The erosion of the political party system in Latin America is a process that has been brewing for years, verified by regional organizations/study centers and by the results consistently shown by the main measurement instruments used by parties and interest groups.
We have been talking for decades about a crisis of the party system that, based on the constitutional architecture of power in the West, also represents a crisis of democracy. Since the Glorious Revolution, the last three centuries have been governed and decided by political parties, as guarantors and instruments of a system (representative democracy).
Nothing is eternal, permanent or immutable. The time scale with which sapiens measure their life differs from that imposed in long-term historical processes. Just as some theorists claim that World War III has already begun (the wars in Ukraine and Iran constitute its initial phase); Likewise, numerous social scientists agree that the crisis of the party system is a preview (or consequence?) of a much deeper crisis of governability; one that threatens to change the foundations of representative democracy itself, as we know it. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, Colombia is there… Like at the time Bukele (El Salvador), Chávez (Costa Rica), Milei (Argentina), Castillo (Peru), Noboa (Ecuador), Kast (Chile), Sunday’s results speak of a much deeper process of breakup. In an irreversibly fractured country, where they have been killing each other for decades and decades, polarization should not surprise anyone, unless now, the radicalization process does not occur within traditional politics, its rules and institutions, but from systemic logic.
This is not new, there is consensus around the processes that the region is experiencing and the common denominator that intertwines them: a loss of legitimacy of the system of serving as an instrument of favorable changes and social and economic improvements. On the contrary, people identify parties and politicians as part of the problem, not the solution.
Aristotle was right, we are political animals. But in the short term of rage and indignation at so many unfulfilled promises, abuses of power, systemic corruption, citizen insecurity, impunity and frustration, citizens forget that exercising an opinion (and a vote) is also a political position; something that in the hands of any messiah (or traditional politician converted into an “outsider”), constitutes a powerful instrument to surpass and overcome the traditional parties, their rules, internal oligarchies, and build alternative projects to assault power.
The traditional parties and their leaders neither understand nor care to understand. They are too engrossed in their political realities, ties, speeches… and businesses; too enthralled with the image of unbeatable superiority projected by the mirror of history. Meanwhile – as in Colombia – the questions, disagreements and disbelief against the entire system grow, and, although nothing ever happens… that is until the day it does.
