Dithering on 'Third Road': News Analysis

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, September 11, 2003

Dithering on 'Third Road': News Analysis

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In the 1980s to 1990s new liberalism swept across the whole of Latin America and promoted the region's prosperity in the 1990s. However, with the Brazilian 1998 financial crisis as the turning point, especially after the Argentinean 2001 crisis, negating the new liberalism and exploring a "third road" constituted the mainstream of Latin America's political trend of thought.

Nowadays central-left parties wield political power in some representative Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Chile. They all have introduced respective reforms under the banner of a "third road". However, numerous obstacles in the way to reform bring about differences of opinion and wrangle over interests, which, in turn, make quite a few Latin American leaders hesitating at the crossroads.

The core of a "third road" is to strike a balance between economic development and fair social distribution. It aims to guarantee the sustained economic development and at the same time gradually improve the social welfare of the masses of lower and middle strata. However, it is not an easy job to seek this equilibrium. It would stifle economy if deviating to the left or deteriorate the polarity of unfair distribution, which has already been serious, if deviating to the right.

Development and distribution constitute the longstanding contradictions in human history. No matter how rapid economic development is, if doesn't benefit the majority of people, it will arouse dissatisfaction expressed in various manners by non-beneficiaries. On the other hand, if the locomotives of economic development were distributed to every social stratum in an absolutely fair way, or, figuratively speaking, each one took a wheel home, the train would never be able to start running.

Development and distribution have long been disputed in Latin America. Since a relatively sound social security system has not yet been established as has done in Europe and distribution of social wealth is badly unfair in this region, the dispute over wealth distribution is most heated. The result of experiment on new liberalism shows that, although Latin America's economy has somewhat developed, the problem of unfair social distribution has not yet been resolved, nor has the economic status of the lowest social rung been improved. In other words, a big cake is made, but the lowest rung of society is not distributed even crumbs of the cake.

Different from the past scholastic debates, the current dispute over which road for Latin American countries to take has attracted more participation of all social strata, the lower and middle strata in particular, which are displaying their strength and influencing decision-making in a more active way through waging strikes and demonstrations.

It is against such a background that many Latin American countries are plagued by limitless strikes and anti-government protests. In Venezuela a million-strong march is no longer news today. Peru, which boasts an economic growth rate of over 4 percent during the past two years and belongs to one of the region's best economies, has lately witnessed strikes and demonstrations staged by the lower and middle social strata. In Chile, although President Lagos, a member of the Socialist Party, adopts a prudent policy, and also the economic situation is obviously better than in other countries, the country's trade unions has called a nationwide strike recently. In Brazil Lula's endeavors to introduce the pension reform resulted in the strike involving hundreds of thousands of civil servants. And in Argentina, enthusiasm for massive demonstration has cooled, but small and mid-scale protests in front of the presidential palace, the parliament and banks take place almost every day. No wonder someone bantered that the slice-beating sound has now taken the place of tango as Argentina's "national music".

The upper stratum in the Latin American society, as distinct from the lower and middle stratums that employ a formidable way to put pressure on governments, seeks to influence governments through comparatively quiet approaches, such as clubs, think tanks, the media or direct election funds.

Under such pressure the central-to-left leaders, who attempt to find out a "third road" between economic development and equal distribution, are faced with the danger of being torn apart by two wings. Take Brazil for instance. During last year's general election Lula's worker origin and left-wing deviation caused worries among a large number of international investors about Brazil's future policy. As a result, capital was withdrawn in succession, which gave rise to financial turbulence in this country. After Lula took office, his reform policies gradually met with confidence at home and abroad, and accordingly he was lauded as "responsible left-winger". Meanwhile, President Lula invited increasing criticism within his Workers' Party and even was publicly reproached as "traitor" by individual the party's parliament members.

The new liberalism is fading away, while Latin America still wavers on a "third road". How to strike a balance between economic development and fair distribution and then spur on Latin America out of the vicious circle between "development and crisis" poses a long-lasting challenge to leaders in the region.

By PD Online Staff Zhu Lizhen

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