Bello – The return of rigged elections in Latin America https://t.co/4yXJS4TPMY
— Democracy Digest (@demdigest) July 30, 2020
Latin America is facing a ‘decline of democracy’ under the Covid pandemic, recent reports suggest. Electoral prohibitionism is its latest manifestation.
With the spread of mass democracies across Latin America in the 1980s, rigging of elections seemed a thing of the past. Any citizen could become president. Now that fundamental democratic principle is under threat, The Economist cautions:
Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa were less than fully democratic in office, undermining the separation of powers and riding roughshod over opponents. Their critics fear that if allowed back, they would hold power for keeps. But democracy cannot be saved by curbing it.
