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A Latin American Alternative Buenos Aires, November 1997 Over the past eighteen months a group of Latin American politicians, drawn from the centre and left of the ideological spectrum of our lands, has been meeting in search of the lost paradigm. Aware that both the currently prevailing market fundamentalism and the protected and populist developmentalism of yesteryear are ineffectual nowadays; that specific proposals confined to narrowly defined areas -- economic, political, social or international -- do not sufffice to design a viable, credible and different programme of reform and government; and that little is gained from erecting platforms and issuing proclamations without the political and social coalitions to further them, the participants did not try to rebuild the world overnight. In the four meetings held so far in Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica, work has been patient, with a long-term horizon and without the urge to create artificial and ephemeral consensus. These encounters were initially convened by Jorge G. Castañeda and Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Participating, among others, were Carlos "Chacho" Alvarez, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, John Biehl, José Bordón, Leonel Brizola, Manuel Camacho, Dante Caputo, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, José Dirceu, Marco Aurelio García, Gabriel Gaspar, Tarso Genro, Ciro Gomes, Oscar González, Facundo Guardado, Claudio Fermín, Graciela Fernández Meijide, Vicente Fox, Itamar Franco, David Ibarra, Ricardo Lagos, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, Carlos Ominami, Sergio Ramírez, Federico Storani, Rodolfo Terragno and Vicentinho. These are not signatories of this document but participants -- some more assiduous than others, some more committed than others -- in a dynamic and ambitious process of meetings, still continuing, which aims, through discussion and the confrontation of our ideas -- tentative, initial, abbreviated -- with public opinion, to transform the indispensable denunciation of the present state of affairs into an alternative design. We cannot remain inert in face of the afflictions plaguing our territories. Latin American societies, inherently unequal and split in innumerable ways, are nowadays overhelmingly more so. In some countries --the few-- poverty is shrinking though injustice persists. In others -- most -- the number of citizens condemned to a thankless, unacceptable and undignified existence grows, as do the already abysmal gaps which separate poor from rich, city from countryside, black and brown from white and creole, men from women, and children from the rest of society. Our nascent democracies are constantly threatened by coup attempts, meagre economic results, the understandable apathy of a population overburdened by the effort of surviving from day to day, and a persistent uprootedness. And the unfinished nature of our nationalities is nowadays aggravated by a merciless globalisation, often fictitious or exaggerated by the media, always corrosive of the fragile sovereignties constructed as recently as the last century-and-a-half. It is all this that we must amend, improve, reform -- in short, change. We must do so in a world that offers, simultaneously, more and less resistence to change than before. The narrowing of ideological parameters, together with the imperative of meeting the demands of the flows of capital, goods and people, have reduced the freedom of action of each nation, each government, each party or movement. To ignore this is, apart from futile, harmful to all of us, beneficiaries and victims of the share-out of vices and virtues at the end of the millennium. But the selfsame transformations of the last decades of the century have opened up new possibilities of change, struggle and the raising of utopias which were only barely imaginable in the past. The technologies available only to few, but in theory usable by all; the end of the Cold War and the processes of regional integration; the possibility of stripping from social reform initiatives their 19th-century ideological connotations; the growing awareness that if the world is global it is also one; all these are planks of a feasible scaffolding -- one which allows the construction of countries that are more just and solidary, freer and more aware, at peace with themselves and inserted in a less aggressive and polarised financial, ecological, commercial and juridical environment. We are strongly determined to overcome the neo-liberal policies that have elevated the status of the market from that of an instrument to that of a religion. We distinguish between, on the one hand, the market economy and the need to democratise it, and neo-liberalism on the other. The latter, an extreme expression of the market economy, has failed in its attempt to generate growth and development, and particularly to meet the challenge of achieving a more equitable distribution of income and wealth. It has become evident that it was mistaken to believe that capital was, almost exclusively, the factor determining economic processes. The policies of wholesale privatisation, systematic lowering of taxes and de-regulation of labour markets, so typical of neo-liberal approaches, have in most cases aggravated social tensions and conflicts, further impoverishing broad segments of the population. Our rejection, however, does not lead merely to calling for the humanisation of neo-liberalism but, by proposing the democratisation of the market economy, we put forward an alternative approach. In this endeavour it is evident that dilemmas abound. If reforms are proposed that are too distant from the status quo, it is objected that they are appealing but utopian. If the proposals adhere too closely to the present situation, it is objected that they are viable but insignificant. Thus, all proposed programmes appear to be either illusory or trivial. This is actually a