Viewpoint: Polan Lacki

Wake up, Latin America!
Governments are collapsing and it’s time for something radically different

An article by Polan Lacki
Translation by Crystal Samples

“When the remedies aren’t effective enough to cure the illnesses, you have to cure the remedies to cure the patient”
Father Vieire - Sermon of San Antonio

These days there’s no other alternative; we have to heed the advice of Father Vieira. The conventional remedies for curing the ills of the developing world no longer apply, for the simple fact that the governments no longer have them at their disposal.

The illusion of the paternalistic state that will solve all our problems is over. In every country in Latin America, without exception, the national, state, and municipal governments are weakened, “under funded” and severely indebted. Their collected resources barely cover debt and interest payments, salaries and pensions; and the little that remains is put towards the maintenance of a skeletal, virtually unproductive bureaucratic apparatus.

The main reason that successive governments are not solving the mounting problems in education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure, basic sanitation, urban transportation, poverty, assistance to the handicapped, and crime, etc. is not so much for lack of political initiative, but rather insufficient public resources.

Governments are virtually paralyzed, passively watching and accepting as if it were acceptable, the persistence of the following facts that are now incorporated into the daily lives of our countries:

• The unemployed desperately seeking jobs, but never finding work
• The sick waiting several days for a medical consultation, weeks for a lab test and months or years for surgery; many die in the corridors of the hospitals before they even fill out the wretched “admissions form”
• Growing numbers of poor people “live” and take residence in the streets while their children are being “educated” in the world of crime and delinquency
• In the public trash bins the hungry are fighting with rats and crows for their meals
• The drug dealers are more powerful and better armed than the police
• From inside the overpopulated jails many delinquents continue participating in organized crime and promoting frequent rebellions to demand and achieve the “most democratic” trials

Government officials do little more than put out the noisiest fires, but after the noise dies down, government action ceases until the next emergency occurs. They occur for the simple fact that the needs and aspirations of the citizens surpass the diminishing capabilities of debilitated governing bodies to satisfy them.

To further worsen this state of paralysis, governments are now unable to reinforce their budgets by simply increasing public debt and taxes because the first way is unacceptable to the governments and the second way is unacceptable to the tax-payers.

In summary, the ability of the governments to resolve the citizens’ problems by paternalistic means is exhausted.

Only the “ostriches” (with their heads stuck in the ground) have still not realized this obvious governmental impotence. This is a reality that we can no longer ignore, since it is not only evident but increasing; you need only step out on the street to see the lines at the public assistance offices or listen to the news commentators.

Now that we have arrived at the “bottom of the well”, it is clearly impossible to solve the problems of poverty through state paternalism. The government resources that once appeared inexhaustible are now exhausted. So we must abandon the populist/demagogical methods and embrace a radically different approach.

Among other things, we must drastically reduce the frivolous and unproductive state bureaucracy, eliminate the ineffective and expendable public organisms, abolish illegitimate hidden privileges of “acquired rights”, become tougher in the fight against corruption, reduce the number of unproductive parliament members, military officials and bureaucrats. In summary, “slim down” the governmental machine so that the government officials will have the resources available that they need to carry out the activities that are most important.

With the money saved from this “slim down”, the entire nation should make a serious investment in the development of capacities and competences of the habitants of each country. The citizens themselves - who are both causing the problems and being affected by them - will have to be called together, shaped and trained to assume, individually or in organized groups, a greater responsibility in the correction of the errors that they have, involuntarily, committed and in the solution to their own pr