countries and major regional institutions. Polled with a series of questions on government systems were 18,643 people.

The report reveals many people feel political parties serve only an elite, while corruption impedes social mobility.

“They’re disgruntled with democracy’s failure to produce results in terms of their daily economic life,” said Bill Orme, a UNDP spokesman.

“People are saying, ‘We have elections, yes, but I can’t start a business without paying a bribe, and if I go to court, I’ll lose unless I am big and powerful.'”

But he argued this means people want a strengthening of democracy.

“Authoritarian doesn’t necessarily mean they want [General Augusto] Pinochet,” he added, in reference to the former Chilean dictator. “It does mean that the strength of support for democratic ideals is not that deep. But if you ask people whether they want press freedom, they say yes. So it’s more that they want democracy to go further.”

Torture, murder and the unexplained disappearance of individuals occurred under Gen. Pinochet’s rule, but his regime also instituted market reforms that gave the country a rapidly improving economy.

Regional experts say Latin Americans have that kind of economic discipline in mind when they express nostalgia for authoritarian regimes, but warn that dictatorial rule is no guarantee of prosperity.

“The Chilean political culture was one that didn’t tolerate very much corruption. So there is a benefit there even under a dictatorship [alongside] a real crackdown on civil liberties and human rights,” said Martin Andersen, senior research specialist with Freedom House, a New York-based monitoring group.

“In Argentina, the military was very corrupt and they also mismanaged the economy. The question is what recourse do you have if the people who are running the economy also have the guns? That question gets lost in this equation.”

The report says Latin Americans’ disillusionment with democracy has led to rising civil unrest and falling voter turnout, especially among the young.

“The first generation of Latin Americans to come of age in functioning democracies has experienced virtually no per capita income growth,” the report says.

Since 2000, steep drops in public support have forced four elected presidents in the 18 countries to quit before the end of their terms, it points out.

Just 43% of those surveyed fully support the idea of democracy, while 30.5% express ambivalence.

Almost 55% say they would support an “authoritarian” regime over “democratic” government if authoritarian rule could “resolve” their economic problems.

Steven Edwards, National Post, April 22, 2004