These writers, journalists and thinkers that don’t really understand Africa, but like to think that they do, and then go on to show their inability to grasp what’s going on through their writing, really annoy me. If I didn’t believe that debate, dialogue and discussion were by far the best way of learning and bringing about change, I would ask them all to put their pens and cameras down. But debate is informative so let it be …

Did you see Simon Robinson’s article in the European version of Time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901051205-1134693,00.html) ? I have pasted a copy of it below my comment. A friend of mine mentioned in his blog that he thinks it’s a good article on Africa. I’m disappointed. The idea that democracy is simple, in a place as complex and as torn apart as Africa is just a shallow idea. Living here, I see every day, the levels at which democracy and governance are so hard to make function in a continent like Africa. The leadership needs and requirements to make Africa succeed a very much different to what a western country would need. I agree that there is largely a void of such skills that you end up with people resorting to a totalitarian approach as the ‘easiest’ way to deal with things in the absence of those competencies. Let me elaborate:

To run an African country must be complex. I don’t claim to ever know how to run one, or that I will ever do so some day. No way! But you have to deal with several key factors in a very deep way:
• A history of oppression and abuse
• Tribal tensions that were engineered to keep people fighting each other – and they do not go away over night
• Poverty, and the pressures it puts on people to acquire and hold on to resources to stay out of poverty [those resources often go hand in hand with (political/military) power]
• Cultivating a culture of democracy

I could probably write a long thesis on these points, but I won’t!

You can’t reduce the leadership challenges of Africa to just ‘leaders’ and institutions. Institutions can be manipulated, no matter how strong they are. Look at the institutions in a ‘strong’ democracy like the US. Are they not being manipulated … ? I think so! I also think that for the most part, American people at large are like a frog in a pot of boiling water and will only notice that the water’s getting hot when it’s too late.

Anyway, back to Africa, I read the article below by Simon Robinson and he just makes Africa sound so simple, and by virtue, its people stupid and powerless … it’s disgusting. Here are my objections with his perspective:
1. statements by leaders like Clinton of praising African leaders when they don’t really understand Africa set the wrong tone. You get mad men like Museveni being made to look like models of what the rest of us should aspire you. Forget that for the most part, Museveni had suspended democracy in Uganda. Even now as he allows it to make a come back, he’s not tolerating any opposition. Yet you’ll find the noise being made against him to be really a slap on the wrist. If mugabe had put the opposition leader in jail before an election, imagine the outcry and reaction and action [sanctions etc] from the ‘west.’ The noise would be so loud, your ear drums would pop!

Yet putting the Musevenis on pedestals reinforces what they do and their tactics and ways of sucking up to the west as the way forward if you’re to stay in power, and have the world’s big shots back you!

2. You also have to understand the underlying motivations in Africa and in African society and politics. It is not always as simple as saying people want to stay in power. That’s true in some cases, but there are many other reasons for it too … some of the issues that these ‘leaders’ put on the table are bona fide, important issues that need to be addressed, but then again addressing them is not always in the interests of big business, western foreign policy and other excuses. So they are brushed aside and the leaders are just brashed as power hungry and their cases are made illegitimate. The inconsistencies are amazing. It’s pick and choose. So as partners in developing democracy in Africa, the west often makes itself irrelevant because of how they will treat the same situations in country by country with such colossal differences.

Again, allow me to make comparisons between Zimbabwe and another African country – Kenya. Zimbabwe had a constitutional referendum in 2000 which the government lost. The president in Zimbabwe, as in Kenya, accepted the result, did not suspend elections or his cabinet or people’s right to meet. Yet Zimbabwe’s elections a few months later in which people voted and the government wasn’t overthrown, were called ‘unfree and unfair.’ Kenya’s president has, in my eyes, responded very undemocratically to the whole referendum thing. Today they decided that attending opposition rallies was a threat to national security. No one’s really bothered about asking Kenya to behave herself. So if you’re a politician in Zimbabwe, you take those cautions you receive when you ban opposition rallies as just ‘unfairness and bias’ against you. So it doesn’t help to foster that culture of democracy. Your influence as a partner is zero because you’ve shown such inconsistency in reacting to similar breaches of democratic processes.

