Regional Outlook : Forget Communism; Now, Corruption ‘Excuses’ Coups : In Latin America, the current mania for reform is a sign of democracy--and a threat to it.

CARACAS, Venezuela — It used to be the threat of communism that provided the cover for Latin American coups and dictatorships. If some army officer or civilian plutocrat could label opponents as Marxist-Leninist it justified almost anything, including the overthrow of elected governments.

Now, there’s a new label, a new justification for attacking government institutions, even democratic ones. From Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande, for good and bad, the watchword is now corruption.

Sitting and former presidents have been thrown out of office or stand accused of corruption in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama and Bolivia. In Guatemala and Peru, leaders have justified the suspension of democratic institutions in the name of combatting corruption.

The growing attention focused on official conduct is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, long-dominated or timid legislatures are showing independence and accountability, while courts and public officials are beginning to act on behalf of the law and the citizenry.

On the other, the demagogic use of corruption charges by ambitious politicians, would-be despotic presidents and entrenched business interests threatens to create instability and actually thwart the will of the electorate.

There can be no questioning that corruption has mocked and retarded Latin American democracy. Nor can there be any question that the current wave of anti-corruption efforts has major, positive elements in strengthening democracy and its institutions.

So it sounds good--fighting corruption in a region of the world marked throughout its history by some of the sorriest examples of government and ruling class thievery and abuse of power.

“There is a general approval of the idea of cleaning up politics,” Alexandre Barros, a Brazilian political expert, said in a telephone interview. “I think the overall mood is, ‘Gee, we are getting back to law and order.’ ”

For Richard Millet, a scholar at the University of Miami’s North-South Center, the anti-corruption movement is the sign of a maturing democratic commitment and the end of an era of centralized, presidential rule.

“Finally, we are getting elected congresses acting as a limit to presidential abuse,” he said. “It also shows a surprising degree of judicial independence . . . and the reversal of the attitude whereby no one ever questioned the right of a president to steal.”

Yet, as in the fight against communism, the flag of corruption is increasingly being waved as an excuse to weaken, even destroy, the very system the reformers are supposed to be protecting.

“When Congress and the courts don’t cooperate,” Millet said, “it is obvious that some people will use corruption as an excuse for doing away with democracy.

“There is no question that anti-corruption can backfire against democracy.”

That is exactly what happened last week when the elected president of Guatemala, Jorge Serrano, suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress, closed the courts, imposed media censorship, ordered the house arrests of political foes and began ruling by decree--all in the name of fighting corruption.

He acted, Serrano said in a nationwide television address, “to purge the state of all its forms of corruption with which you and I are totally fed up.”

He spoke particularly about legislative and judicial corruption impeding the ability of his government and military and security forces to fight drug trafficking.

“That is particularly ironic,” said a European diplomat who recently served in Guatemala, “since the centers of corruption, particularly drug corruption, are the military and security forces.”

Another strange twist in the Guatemala situation is the charge by Serrano’s opponents that his real motive for taking dictatorial power was to offset impending congressional charges of his own “scandalous illicit enrichment.”

Serrano, a right-wing businessman with strong ties to Guatemala’s brutal and politicized military, followed the model built in April, 1992, in Peru by Alberto Fujimori.

After winning election as president, Fujimori charged a recalcitrant Congress and judiciary with corruption and obstructionism. With military support, Fujimori shut down Peru’s democratic institutions.

In an interview with The Times two months before Guatemala’s strikingly similar autogolpe, as Latin Americans call the assumption of autocratic power by a president, Fujimori speculated that other countries would follow his lead.

“There are three evils that affect many countries in the world, that affect the people directly,” he said. “They are corruption, violence and inefficiency of the state apparatus.. . .

“And these evils, paradoxically, are covered up by what is called democracy. Today I believe that wherever that kind of problem may exist, options that are not the traditional ones can happen.”

While Peru and Guatemala are stark and even extreme examples of the use of anti-corruption moves as a variation or substitution for old-fashioned military coups, there is a definite trend throughout the region of undermining the established and traditional democratic institutions in the name of government honesty.

Last month in Venezuela, the Supreme Court and the Senate suspended President Carlos Andres Perez and ordered him tried on two counts of misusing $17 million in government funds.

The charges were technical--involving the use of cash instead of checks and sending the money to an unauthorized Cabinet minister--and widely seen as a move by Perez’s political enemies to advance their own ambitions and stop his economic austerity program.

