Um outro Guevara

Clique na imagem para ver uma animação que explica a ideologia do "Movimiento Libertario"

Alvaro Vargas Llosa dá conta (via The Independent Institute) do que se passa na Costa Rica com o "Movimiento Libertario", cujo candidato às eleições presidenciais de 5 de Fevereiro é Otto Guevara.

Mr. Guevara is currently running third, with 15 percent in the polls; far behind the expected winner Oscar Arias, but a close second to Otton Solis, a classic Latin American populist. The Libertarian Movement party is also well ahead of the Social-Christian Democrats and is set to obtain some 12 seats out 57 in Congress. As Guevara told me recently, he wants to “force the next government to negotiate with the Libertarian Movement Party its public policies for the next four years” and prepare the terrain for a presidential victory in 2010.(...)
The libertarians stand for minimal taxation and regulations and have successfully blocked the current President’s attempts to raise taxes for the past three years. They believe in ending government monopolies on electricity, telecommunications, oil refining and insurance, as well as legally protected private monopolies such as vehicle inspection. They have proposed the elimination of trade barriers including support for the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States. And they believe in a property-owning society (they support giving titles to informal home owners); stand against foreign intervention (they stood against the war in Iraq, which the Costa Rican government supported), and in favor of decriminalizing drugs.###
But the significance of their efforts goes far beyond Costa Rica and shows three things.

First, it indicates that the classical liberal tradition has some potential for making a connection with the populace, because of its critique of established parties and traditional politicians—a stand very much in vogue in the developing world. The recent tendency has been for the old-fashioned populist left to seduce those vast segments of the population that feel cheated by the establishment--only to prove they represent exactly what they purport to combat.

Second, the Costa Rican experience shows principle is not necessarily a lost cause in politics. Few things have caused classical liberals more harm than muddling the message and obfuscating principle. If defenders of free markets support big spending, legally protected monopolies, crony privatization and courts that make a mockery of the principle of equality before the law, is it surprising that many people tend to associate classical liberalism with mercantilism, that is, the blurring of the line that ought to separate government and business?

Finally, Otto Guevara’s success poses a challenge to those who think politics is not a valid way to go about changing the prevailing culture, and that education needs to come before political action because until people’s minds are educated no political change is possible. The Costa Rican experience seems to contain a more complex truth: everything, including practical politics, can, in the right circumstances, become a catalyst for cultural change.