With all due respect, constitutional issues in many countries just confuse things. People almost never vote on the constitution presented. They use the occasion to show the sitting government the finger. Constitutions are complex documents and their drafting, such complex and delicate processes that you can't assumt everyone will understand the legal implications of a document that lawyers themselves disagree so much on their natures and interpretations. Look at the recent examples of Zimbabwe, Kenya, France, the Netherlands … so for Robinson to look at the constitutional process in Kenya and use it as a benchmark for measuring democractic process - - hogwash!

3. by the way, Mr. Robinson, the opposition in Zambia last won an election in the early 1990s. since then, they have NOT won an election. That opposition became government and has stayed in power ever since. So please don’t get your facts confused. They once again show how much you don’t understand what you’re really talking about. You’re almost as bad as those people who point to Botswana as a model of African democracy! Ha!

4. Robinsons once again gets it wrong. Look at his analysis of Zimbabwe in this paragraph:
“Take Zimbabwe. Even five years ago, the country boasted one of the best judiciaries in Africa. Voters could make their voices heard, as they did in 2000 when they rejected a new constitution backed by President Robert Mugabe. The independent press was amongst the feistiest on the continent. Over the past few years, though, Mugabe and his henchmen have bludgeoned the opposition into near submission, rigged elections, closed down the independent press and forced most of the country's best judges into retirement. Mugabe, once hailed as a great new African leader himself, has proved more powerful than his country's institutions. “

First of all, the judiciary that was in place in Zimbabwe was still largely a white judiciary from pre-Independence days that protected a very conservative agenda that was not in the interests of most Zimbabweans. The same people who had legislated to maintain and uphold apartheid in Zimbabwe were somehow amongst the “best judiciaries in Africa.” When they disagreed with the government, and left, or ‘were forced out,’ and replaced by capable black Zimbabwean judges, our judiciary is suddenly not credible? Because it doesn’t just rule in favor of white minority or foreign interests… ? when was the last time Robinson was in Zimbabwe, or bought a Zimbabwean independent newspaper? Who is he kidding? There are still independent newspapers in Zimbabwe that are very critical of the government in many ways. We’ve never had private TV or radio. Even in the good days. So there’s no benchmark there. One newspaper was closed down in around 2002, for refusing to register with the regulatory authority. Every other paper registered and is still in business. Yet we are told that all the free press has been shut down. Again, another lie that western media likes to promote. I am not saying journalists here write have all the freedoms in the world and it’s an easy environment to be a journalist. Not at all. But again, there’s reasons for that, and if people understand those reasons, they can make meaningful contributions to addressing those problems. Not advocating for sanctions or punishments to fix things. That never works. But those that don’t understand end up writing trashy generalizations about Africa like Mr. Robinson just did. my question is, how would he like to see the judiciary in zimbabwe therefore ... ? full of old white judges who are good at matters of the law [zimbabwean trained black judges are just as good and competent, and don't always agree of rule in favor of the government], and yet want to rule in contra to the interests of the majority of citizens? it cannot work. not in africa. not in any country. (there's a reason why the appointment of supreme court judges in the US is such a hot issue ... )

5. finally, why are these journalists [Michael Wines of the NY Times fame, as well as Rachel Swans and many others who write for different newspapers as the “Africa specialists”] always dodging the core real issues affecting democracy and good governance and good living in Africa. The issues haven’t changed for over 500 years – the desire to have and control those resources that flow out of Africa. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that democracy in Africa is by and large corrupted by the need to access and control those resources. Often in arrangements involving parties on both sides of the equation. But it’s much, much easier and more acceptable to write about failed leadership and weak institutions. It keeps the dogs of the scent. And it keeps us obsessing about voting for the next loser in Africa and missing the real point. Once you raise the topic, you’re labeled an out of touch nationalist who isn’t in touch with the needs of today’s Africa – modern democracies, run by western educated technocrats [if I hear of the fact that Liberia’s new president studied at Harvard just one more time, I’ll throw my TV out the window!] focusing on building institutions and leadership! Blah!

