REPORT #420 August 2001
LATINOBAROMETRO POLL OF 18,000 PEOPLE IN 17 LATIN COUNTRIES


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

People are still centrist, between the communist left dictatorship idea at the point of a gun and rightist, elected autocratic one party centrist oligarchies. If anything the poll indicates a slight trend among the masses to prefer the rightist side of centrism.

'Unfortunately, in Latin America where these polls have been taken, the masses do not understand, or even know about the third option of Federalism, as practised in Switzerland and the USA.'

Both the Leftist communist ideaology and the elected one political party rule dictatorship of centralism autocracy, have murdered, criminalized, jailed, or exiled all their Federalistas over the last two centuries. Both left and right persuasions are dictatorships and they want no part of local government democracies working in a Federalist format, with elected officials in all tiers of a bureaucracy and government.

A fair division of national revenues, by states, departments, or districts is abhorrent to them. The tyranny of old colonial capital population representation helps them exploit the system.

Doesn't matter if you are talking old time President Fujimoro of Peru, the aspiring Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, now running under the elected dictator one party system, or Prime Minister Said Musa of Belize in an elected one party dictatorship with rubber stamp government bodies. None of these gentlemen tolerate the idea of real federalist democracy. It remains to be seen if the new President of Peru, Toledo; will succumb to the power lust and ego driven drive to retain power in his personal hands, and his party delegates? Fuijimoro and Toledo of Peru, one has no doubt, believed they wanted to help the poor get away from poverty. So does Said Musa of Belize, but none of these autocratic leaders are willing to surrender their ego driven lust for power and control, to a federated multi-layered geographic system of self reliant elected officials in a sustainable federalist democracy, accompanied by a financial system that would divide up national tax revenues by national geography areas with local elected officials and governments. Daniel Ortega is somewhat different. Just a criminal bandit wanting riches and power in whichever system will give him the means to get it. That is his murderous history.

Without sustainable, self reliant elected local governments sharing in the spoils of the tax base and equal bargaining political power inputs on legislation at the national level, there never can be any resolving the issues of poverty in Latin America. All ego driven power hungry attempts by autocracies, or outright dictatorships are doomed to failure. Poverty can only be tackled by locally elected officials with the financial means from the national tax revenues in a self help, boot strap political power sharing format.

Latin American masses need educating in the third option open to them ( federalism), rather than what this poll shows, is a choice between the frying pan and the fire. USA investments in democracy in Latin America need focusing on educating the masses of Latin America on the third working option, of which they obviously have no knowledge; because of dictatorial persecution both by dictators of communism and the oligarchy dictatorship of one ruling party method based on the tyranny of population representation without any checks and balances.

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