false dilemma which arises from not understanding that changes take places both a step at a time and cumulatively. Any direction of change worth considering can be presented as addressing both issues that are close to the current situation and distant from it. What matters is the direction, and its effects on the people's understanding of their interests, identities and problems. Economic and political globalisation accelerated the worldwide spread of the so-called "single thought": the neo-liberal doctrine, which in Latin America acquired features and exaggerations that were absent in the version applied in the industrialised countries. Several countries of the region adopted the most extreme version of this form of economic organisation, greatly restricting the scope of public policies and state regulation. Neither in the experience of Japan and the other Asian countries which developed market economies, nor in that of Europe, was so narrow a margin left for the pro-active or regulatory mechanisms of the state. Even in the United States, ambits are reserved for state action that are unknown in some Latin American adaptations of the market economy. These do not only reflect the logic of financial capital, which rejects controls and flows to where regulation is weakest, but also the action of national states which, imbued in ideological exaggeration, militantly roll back their regulatory mechanisms. This generates the following sequence: Globalisation creates the conditions for the unrestrained circulation of capital and its almost instant reallocation in the service of maximising profits. The logic of finance, sustained by a daily volume of transactions of US$1,300bn, tends to overrule the logic of production. The ability of speculative capital to circulate towards the least restricted places leads the system as a whole and each country into a downward contest of de-regulation or easing of controls. This trend towards de-regulation becomes stronger when reinforced by the consequences of national policies inspired by extreme versions of neo-liberalism. In such conditions the logic of finance and speculation tends to dominate national economies. Finally, the phenomenon is amplified when it is deduced that the advent of a 'single world' will, sooner or later, render anachronistic the nation state. The public power then submits to the logic of finance and speculation; the destiny of societies escapes the will of its members and we head towards a world without a deliberate, or at least majority, will, in which we steadily lose the power to shape the future. But this is not an unmodifiable future, or a hopeless scenario. It is only a probable future, and as such, it is possible to alter it. However, this becomes unfeasible if the internal sovereignty of the state, (ie its ability to carry out the policies voted by the majority) is not strengthened -- in some cases -- or rebuilt -- in others. A state is not sovereign when a private power has greater capacity to define the objectives of a society, or when the omnipresent logic of finance is imposed upon nations. This sovereign capacity of the state has little to do with the classical debate over its size or degree of intervention; rather, it has to do with the existence of the state as a public power, as the executor of the democratic will. This is the starting-point of our proposal and the measure of its ambition. A PROJECT FOR THE NATION WITH POLITICAL SUPPORT Latin America's linkage with the world economy and the international community, and particularly with so-called financial globalisation and the large movements of capital that criss-cross and shake the world, can be defined on three levels, each supporting the other. At the national level, it is feasible and desirable to establish diverse mechanisms to regulate the speculative capital coming from abroad, together with granting priority to the domestic savings that reduce dependency on those flows. It is possible to increase the margin of (relative) autonomy of the nation states with different entry and exit taxes -- similar to those which exist or have existed in several countries, like Chile, Brazil and Malaysia -- and with incentives to foreign direct investment, as distinct from portfolio flows. Secondly, the processes of regional economic integration -- Mercosur, Colombia & Venezuela -- and the efforts to revive the Central American Common Market -- which we must strengthen, deepen and politicise -- offer additional possibilities of regulating and ordering the relationship with the world networks of capital movement. It is evident that the capacity and efficacy of regulatory measures will be greater at regional level than in each individual country, as the markets involved are greater and more attractive, as is the cost or penalty of exclusion due to rejection of the limitations imposed by the integrated countries. Finally, we must promote at the international level, in the multilateral financial organisations and other forums, proposals of regulation or taxation ( for example, the Tobin tax proposed by the late President François Mitterrand) of the flows of speculative capital. The use of market mechanisms to redefine the relationship of countries and regions with the new phenomena of globalisation is the key to constructing new forms of sovereignty. Not only are we not against regional economic integration, but on the contrary, we believe that it must go further, embrace more ambits and be more ambitious than before. The flaw of integration such as it is being practised nowadays lies in its exclusive confinement to the field of trade; alongside the reduction of tariffs between our countries we must build up the regulatory institutions, the social convergences and the common policies that in other latitudes were constructed at different paces. The only way in which we can avoid the sense of alienation expressed by citizens of other countries vis-à-vis distant and unaccountable bureaucratic agencies is the steady construction of