Good leaders and institutions are important yes. But also understanding the underlying, fundamental issues is important as is having the guts to be fair and objective in dealing with the governance challenges in Africa across the board, not in isolated cases country by country while we pretend that other villains are the “hope for our continent’s future!”

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901051205-1134693,00.html

ESSAY
Africa's Game of Follow the Leader
Why strong institutions matter most when once promising politicians start to fail

By SIMON ROBINSON

Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005
For brutal honesty on the causes of Africa's woes, it's hard to beat Chinua Achebe's The Trouble with Nigeria. Written during the country's rowdy 1983 election campaign, the book, just 68 pages long, is an outpouring of frustration at Nigeria's problems. You only have to read the contents page to tap into Achebe's angst. The author — best known for Things Fall Apart, a powerful work of fiction that almost half a century after its release still tops lists of Africa's greatest novels — uses blunt prose to deliver the message in Trouble. Chapter headings telegraph his views: "False Image of Ourselves"; "Social Injustice and the Cult of Mediocrity"; "Indiscipline"; "Corruption." Achebe lays out his case in the book's very first sentence: "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership."

Many Nigerians agreed, and Africans across the continent reached similar conclusions about their own countries. Which is why, in the mid-1990s, when a new generation of leaders emerged, Africans dared to hope that things could finally be changing. People like Issaias Afewerki in Eritrea, Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia promised a new style of leadership that focused on building economies and democratic nations instead of shoring up their power by force and ensuring that they and their friends got rich. When President Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he touted this generation as Africa's great hope.

The reality has rarely matched the hype. Within months of Clinton's visit, Rwanda and Uganda had invaded Congo, and Eritrea and Ethiopia had gone to war with each other. While some leaders — notably Museveni and Zenawi — still did enough to remain darlings of Western donors, even they have now begun to slide. In Ethiopia, Zenawi has sent troops onto the streets to stop opposition supporters protesting the results of a general election last May. In Uganda, an increasingly dictatorial Museveni announced two weeks ago that he will run for office again, following Parliament's decision to scrap term limits that would have forced him to retire. That long-expected bulletin came just days after his main opponent was thrown in prison on charges — vehemently denied — of treason and rape. Demonstrations have been temporarily banned.

So, Achebe's lament still holds true, then? No. Fixing Africa was never as simple as changing its leaders. And that's why the fall from grace of Museveni and Zenawi may prove a positive thing, even if they hurt their own countries in the short term. It's a reminder, especially to Western countries that invested so much in Africa's new leaders, that strong institutions are far more important than personalities. Good leaders can turn bad if they stay in office long enough: faults become obvious; people compromise to hold onto power; supporters get frustrated with the inevitable slow pace of change. It's not just Africa. There are plenty of erstwhile supporters of Tony Blair who would be happy to see the back of him. The same goes for one-time fans of Jacques Chirac and George Bush. A key difference is that the institutions in the countries those men lead — parliament, the judiciary, the press — are bigger than any one person and counterbalance the worst excesses. That's still not a given in Africa.

Take Zimbabwe. Even five years ago, the country boasted one of the best judiciaries in Africa. Voters could make their voices heard, as they did in 2000 when they rejected a new constitution backed by President Robert Mugabe. The independent press was amongst the feistiest on the continent. Over the past few years, though, Mugabe and his henchmen have bludgeoned the opposition into near submission, rigged elections, closed down the independent press and forced most of the country's best judges into retirement. Mugabe, once hailed as a great new African leader himself, has proved more powerful than his country's institutions.

