Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

BOLIVIA: Morales Will Need to Forge Alliances

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Dec 19 2005 (IPS) - Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales will need to forge agreements with part of the opposition in Congress, set forth a timetable for pushing through actual reforms, and carefully handle the differences within his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) if he wants to overcome the severe political instability and social problems afflicting this Andean nation, say observers.

According to the preliminary results, the 46-year-old Aymara indigenous leader of Bolivia’s coca farmers won a landslide victory with 51 percent of the vote – unprecedented in the past 23 years of democracy in the country – and is preparing to take office in South America’s poorest nation, promising to transform the current free-market, neoliberal economic model and put an end to “the colonial state.”

Vice President-elect Álvaro García Linera, a mathematician and sociologist by training, and a former guerrilla fighter, announced changes to the economic policies based on trade liberalisation and privatisations followed since 1985, and the “recovery” of the country’s natural gas resources, which are currently exploited by foreign oil giants, including Brazil’s Petrobras.

But García Linera also expressed support for businesses keen on generating employment, and ensured that the new government would fully respect private investment and savings.

His remarks a few days after the sale of the Banco Santa Cruz bank, which passed from the hands of Spanish to Bolivian investors, and was interpreted as flight of foreign capital in the face of Morales’ possible triumph at the polls Sunday.

In Bolivia, the winning candidate must capture 51 percent of the vote in order to win the presidency outright. If this does not occur, Congress votes between the two leading candidates.

Although Morales does not need to strike a deal with the opposition in Congress in order to secure the presidency, he will face firm opposition from the right-wing Podemos movement of his rival Jorge Quiroga, who took 31 percent of the vote, and more moderate opposition from the National Unity party led by businessman Samuel Doria, who came in third with eight percent of the ballots.

According to the projections, MAS will hold 12 seats in the Senate, Podemos 13, and National Unity and the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) one each. In the lower house of Congress, MAS will have 53 seats, Podemos 48, National Unity 14, the MNR 11 and the New Republican Force and the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement one each.

In order to govern, Morales will need the support of the National Unity party, with which MAS has some points in common.

Sociologist Raúl Prada told IPS that MAS should put together a government that will bring about real transformations instead of merely “administering the crisis,” because the process that culminated in Sunday’s elections is a “synthesis of the social struggles of the past few years, carried out on the streets and highways.”

The expectations of Morales’ supporters focus on a new policy with regard to Bolivia’s abundant natural gas resources, which are at the centre of the social and political upheaval of the past three years, and of trade and ties with the United States and other countries in the region.

But above and beyond any formal agenda, Professor Joaquín Saravia told IPS that it is time for the representatives of the Aymara indigenous culture – Bolivia’s largest ethnic group – to build a state on the basis of the moral principle of “thou shalt not steal.”

Saravia also said that the makeup of MAS, which is comprised of academics and indigenous leaders, gives rise to concern about possible internal disputes that could have negative repercussions on the administration of the state.

Former vice president Víctor Hugo Cárdenas (1993-1997), the first indigenous leader to achieve that position, remarked to IPS that Morales’ election victory was a historic event, because the task of fixing the country’s serious problems was being entrusted to a man from Bolivia’s rural areas.

Cárdenas also noted that after Morales’ triumph, the country’s campesino (small farmer) leaders did not appear next to the candidate, unlike the intellectuals, who did not leave his side.

Sunday’s vote also clearly reflected the division between voters in the impoverished western highlands region of Bolivia and the more developed, wealthier eastern lowlands, where the country’s natural gas resources and agricultural zones are located. While Morales won in the departments (provinces) of La Paz, Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, Oruro and Potosí, which fall into the first region, Quiroga performed well in the departments of Tarija, Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando, which make up the second.

Saravia thus said MAS would need to listen closely to the demands set forth by people in the east, where he won a lower level of support, and create “spaces for dialogue” in order to guarantee governability.

On the other hand, Cárdenas expressed surprise at the votes MAS did garner in the east, where the resistance to the leftist movement and the cocalero leader ran strongest, and in the urban areas characterized by support for the right.

The former vice president said he hoped that the votes taken by MAS would be compensated with clear proposals, which he said were lacking in the campaign. He said the people were “frustrated and fed up with the mediocre and corrupt performance of the traditional parties.”

“A new history of Bolivia marked by equality, equity, and peace with social justice is beginning,” said Morales, who was raised in the country’s bleak, chilly highlands, where he herded llamas and grew potatoes and other subsistence crops.

After he migrated to the mining city of Oruro, 250 km from La Paz, he played the trumpet in a band that played at traditional fiestas and in the famous carnival of Bolivia’s capital of folk music.

But the drought and grinding poverty drove him to move to the tropical central department of Cochabamba. Alongside thousands of miners who had lost their jobs, he began to grow coca.

His leadership among the growers of coca, the only means of subsistence found by thousands of impoverished peasants and unemployed miners, catapulted him into the labour movement, after which he was elected to Congress in 1997.

Today he is president-elect in a country where 70 percent of the population of 8.6 million are poor, and the minimum monthly wage stands at just 50 dollars.

“We have won the match against the other team, including its referee,” said Morales, with tears in his eyes, in the cocalero association’s headquarters in Cochabamba, where his political career was launched.

The “referee” he was referring to was the National Electoral Court, which removed 872,974 names from the voter registries because they had not cast a ballot in the previous elections. The official registry only contained 3.6 million names, out of a potential total of 4.3 million.

“If I was a member of the Court with ethics, I would be the first to resign,” said Morales, who filed a complaint on what he called the “illegal purge” with the Organisation of American States (OAS). The OAS, along with other international bodies, sent more than 200 election observers.

People’s Defender (Ombudsman) Waldo Albarracín lamented that the National Electoral Court had failed to make the list of excluded voters public prior to the elections.

“We are not here to judge the legal performance of the Court, but in the face of such a large number of names purged from the registry, the voters should have been publicly notified, in a serious manner,” Albarracín commented to IPS.

The final results of the election will be announced by the National Electoral Court on Tuesday. The president-elect will take office on Jan. 22.