social solidarity between the participating countries. This is particularly pertinent to the case of Mercosur, including in this notion the privileged association -- which must be deepened -- with Chile. We want more integration between ourselves and with our peers, and for this we must foster encounters between the political, social, civic and professional forces of our countries; economic integration is too important to be left in the hands of the bureaucrats of the trade or finance ministries. We propose a democratising development, resting upon the reorganisation and refinancing of a state which is active and provided with ample resources, capable of investing in individuals and of becoming a vigorous and useful promoter of private initiative, particularly of the small and medium-sized enterprises; on the struggle against the rigid and tragic dualism that splits all of our countries; and on a deepening of democracy through institutional reforms that facilitate the implementation of the necessary structural changes and generate, in everyday civic and social life, an authentic libertarian shock. To this day, failure has accompanied the insistence on moderating inequality merely with compensatory social policies, which are incapable of narrowing gaps rooted in the very structure of the economy. We must not fear a freer democracy. We insist on the possibility and necessity of creating political and economic institutions based on new forms of linkage between representative democracy and citizen participation, which adopt human and economic development as their priority. Both the latter and poverty should nowadays be measured, not only in terms of income insufficiency, but chiefly in terms of the lack of basic opportunities for the development of each person. As long as there is no access to the basic goods of development, there will be more poverty. Consequently, priority must go to the political and economic institutions designed to bring in those who are excluded from development. We do not want to return to populist nationalism or to the semi-autarkic import-substitution strategy which ends up protecting the inefficiency of native oligarchies. Nor do we want to return to the inflationary public finances of past times. We defend a strong and democratised state, not the state we have or have had. We want to democratise the market economy and return to a democracy capable of confronting inequality. The market must be the chief allocator of resources, but it is up to the state to create the conditions for the needs of the poorest to be transformed into solvent demands which it is able to process. We reject the notion that the market economy should naturally or necessarily adopt the form of the economic institutions which now prevail in the industrialised democracies. We insist on the possibility and necessity of institutional innovations that can help introduce real economic de-centralisation in societies as hierarchic and exclusionary as our own. We wish to lay the foundations for a new generation of national development projects that overcome the false option between submission to the new rules of the game in the world economy and faith in the developmentalist authoritarianism of a tutor-state. We do not propose a third way because there is no second one. We propose a democratising alternative to the path which falsely boasts of being the only one. This proposal must be sustained by an alliance of the centre and the left, replacing the alliance of the centre and the right which, in so many countries, has backed the conservative economic reforms of the last few years. The task of the centre is to give transforming expression to the non-conformity of the middle class, and to defend the spread of meritocracy in social life; it must devote itself to proving the impossibility, among us, of realising the liberating impulse of the old liberal cause by simply imitating the political and economic institutions of the rich North Atlantic democracies. For its part, the mission of the left consists in confronting inequality through combating dualism, by deepening democracy; instead of reproducing the division between the corporate left of the organised sectors and the populist left of the disorganised ones, this proposal aims at erasing this division which is harmful to all. In recent years there has been an important change in the region's trade-unionism, in which the old notions are being replaced by the so-called "socio-economic unionism". The latter has adopted a less rejectionist stance towards regional integration, demanding the inclusion of social clauses and charters that limit competition between workers by guaranteeing a core of basic rights. Among these are collective bargaining, unionisation, non-discrimination and the abolition of child labour. It also values the participation of workers to ensure the competitiveness and efficiency of companies, always through collective bargaining. This brand of unionism tends to define itself in terms of what we could call the democratisation of globalisation; the extension of "social citizenship" to the workers and the excluded. An alliance between the centre and the left must incorporate the demands of the world of labour, and persuade employers that overcoming unemployment and under-employment will only be made possible by creating productive, quality employment in dynamic economies. A DEMOCRATIC STATE WITH ECONOMIC STRENGTH We need a strong, active and refinanced state, as an enabling condition, not as an enemy, of the democratised market economy. The tax system should allow high public revenues, progressively rising to international levels. It must be kept in mind that nowhere in the world, so far, has it been possible to generate solid social equilibrium with public spending levels below 30% of GDP. In order to reconcile an increase in the level of taxation with the imperatives of private savings and investment, we must grant an important role to the whole array of instruments of taxation. Indirect