There is progress, of course. Kenyans last week rejected a new constitution backed by lackluster President Mwai Kibaki — elected just three years ago in a wave of reformist zeal — because of concerns that the proposals vested too much power in his office. (Kibaki promptly sacked his entire Cabinet.) Voters in Ghana, Senegal and Zambia have all elected opposition parties since the turn of the century. Such peaceful shifts prove that institutions in some countries are becoming strong enough to survive change and are not merely dependent upon, or at the mercy of, whoever sits in the presidential palace. Ethiopia and Uganda are also vastly better off than they were before Zenawi and Museveni took power; the backsliding hasn't wrecked all the good work the men have done. But their tainted legacies are a lesson. "A leader's no-nonsense reputation might induce a favorable climate but in order to effect lasting change, it must be followed up with a radical program of social and economic reorganization," writes Achebe in The Trouble with Nigeria. In other words, good leaders are good, but strong institutions are even better.

Now don't you dare marry more than one wife ... especially you crazy african men out there! you're contribute to social unrest, riots and burned cars. and who would want that?

this article is ridiculous! france is ripped apart by social tensions, mainly based on issues of equity and economics and, at the same time an incredible opportunity for genuine dialogue and transformation opens up and what do people in political leadership do...? blame it on the number of wives a man has? young french men are angry because their society does not give them opportunities to participate and engage in productive activities. they respond violently to years of picked on and stereotyped as trouble causers; they are unhappy with being referred to [by government ministers] as 'scum' or filth; they are marginalized and not made to feel like they belong where they have settled. they are threatened with deportation should they break the law. yet the root cause of this trouble is polygamy? and we have people preaching to us in africa about creating diverse, multi-racial [emphasized more than multi-ethnic] societies ... what for? so that immigrants to made themselves at home through brutal means 300 years ago can feel at home, but those who are trying to make them feel at home on other continents are to the thrown out, together with their "filthy" cultural practices. but we have to create multi-racial societies that comfortable accommodate other people's cultural practices -- democracy, religion, 'modernization'

why does something about this whole picture JUST DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME!

oh no, hold on dumi -- it's simple. tell you people to limit the number of women they sleep with, and everything with be ok.

the article in the new york times points to this ridiculous claim made by some french thought and political leaders that Polygamy is a key factor in this french unrest! in all fairness, there have been effort to address the other issues too and to highlight them, but the fact that this one gets this much air time repulses me!

d.



Immigrant Polygamy Is a Factor in French Unrest, a Gaullist Says


By ELAINE SCIOLINO <http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ELAINESCIOLINO&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ELAINESCIOLINO&inline=nyt-per>

Published: November 18, 2005

PARIS, Nov. 17 - In the search for explanations for the riots that have rocked France , some politicians and intellectuals are pointing to a novel one: polygamy.

In an interview with RTL radio on Wednesday, Bernard Accoyer, the parliamentary leader of President Jacques Chirac's Gaullist party, the Union for a Popular Movement, called polygamy "certainly one of the causes, though not the only one" for France's worst unrest in four decades. He blamed the former Socialist government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin or being "strangely lax" in enforcing the ban on polygamy. Pierre Cardo, a deputy in Parliament from Mr. Chirac's party, said that the most difficult juvenile delinquents were "often products of polygamous families."

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, one of the country's most eminent historians and the permanent secretary of the Académie Française, was even more pointed. "Everyone is astonished; why are African children in the streets and not at school?" she said on Russian television in Moscow on Sunday. "Why can't their parents buy an apartment? It's clear why. Many of these Africans, I tell you, are polygamous. In an apartment, there are three or four wives and 25 children." Even the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has suggested that polygamy makes it harder for North African Arabs and sub-Saharan Africans to integrate into French life.

"There are more problems for a child of an immigrant of black Africa or of North Africa than for a son of a Swede, a Dane or a Hungarian," said Mr. Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian father, in an interview with France 2 television on Nov. 10. "Because culture, because polygamy, because social origins contribute to more hardships for him."

The remarks have set off an uproar in France and charges of racism. In a statement on Wednesday, MRAP, an antiracist group, accused political leaders on the right of "playing an extremely dangerous role in feeding our country with the racism that causes the damage we know."

