The fundamental principle in Latin America that any citizen could become president is again under threat
armed forces overthrew Juan Perón, Argentina’s populist president, driving him into exile. They banned him and his party from the election that eventually followed, a prohibition which remained in effect until 1973. A doddery Perón was then re-elected, but military rule soon returned. Apra, a Peruvian party with tendencies akin to Peronism, was similarly banned for decades. So, during the cold war, were many Communist parties.
Despite its charade of holding elections, Venezuela is widely seen as a dictatorship. But the practice of narrowing the electoral field is spreading in democracies in the region. In Guatemala last year Thelma Aldana, a popular former attorney-general who had helped to jail a corrupt president, was kept off the presidential ballot by a charge of embezzlement her supporters say is bogus.
In Peru’s election in 2016 the electoral authority barred a well-placed candidate on a technicality. José Domingo Pérez, a Peruvian prosecutor, last month asked a court to ban for two and a half years Popular Force, the party of Keiko Fujimori, a former presidential candidate. He claims that it is a “criminal organisation” because it tried to cover up a $1.2m donation from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company, in 2011.
Either would be a dangerous course. Disqualifying Mr Arce would deny legitimacy to the election’s winner and condemn Bolivia to years of conflict. Far better would be for Ms Áñez to back Carlos Mesa, a former president who was Mr Morales’s main rival last year. She should recall the analogy of Argentina in 1955. “Instead of destroying Peronism …persecution swiftly reinvigorated it,” concluded David Rock, a historian.
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