Probably the most notable of the anti-corruption campaigns--and one that supports arguments that the fight for honesty in government has overwhelmingly positive elements--has been in Brazil.

A congressional investigation of corruption charges in the administration of President Fernando Collor de Mello led to Collor’s impeachment and suspension last September and his permanent removal from office in late December. Collor now faces trial on charges of profiting from an alleged billion-dollar graft ring headed by his former campaign treasurer.

Collor’s impeachment, the first ever in a Latin American democracy, showed the way for removing a president by constitutional means in a region where military coups long were the standard way to do it.

But the Brazilian process was far from painless. From the middle of 1992, it monopolized national attention, all but paralyzing government at a time when severe economic problems cried for attention.

President Itamar Franco, who rose from the vice presidency to succeed Collor, has made little or no headway in efforts to re-establish confidence in government and end the economic crisis, which has seen the annual inflation rate climb to 1,200%.

And although corruption may have subsided, it has not stopped. Economic analysts say bribes and bid-rigging remain a “normal” way of doing business in ministries and state enterprises.

Eliseu Resende, President Franco’s finance minister until late May, resigned amid a scandal over the ministry’s approval of a $115-million loan that would have benefited a construction company that Resende once worked for.

Despite the difficulties, most Brazilians still applaud the results of the crackdown on Collor--just as most Venezuelans support the impeachment and impending trial of Perez.

According to Barros, the Brazilian expert, the impeachment movement against Collor was not primarily the result of any political vendetta. “Once this bandwagon started moving, all kinds of people jumped on it, but I don’t think that was the primary motivation.”

If so, mark one in the positive column for the movement against corruption. But most political experts and diplomats see a far more ambivalent outcome in Venezuela.

What happened to Perez “is the equivalent of indicting (former President Richard) Nixon for double parking in front of the Watergate,” said a Western diplomat. “It was a political lynching.”

In fact, according to a European ambassador, Perez was probably the least corrupt of any recent Venezuelan president. “It’s true he’s become rich in his two terms (he was president from 1975-79), but he also has done more to appoint honest and efficient officials than anyone else,” said the envoy.

“He’s done away with a lot of political patronage and cronyism and he was the one who got rid of five Supreme Court justices who were party hacks and replaced them with respectable jurists.”

In the mind of the Western diplomat who likened Perez’s case to a political lynching, the real motive behind the anti-Perez effort was not corruption at all, but a combination of political ambition, disagreement with his economic austerity program and a “get-even” mentality by former allies ousted by the president.

“There wasn’t a player (against Perez) who could come out clean in a real corruption investigation,” he said.

The effect of manipulating corruption charges, according to the University of Miami’s Millet, “could be to drive honest people out of government, or at least make them more cautious.”

Not only has Brazil, with its weak and cautious government, been unable to get its economy under control since Collor was impeached, but there is great concern that the economic reforms instituted by Perez in Venezuela will be stymied if not rolled back completely.

And in the cases of Guatemala and Peru, the supposed anti-corruption campaigns actually can serve to cover up and even promote extreme corruption.

Speaking of Peru, Fernando Rospigliosi, a prominent Peruvian political analyst, said in a telephone interview that “there is a ferocious and dangerous corruption; the power of narco-traffickers that is corrupting the armed forces.”

Because of Fujimori’s dependence on the military for survival, he must tolerate the corruption. “There is no other way to control the armed forces,” Rospigliosi said.

“It is the same for Serrano,” said the European diplomat who recently served in Guatemala. “That quote applies exactly. Serrano cannot survive without the army, and the army is the most corrupt institution in Guatemala.”

There is a strong sense of paradox in all of this, since it was the development of democracy throughout Latin America beginning in the 1980s that brought anti-corruption forward as a cause.

Under military dictatorships, corruption was covered up by repressing publicity and protests or by buying off challengers. But democracy unloosed freer media coverage, more legislative investigations and greater public awareness.

That has increased public intolerance of corrupt courts, police, military and high officials.

While most experts say this is essentially a positive development, the danger of its backfiring does exist.

“Democracy has never been easy in Latin America,” said Allan Brewer-Carias, a Venezuelan constitutional expert. “Before, it was the military and the oligarchy. Now, it could be what you call the do-gooders who are the enemy.

“I never thought I would see democracy challenged on grounds of corruption.”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson, in Guatemala City, contributed to this story.