No official figures are available on polygamy in France, although some women's rights groups estimate the number of polygamous families as high as 30,000. They come mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, including Mali, Senegal and Gambia. The practice is less prevalent among the much larger and older immigrant population of North Africa.

Bigamy is illegal in France, and punishable by a year in prison and a $53,000 fine. But the practice of polygamy among immigrant families from countries where it is part of the culture and tradition is more complicated. Polygamy was effectively banned by a 1993 law that prevented second wives from getting visas. But it created difficult situations for families that had lived in France for years, and pushed many wives to enter France illegally. Polygamy is therefore largely tolerated, particularly if the marriages took place before the 1993 law went into effect.

To end polygamous living arrangements, local authorities encourage wives to seek separate accommodations. "We tell them, 'It may be legal in Africa, but in France, it's not,' " said a City Hall spokeswoman who would not allow her name to be used, citing City Hall policy.

The issue also has caused a furor in the French news media. Le Monde put the article on its front page Thursday afternoon. An editorial Thursday in Le Courrier Picard, a northern French newspaper, said, "Then like this, it's because Papa is polygamous that the son burns cars." It called such statements "a call for a new and hypocritical apartheid."

In an effort to calm the waters, Jean-François Copé, a Chirac spokesman, sought to distance the government from remarks linking polygamy and the unrest. "You cannot draw such a tight link between polygamy and urban violence," he said Thursday in a radio interview. "The crisis of disadvantaged neighborhoods has multiple causes."

Community groups acknowledge there is a problem of polygamous families, but say the causes of the riots run much deeper. "A culprit has to be found," said Claudette Bodin, co-president of Afrique Partenaires Services, a support group for families from sub-Saharan countries in France, in a telephone interview. "It's easier to accuse polygamous families than to question your own society." Daniel Vaillant, the Socialist mayor of the 18th Arrondissement, which has a large number of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, also said the problem was much larger. "You cannot say that polygamy created or aggravated the riots," he said in a telephone interview. "This is transferring the blame." The root problems, he said, were "those of jobs, of housing, of bitterness."

Ariane Bernard and Hélène Fouquet contributed reporting for this article.

latin american countries seem to be leading in defining a different, more independent poltical agenda, less dicated to from D.C. i guess it helps that there's a huge leadership defecit in washington, and also that there are leadership gain in those countries i guess. plus the fact that people can see that most policies prescribed from places like Washington DC are not in their best interests. i am interested though in the perspective of people in countries like uruguay, argentina, venezuela and brazil to learn about how they seem the impacts of the shift in the outlook and perspective of their political leadership. is life much different from the days when policies were more dominated by world bank and IMF idealogies [not that they are completely free now]? what are the long term prospects?

the rest of us (especially in africa) have a lot to learn from latin america. the article below does a good job of breaking it down, although it is from the perspective of a major US newspaper.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/chitribts/20051031/ts_chicagotrib/bushheadingintodenofleftists

Bush heading into den of leftists
By Colin McMahon Tribune foreign correspondentMon Oct 31, 9:40 AM
ET

For a guy with the headaches President Bush faces, quiet time away and a pleasant visit with friends might be just the ticket. Too bad Bush is booked for South America this week.

The fourth Summit of the Americas will bring Bush into territory that is not quite enemy but far less allied than before. Half the hemisphere's leaders have changed since Bush took office in 2001 promising to make Latin America a priority. The region's politics have changed too.

A resurgent left is reshaping Latin America. This year alone, leftist protests toppled governments in Ecuador and Bolivia. A socialist took power for the first time in Uruguay. And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, swimming in oil profits and brimming with bravado, is rallying the region against the United States and its economic prescriptions.

All told, more than 320 million Latin Americans have seen their nations turn to the left in recent years--in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Yet this turn is not nearly so dramatic as some had feared and others had hoped. So far, complex economic and political realities have softened Latin America's leftist wave.

