Latin American presidential elections tilting right

LIMA, Peru — There has been abundant talk of Latin America's tilt to the left this past decade. But such chatter will soon become highly antiquated. Presidential contests in key countries are almost certain to move the region in the opposite direction.

Chile's runoff election this month will probably mean the end of the center-left coalition's two-decade hold on power and the emergence of businessman Sebastian Pinera as a political tour de force. In May, Colombians will either vote for Alvaro Uribe's third term — if he wins approval for an ill-advised constitutional reform — or for someone who will carry on with his policies. And, according to every poll, Brazilians are expected to pick Jose Serra, the governor of Sao Paulo state, over President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's heir apparent in October.

If these turn out to be the results indeed, the ideological shift that was first hinted last year with Ricardo Martinelli's victory in Panama and Porfirio Lobo's election in Honduras will be powerfully reinforced. But there is more. Peru's left-wing nationalist candidate is fading after almost winning in 2006; a long list of center-right candidates (a couple of whom coquettishly call themselves center-left but are not perceived as such) dominate the polls. And by all indications, most Argentines now support various opponents of the socialist policies of Cristina Kirchner's government. This will make it difficult for her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, should he run next year.

The only major Latin American democracy where the pendulum seems to be swinging away from the center-right is Mexico. But the Institutional Revolutionary Party — the organization likely to win the 2012 election — is a broad tent, not an ideological force. And it is not remotely interested in casting its shadow over the region.

The significance of the tilt to the right is potentially twofold.

Could it mean a new wave of reform not seen since the 1990s and a foreign policy realignment across the continent? In theory, some of the favored leaders will aim to make Latin America much more entrepreneurial and economically diversified — the region is still far too dependent on natural resources, its investment levels are too low compared with other newcomers to the development race, and its education standards continue to be dismal. But there is no guarantee that the shift in ideological direction will bring meaningful change. Much like their social-democratic rivals, Latin America's center-rightists tend to settle for the apparent placidity of the status quo. Many seem to have exhausted their reformist ambitions with the liberalization and privatization of the 1990s, which left a sour taste because of the corruption involved.