taxation of consumption, generally through a value-added tax, adequately implemented, can help achieve this objective; its regressive bias can be comfortably offset by the redistributive effect of the social expenditure it will enable. Also particularly important are three types of direct taxation which are strongly redistributive: a single and progressive tax on each citizen's personal consumption (contributing the difference between total earnings and proven savings), a tax on assets, particularly regarding inheritance and gifts, and a tax on natural resources which will capture for the nation part of the rent corresponding to a favourable endowment of resources. Exemplary punishment of large evaders and the broadening of the contributor base will complete the work of re-orienting the tax system. It is a fundamental obligation of the state to optimise the fiscal resources it receives from society. A government in present-day Latin America must totally eradicate corruption, dishonesty and inefficiency so that the administration of each fiscal peso yields maximum productivity in social and human development terms. In some countries an onerous domestic debt compromises an enormous part of the public revenue and attracts exceedingly high interest rates; in that area it is necessary to cleanse the state's patrimonial situation. For this it may be convenient to privatise public enterprises, on the condition that the proceeds be used to reduce the domestic public debt and the interest paid by the government -- and private agents -- at international levels. We reject the recourse to financing current expenditure or the external debt through the sale of state assets. Privatisation is an economic policy instrument of circumstantial character, not a prejudice or an ideological dogma. New public enterprises may be created tomorrow, while others are privatised today. We must also use privatisation to fragment ownership and encourage competition, avoiding the replacement of public monopolies by private monopolies or oligopolies. Above all, however, it is necessary to establish three mechanisms whose absence has translated into high costs for our nations during the privatising euphoria of recent years. First, there must be a long-term national development strategy which lays down the broad parameters for the privatisation, conservation or creation of para-state entities, and defines the norms for their administration -- subject to market criteria. Second, it is indispensable to create oversight and transparency institutions to govern the sale of state assets, not only to avoid classical vices like influence-trafficking, insider information and below-market pricing, but also to ensure that the purchasers are convenient to the national interest, and that their resources proceeds from legitimate businesses and means. Finally, in most of our nations there is a conspicuous absence of the necessary regulatory framework to ensure the adequate functioning of private macro-enterprises which often provide a public service from a semi-monopolistic position. Without that regulatory framework privatisation can result counter-productive and onerous. AGAINST INEQUALITY: OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL The state must ensure for all a basic package of social rights, in the knowledge that social compensation policies can only deepen, never replace, the combat against economic and social dualism: the chasm which in our countries separates the favoured and organised sector of the economy from the backward and disorganised one. These social rights should grant priority to children and education, guaranteeing each child a school which will provide him, apart from instruction, with daily nourishment and medical care. Support for children is necessarily complemented by assistance to mothers, particularly to single mothers heading households or families: in some Latin American countries, close to half of the working-class families are headed by women, while the men act as unstable companions. The state must guarantee equal access to education for each and every one of its citizens. If anything has widened the gap between rich and poor it is the lack of access of the poor and excluded to participation in the educational process up to university level. With intelligent policies, with the modernisation of technologies in the educational processes, with distance, TV and online education, that deficiency can be overcome. A present-day educational process cannot be satisfied with achieving full primary, or at best secondary schooling: it is urgent for the state to set in motion the mechanisms to ensure that public education is accessible to each and every citizen and in the remotest part of the territory, covering all levels of schooling. With citizens equipped with high educational standards, with knowledge and technology, we shall really be ensuring sustainable development. Investment in human development must thus be far more important than other public investments. The mission of a school in a democracy is to examine the possibilities of imagination and life that society is incapable of exploiting. It must be the voice of the future -- of alternative futures -- within the present, and must recognise in the child the future worker an citizen; a small prophet. For this it is indispensable to prevent any specific instance of government -- not even the community itself -- from having a dominant say in the matter of educational content. A system of multiple responsibility, multiple financing, multiple orientation -- federal, state and municipal -- will free the public schools from exclusive dependency on local control and offer them the economic and cultural resources to form free men and women. The basic package of social rights must remain de-linked from employment, so as not to reinforce existing inequalities, financed increasingly from the central tax system and not through payroll taxes that erode company competitiveness and widen the gap between