"The elections in Uruguay and elsewhere have been a referendum against failed policies. People have started looking for alternatives," said Ernesto Talvi, an economist and executive director of the think tank CERES in Montevideo. "But I don't think they are looking for alternatives that revert us to the failed policies of the past."

Markets failed the poor

During the 1990s and early in this decade, free-market policies--low tariffs, fiscal discipline, privatization--remade Latin American economies. But they failed to significantly reduce poverty or expand the middle class. Poor and working-class voters felt robbed by relentless austerity measures, the loss of state jobs and the cutting of government subsidies.

Leftist precepts that analysts had written off only a decade ago underwent a revival. And so did anti-Americanism. Growing numbers of Latin Americans came to accuse Washington of imperialism in foreign policy and of pushing neo-liberal economic policies that enrich the United States and the region's elite at the expense of the masses.

Bush in particular is identified with the policies that have come under criticism. Suspicion from fellow leaders and derision from protesters will greet the American president at the summit, which starts Friday in Argentina. But most of the hemisphere still looks to the United States for leadership, aid and investment.

This presents the Bush administration with an opportunity but also a thorny foreign policy challenge. Push its agenda too much, as the United States is accused of doing in confronting Chavez in Venezuela, and Washington is seen as meddling. Stand too far back, as the United States is accused of doing regionally since the Sept. 11 attacks, and Washington is seen as abandoning Latin American nations trying to do the right thing on human rights, trade and immigration.

U.S. officials acknowledge that the so-called pink tide rolling across Latin America has a mellow tint.

A few governments have raised tariffs to protect domestic industries, but there has been no wholesale return to protectionism. Social spending is rising, but treasuries remain committed to fiscal discipline. Leaders across the region extol the importance of attracting capital and investment, and last year two nations with left-of-center leaders, Brazil and Chile, recorded the highest percentage increases in foreign investment. Economic opportunity is hardly washing away.

Some left-of-center presidents, such as Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have even come under criticism for being too conservative.

Brazilian turnabout

During his long career as a labor leader and his unlikely slog to the presidency of Brazil, da Silva railed against the free-market economic policies that have transformed his nation. But as the elected leader of the world's fifth most-populous country, da Silva is gambling that fiscal discipline and free markets will spur sustained growth, create jobs and provide the revenue da Silva's government needs to address Brazil's crushing social inequalities.

"Lula changed," said Marcilio Marques Moreira, a former finance minister who also was Brazil's ambassador to the United States. "I don't know if it was by conviction or by pragmatism, but in the process there was a certain type of conversion, at least in economic policy."

This conversion breaks the heart of da Silva's leftist allies. But da Silva's orthodox policies are credited with stabilizing Brazil's economy--and helping to insulate da Silva from an all-out political attack--during a corruption scandal that threatened his government.

That scandal has cost da Silva standing and influence in the region, and Chavez has benefited.

Because of the value of Venezuela's oil, Chavez for now can afford to challenge economic liberalism and even chase off some foreign investors. The Venezuela leader has won many fans with his calls for a "Bolivarian revolution" that would restore a large state role to national economies.

But elsewhere the new leftists are wary of isolating their countries from international credit markets and foreign capital. They are searching for a Latin American third way between unfettered capitalism and state-dominated socialism. They see private business as the engine of growth, but they are not content to leave job creation to the unforgiving market. They believe in free trade but want safeguards to make sure trade is fair.

This may not work, and most Bush administration officials and conservative economists say it will not. They blame corruption and poor execution of market policies, not the policies themselves, for their failure across Latin America. But the hardships and inequalities across Latin American have convinced most voters and the new breed of leftist leaders that the economic orthodoxy of the so-called Washington Consensus has failed them.

Holding off the radicals

The challenge now is for the new leftists to make their way work before radical approaches gain more favor. In some countries, the throwing out of the old has coincided with the rise of new political movements with a strong populist bent and a fervent anti-American agenda. Their commitment to electoral democracy is at best unproven.

So far, the Latin American third way is being built most convincingly by the market-minded socialists running Chile.

