Canning Insights

This is something of a bellwether year in the Latin America and Caribbean regions. In countries with presidential and general elections, the outcomes will signal not only the national but also the regional mood toward governments that have been in place throughout the oil-price shock and the drop in commodity prices. Countries such as Mexico and Bolivia, meanwhile, will use their polls this year to take the temperature of the electorate ahead of their presidential and general elections in the next few years. The standout contest will take place in Peru where huge uncertainty surrounds April’s presidential and congressional elections.

Brazil: Bottoming out – or just falling?

Macri strikes at the heart of Kirchnerismo

There is a growing consensus about the wide-ranging costs of corruption, with several non-government organisations (NGOs) incorporating anti-corruption measures into broader policy directives to reflect this far-reaching impact. In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) included the need to reduce corruption and bribery into its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which it hopes will guide policymaking in both developing and developed economies. The issue is set to gain even more traction in 2016, when London hosts an international summit focusing on anti-corruption measures.

Macri hits the ground running in Argentina

Speculation abounded about what measures Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri would take first after his investiture on 10 December. The consensus view was that economic reforms would come first. Macri did not disappoint. His government wasted no time in issuing decrees ending most tariffs on agricultural and industrial exports, and then took the plunge by lifting currency controls. What nobody anticipated was that he would also issue a decree in the judicial sphere, appointing two supreme court magistrates. This move was highly controversial, prompting fierce criticism from the opposition, and unease from political allies. Just days earlier Macri had promised during his inaugural address that “there will be no Macrista judges in my government”, an allusion to the propensity of his Peronist predecessors to stack courts with politically loyal justices.

Bolivarian Revolution suffers biggest reverse in 17 years

Not in 17 years of government has Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution suffered an electoral setback on the scale of that inflicted by the opposition on 6 December. The previous reverse in a 2007 referendum pales in comparison. The opposition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) won 65% of the popular vote and secured a coveted two-thirds ‘supermajority’ in the national assembly. But this was an emphatic rejection of the government led by President Nicolás Maduro not a ringing endorsement of the MUD. Maduro has ruled out cooperating with the MUD-controlled legislature but if the MUD’s response is to misuse its newly gained power to confront his government it will rapidly lose borrowed popular support.