those in our countries who have stable jobs and the vast segments of unemployed or informally employed. The horizon for the future development of these rights must be the generalisation of a principle of social inheritance: all inherit from society, rather than just a few privileged ones from their families. The practical instrument of social inheritance is a social account, opened in the name of each individual. The amount in that account may increase according to two contrasting principles: special needs or vulnerabilities or, on the other hand, special merits, competitively demonstrated. The possibility of raising real wages beyond the limits imposed by increases in productivity has been one of the thorniest and most controverted issues in our discussions. On the one hand, all participants agreed on the need to raise the share of salaries in the national income: it is not enough to raise nominal wages or to increase employment with miserable pay levels. But it is not easy -- though it is not impossible -- to impose wage increases beyond the increases in productivity. All of us agree that the strengthening of wages must rest upon the strengthening of the right to work -- without falling into the straitjacket of job stability -- and reject the dismantling of labour rights. We shall have to resolve adequately the tension beween creating stable, quality employment, and negotiated instruments which will reduce the burden of non-wage labour costs on companies. Only a new cycle of development, sustained by an enriched state and high domestic savings, can reconcile the strengthening wages with an ample labour market. A SOCIETY THAT SAVES, AND A NEW SAVINGS-INVESTMENT LINK Any national development project, and above all an anti-dualist one, requires boosting the level of domestic savings and establishing new links between private savings and productive investment. "Capital is made at home": nowadays no country can rely on the possibility of developing with someone else's money. Foreign investment is all the more useful the less one depends on it. A state-enriching fiscal adjustment (enabling public savings and increases in social spending and public investment in infrastructure) and the public organisation of private savings are two complementary means of mobilising national resources for development. The target should be a level of savings of more than 30% of GDP. Reforming the social security system offers a privileged opportunity to organise and increase private savings. Combining the social security systems with pre-set benefits (which guarantee a fixed pension independently of contributions) and with fixed contributions (which return to the pensioner what was saved while at work) renders feasible a savings sytem which is obligatory, progressive and redistributive. This combines a system of obligatory private saving with a mechanism that redistributes part of the wealthier accounts towards the poorer ones. However, it is not enough to raise savings. It is necessary to open up, at the same time, new channels between savings and productive investment. If even in the richer economies a large portion of the productive potential of savings is dissipated in a financial casino, and production is largely self-financed through the reinvestment of profits, in our countries the link between savings and production is all the more tenuous. Hence it is necessary to establish, beyond the banks and the stockmarkets, an additional avenue for the productive mobilisation of savings: funds, beginning with the social security ones, administered under a régime of autonomous management and financial responsibility. Some would have incentives to invest directly in the small and medium-sized companies of the economic rearguard. Access to credit and financing is extremely limited for the greater part of the population. Hence the traditional financial system must be extended until total territorial coverage is achieved -- coverage of all the population through institutions like savings banks, trusts, credit unions, and particularly micro-credit institutions that guarantee access to this vital and elitist resource for each and every citizen, regardless of their condition of poverty, isolation or educational qualifications. SUSTAINABLE AND ENRICHED STABILITY If the boosting of domestic savings, accompanied by new links between private savings and productive investment, is one of the conditions for a new project of democratising development, another is the consolidation and re-orientation of monetary stability. The stability of the currency is an unrenounceable banner. The traditional imbalances of Latin America's public finances -- with the consequent inflation and external over-indebtedness-- were symptoms of the weakness of a state incapable of imposing upon the affluent classes the cost of investing in individuals and in productive infrastructure. Nonetheless, in the long run and once the stabilisation phase is concluded, the stability of the currency must be freed from its dependency on an overvalued exchange rate, the compression of wages, and the high real domestic interest rates. This is only possible through a fiscal adjustment that enriches the state, which, as it increases the tax burden, reconciles the increase in fiscal revenues and the broadening of the tax base with the strengthening of savings and investment. We need a fiscal adjustment that enriches the state instead of impoverishing it. VANGUARDS & REARGUARDS The proposed development project must combat, and in the long run overcome, the division between productive vanguards and rearguards. No development strategy is acceptable which rests satisfied with the present international share-out of comparative advantages and disadvantages, that imposes upon all the same evolutionary process -- slow, painful and manifestly incapable of closing the gap between rich and poor -- and, within each country, between advanced and backward sectors. A productive vanguard within each country inserts itself within