Chile has one of the world's most open economies, according to an annual international survey by the conservative Heritage Foundation. And it is the region's beacon for free traders. The left-of-center government of President Ricardo Lagos has aggressively pursued trade deals with countries in Europe, Asia and North America, and Chile's economy has grown more robustly and consistently than any other in the region.

Trade between Latin America and the United States has grown steadily every year since 2001 and has risen to a historic high. But trade between Chile and the United States has positively soared. A bilateral agreement that went into effect in 2004 between the United States and Chile spurred U.S. exports to that country by 33 percent last year, according to U.S. government statistics.

Chile, however, departs occasionally from orthodox neo-liberalism. It has placed limits on how quickly investors can move money in and out of the country, for example, to encourage long-term direct investment and advance "growth with equity."

At the same time, the Lagos government has expanded social programs. In the last 15 years, Chile has slashed the poverty rate to 18 percent of the population from 40 percent. And by doing so, Chile's leadership has brought voters on the far left more toward the center.

"We are being very aggressive in liberalizing and opening the economy," said Chilean Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker. "But we never lose sight that liberalization is the means and not the ends in itself--the means to achieve equitable and sustainable growth."

Argentina is more complex. President Nestor Kirchner's government flirts with price controls, protectionism, currency manipulation and other state interventions that dismay free marketers. But Kirchner has been far more fiscally conservative than his 1990s predecessors, who became darlings of the financial markets even as Argentina was borrowing its way toward a collapse that threw millions of its citizens into poverty.

"It is impossible to conceive of a country without fiscal discipline, correct administration, the care of reserves," Kirchner told the Buenos Aires newspaper Pagina 12, sounding more like a neo-liberal than a leader of his Peronist party.

Since Argentina defaulted more than three years ago on $100 billion in loans and interest, Kirchner has taken a hard line in dealing with creditors and foreign investors. Economists and other Latin governments are closely watching whether he can hold that hard line while ensuring that Argentina gets the capital it needs to continue its recovery.

Already leftists in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia are calling for their nations to follow Argentina's lead. They want to suspend debt payments and force renegotiations on private creditors and multinational lenders. But even left-of-center economists agree that such moves carry great risks. The populism espoused by Chavez and advocated by his followers would severely damage most Latin American economies by shutting them off from foreign investment, economists argue.

Bolivia, where street protests have forced two presidents from office in the past 18 months, is considered particularly worrisome. U.S. officials accuse Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro of seeking to use proxies such as coca farmer-turned-opposition leader Evo Morales to turn Bolivia into a Marxist, anti-American state. Even leftists such as da Silva and Kirchner, who rely on Bolivia for natural gas, have expressed concerns about a potential economic collapse in Bolivia and the splintering of democratic institutions.

Bush administration officials say a government's political shade is less of an issue than a nation's democratic stability. For one thing, the soundness of institutions matters more to investors than whether a government calls itself left or center or right. Foreign investors seek such qualities as consistent and transparent taxes and regulations, and a judicial system not overrun by corruption. The governments that deliver, no matter what their shade, are deemed suitable partners.

Rice `not worried'

"I am certainly not worried about the rise of left-of-center governments," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared before the June summit of the Organization of American States.

But in an interview with the Miami Herald that was released by the State Department, Rice made clear that not all left-of-center governments were viewed the same way. She offered indirect if not exactly veiled criticism of Chavez. And she praised the Brazilians under da Silva: "They have been absolutely committed to a social agenda ... but doing it in a way that is responsible economically."

Da Silva has stuck with his current economic policy even under extreme pressure from his Workers Party base to employ populist and socialist remedies for Brazil's widespread poverty. That shows how deeply certain principles of the Washington Consensus have penetrated Latin American political and economic thinking.

"When Lula came into office, there was a lot of fear about how the government would manage the economy and a lot of confidence about how ethical the government would be," said Ricardo Ribeiro, an economist and political analyst with MCM Consultants in Sao Paulo. "It is ironic that we are seeing just the opposite."

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cmcmahon@tribune.com