It seems Latin America has united in political turmoil over the last few weeks. When Venezuela seems a stable government by comparison, you know you’re in trouble. With union strikes being the latest in the Honduran political controversy, Argentina has joined the fray in causing foreign investor concern due to political problems at home.

“In a democracy, you win and you lose,” said President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, after her Peronist party’s congressional majority had disintegrated, leaving her to deal with an unstable parliament over the last 2 years and six months of her term. Kirchner, who resigned as the Peronists’ leader after suffering a shocking loss in a congressional race, remarked that “in the coming days we’ll all have to evaluate the mistakes that have been made.”

TIME Magazine’s online edition featured an article that compared Fernández to her left-wing ally Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, as a ‘combative populist who critics say is too dismissive of the legislative and judicial branches’, still very weak institutions in Latin America. Her most recent setback, as states Javier Corrales, a Latin America expert who teaches political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts, ”indicates that Latin America’s hyperpresidentialist project, which was fueled by the economic boom, faces walls and obstacles now“. 

The article goes on to claim that power-hungry Presidents may be a passing trend due to the economic recession. The United States grew increasingly frustrated with George W. Bush as election day neared for a successor with more international humility. Chávez has been to some degree more exposed as a result of his own political misnomers regarding oil expropriation. Mugabe and Tsvangirai. And herein lies another example of an end to “superpresidencies“.

Union-Pro leader and billionaire businessman Francisco de Narváez told the Buenos Aires daily La Nación that the Argentinan President needs to read “these election results well.” Like TIME’s Tim Padgett, I agree that this should serve as yet another precedent of power-hungry leadership, controversy in the executive being passe in a time for humility, understanding and pragmatism.