the international network of vanguards, while the rest of the country, presumably pacified by a social welfare policy, awaits its turn. The working majority atones in the purgatory of under-employment or in an industry integrated into the lower echelons of an internationalised production system. It is not necessary to opt between limiting the state to merely regulatory and social activities or adopting a centralised industrial and commercial policy in the manner of the states of north-eastern Asia. The path consists in de-centralising the desirable alliance or association between the public power and its alternative support and promotion policies, with private initiative. Instead of an Asian-style unified strategy, what is needed is a flexible and de-centralised scheme, led by a variety of public and private funds and banks which, with broadly autonomous decision-making power, place themselves between the central government and the small and medium-sized enterprises. Networks of small and medium-sized enterprises, connected by links of cooperative competition, must enjoy the necessary support to consolidate themselves and become integrated in the world network of productive vanguards. The aim of this policy of daring, de-centralised alliances between governments and companies is to combat economic and social dualism. A technological vanguard, located in both public and private enterprises, must carry out two tasks: one is to reduce the dependency of international competitiveness on the compression of wages; the other entails advancing in the production of equipments and materials that the small and medium-sized enterprises of the rearguard are capable of assimilating. The objective is active promotion of cutting-edge economic practices, of permanent innovation, the reduction of the contrast between supervision and execution, and the meshing of cooperation and competition beyond the traditional vanguard sector. Enlarging the vanguard demands a new pattern of linkages between the public power and private initiative. Elsewhere, the successful development in many rich countries of family-based agriculture through partnership between governments and small farmers is an example to follow in our agricultural sectors. Agrarian reform is not an archaism or an exception; it is a central issue. The counterpart to anti-dualist development is the imposition of market logic upon all agents of the private economy. All too often, our capitalism is transformed into a caricature of a market economy by private cartels and oligopolies tolerated or protected by the state, direct or indirect subsidies obtained by those who enjoy public favour, nepotism in large family enterprises, the thankless treatment of small shareholders, and the reduction of stockmarkets to instruments to attract capital without exposing the control of companies. We must not allow the discourse of privatisation of the public sector to become a pretext to allow the state to continue in the service of private interest, and the private sector to continue enjoying undue state protection and support. On the contrary, the re-orientation of state support towards small and medium-sized enterprises, a vigorous anti-trust legislation in favour of competition and against private or public oligopolies, the defence of small shareholders against controlling shareholders, the fiscal penalisation of closed family control of large firms, the extinction of shares without voting rights, and the disclosure of the benefits enjoyed by top executives -- all these are means to impose competition upon those who claim that they want it. They complement the task of bridging the gap between vanguard and rearguard. Such an economic programme is compatible with non-dogmatic free trade. And "non-dogmatic" means that the de-privatisation of the state and the deepening of democracy will enable strategic selectivity in trade liberalisation processes, preventing selective or temporary tariff protection from serving solely as a means of transforming political influence into economic privilege. It implies that the boosting of domestic savings will free our countries from the vicious circle of dependency on financial capital attracted by high domestic rates of interest, while favouring the inflow of capital destined to increasing production and productivity. It contrasts with the prevalence of rigid distinctions between the treatment of capital (free to circulate) and that of labour (imprisoned within the nation-state). It entails the duty to lobby within the organisations of the Bretton Woods system to prevent them from acting only as executive arms of the dominant ideas. The anti-dualist development programme is based on the deepening of democracy. We do not want a dosed democracy. The strengthening of democracy demands institutional innovation. A leading component of this programme to deepen democracy is electoral authenticity and the strengthening of organised and lasting civic mobilisation. It is not enough to respect popular suffrage: it is also necessary to reduce the influence of money in politics. For this, we must demand the public financing of campaigns and the transparency of allowed private contributions. It is decisive to make compatible the indispensable austerity of electoral campaigns in poor countries with the need to prevent corrupt or illicit financing, be this from interest groups or from the drugs trade. The difficulty of achieving an adequate balance in this respect in other countries does not weaken the imperative of achieving it in our own. THE POWER OF THE MEDIA At the same time, we must open up the media to society in each country. In most Latin American countries we have moved from overbearing state control, in particular of the electronic and radio media, to the overwhelming power of huge private monopolies. In the absence of adequate regulatory frameworks and of the fragmentation originating in the cable and DTH systems in industrialised countries, it is indispensable to promote measures which, without detracting from the freedom of expression and the private ownership of the media, will ensure the plurality and access to which Latin American societies aspire. This can be achieved, among other things, by restricting the concentration of concessions or frequencies, through the de-centralisation and diversification of media ownership and control over the means of information production and dissemination. It is also necessary to broaden the access to the mass media of political parties, social movements and diverse sectors of society, including cultural, ethnic and ideological minorities. STRENGTHENED SOCIETY, TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT An essential ingredient of a programme to strengthen democracy is the accountability of those who rule. On the one hand, we must multiply instruments such as popular initiatives to revoke mandates or call referendums, the parliamentary accountability of secretaries of state, an independent and legitimised prosecutorial service capable of challenging the government in court, and the creation of summary judicial solutions for abuses of power. These resources will allow us to bridge the gap between one election and the next, and modify the equation in which democracy is equal to sporadic elections. Also, the appointment of autonomous instances within the state -- both in the area of regulation and that of oversight of corruption -- ensures that there will be the necessary distance between the invigilators and the vigilated. Separately, at the base of political and administrative life, we must promote the participation of communities in the formulation and implementation of budgets and government programmes -- particularly local budgets and governments -- taking care to prevent the opportunity to participate from becoming a transfer of power to mobilised minorities. Brazil's experiences in this respect are particularly interesting. REFORMING PRESIDENTIALISM An additional element in the democratisation programme is the reform of the presidential régime. Without sharing the predilection of some for parliamentarianism, which tends to fragment, we consider that Latin American presidentialism, copied from the US model, is not entirely adequate to our societies. Hence, if we retain the presidentialist system because of its anti-oligarchic potential, we must cure it of its greatest deficiency as regards the speedy practice of democracy: the fact that it favours legislative impasse over reform programmes. We must endow the presidentialist political system with mechanisms for the rapid resolution of impasses affecting key programmes, and to strengthen the decision-making and transforming power of the state. Among such mechanisms is a series of linked instruments: legislative privilege or "fast track" treatment for legislative initiatives of a programmatic or strategic nature, as distinct from minor legislation; the use of plebiscites or referendums called by agreement between the two powers, apart from the abovementioned citizen initiatives; and other mechanisms of direct democracy, reconciling the latter with representative democracy. A LIBERTARIAN SHOCK The last proposal of this political programme consists in producing a libertarian shock at the foundations of national life, or to put it another way, to provoke long and continuous outbursts from civil society which will allow the dispossessed citizens of Latin America to take cognisance of their rights and defend them. In our fragmented and heterogeneous societies, almost no-one is only a citizen: the number of sectors, minorities, regions and ethnic groups that suffer some discrimination or oppression additional to that of society as a whole, obliges us, and encourages us to a policy of constant ferment. Women, youths, workers, indigenous communities, blacks and mulattos, minorities with certain sexual preferences, oppressed ethic groups, marginalised religious sects, and many other groups deprived of their full rights and aspirations, must be encouraged to mobilise, to conquer space and rights and interests. We must multiply the practical instruments for citizens to know and vindicate their rights, and to confront the racial, ethnic and gender prejudices that divide society and intimidate people. We cannot separate the correction of class disadvantage from the compensation for racial and sexual disadvantage. The accumulation of these disadvantages in certain groups must be the first target of a liberating policy. Ahead of us still lies a long march. The exercise initiated in Mexico City at the beginning of 1996 is only just beginning to take shape, and will not pass its crucial test until the nascent encounter of ideas and forces, sensibilities and theories, translates into a support coalition, an electoral victory and a programme of government. Though not yet imminent, that moment is ever less distant. The alliances are being built; the intermittent and partial victories are becoming more frequent; the ideas are making way. The idea of a single
path to economic prosperity and political freedom has spread all over the world.
Reformers were at best left with the task of humanising that path; their
programme became that of their adversaries, discounting half. We, instead,
propose a different course. It associates a productivist proposal with a
redistributive strategy; it equates the deepending of democracy with overcoming
social and economic dualism; it combines a strong, active and refinanced state
with the de-centralised support for small and medium-sized enterprises,
spreading advanced economic practices beyond the frontiers of the traditional
economic vanguards. It lays the foundation for a high-intensity popular policy
and radically democratises the market economy. It entails a sequence, gradual
but cumulative, of changes in economic, political and social institutions. It
does not consist in the humanisation of the inevitable. It is, rather, the
alternative -- possible and necessary -- to a destiny we do not deserve. |