Lula on the Washington Consensus and more

Evo Morales: A divisive president

Came across this article in the Economist. Very interesting…

Evo Morales is a popular president, but his brand of politics is dividing his country

Reuters

ON THE high plane, the altiplano, surrounding La Paz, where the landscape is drawn in shades of dusty brown, new brick buildings stand out against the bright sky. Most are residences of a couple of storeys, but there are schools and clinics too. Some even boast cement balustrades, a flourish that echoes the Spanish colonial style. In a place where there are still adobe houses, and where a dowry may be measured partly in potatoes freeze-dried by nights spent above 4,000 metres (13,000 feet), this is a transformation.

President Evo Morales’s government has shovelled money towards this part of the country ever since he was elected in 2005. But its time in power has been deeply divisive. Leopoldo Fernández, an opposition politician who is governor of the Pando province in the north, has been in prison for ten months without standing trial. In March Victor Hugo Cárdenas, an Aymara Indian who was once the country’s vice-president, had his house attacked by a mob after opposing a new constitution proposed by the government.

Abroad, Mr Morales’s government has revelled in the worsening of a number of its most important relationships. It expelled the United States’ ambassador, along with his country’s drug-enforcement agents. The accusations of American plots against the government had abated in anticipation of the new Obama administration, but business has now returned to usual, with President Morales expelling another American diplomat and lambasting the United States for refusing to renew a preferential trade agreement that is linked to Bolivia’s performance on combating its drug barons. Bolivia’s relations with Peru are awful and it has failed to convince Brazil to abandon plans for new hydro resources in the Amazon which will lessen its demand for Bolivia’s gas.

In part this drive to isolate the country is deliberate. Many in the government dream of an economic autarky, powered by gas. Yet Mr Morales has accepted help from Venezuela, Cuba, Russia and Iran to further his “Movement to Socialism” (MAS) party. Venezuelan troops helped quell a rebellion centred on the airport at Santa Cruz in the east in 2007.

The antagonism between the government in the Andean city of La Paz and its opponents in Santa Cruz is Bolivia’s clearest fault line. The conflict is usually described as pitting indigenous Bolivians in the uplands against descendants of Spain in the lowlands, or poor versus rich, but in fact Santa Cruz is ethnically mixed and average incomes in the two cities are comparable. Instead, the conflict is one of identity. The cruceños see themselves as pioneers who carved prosperity out of a pestilential jungle. Those who live on the altiplano are likely to view Mr Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, with pride and to think that his government offers them a chance to get their share of revenues from the gasfields around Santa Cruz. By contrast, the cruceño elite fear losing their property, businesses and power.

This fear has increased since April, when government troops burst into the Hotel Las Américas in Santa Cruz, killed three men and arrested two others. The government claimed that this raid prevented an assassination attempt on Mr Morales. The hotel, all brown marble and glass with a few sad ferns in the atrium, seems an unlikely base for a terrorist cell, and the supposed terrorists were an unlikely bunch. That three of them were killed in their beds rather than spared for interrogation has aroused suspicion that they were in effect executed.

Whatever the case, a continuing investigation acts as a useful reminder to would-be rebels that they should stay in line. It has also destroyed any kind of moderate opposition. Carlos Dabdoub Arrien, one of the more constitutionally minded of the government’s opponents in Santa Cruz, describes Mr Morales as an “indigenous fascist”.

Those new brick houses on the altiplano are likely to keep Mr Morales in power in the elections due at the end of the year. He has handsomely increased government spending for the past three years, including much-needed increases in cash-transfer programmes. Some of these were inherited from the previous government, but they have been boosted and renamed. One programme is called “Bolivia changes, Evo delivers”.

Maybe. But at least one pundit, reckoning that the voters are still unlikely to give Mr Morales the landslide he craves in the legislature, says Bolivia is suffering a classic bout of Latin American populism: personalised politics, mild paranoia, bad economic policy and a weak opposition.

Morales opens the door to mob justice… consequences begin to pop up

An outbreak of government paranoia

From the Economist

IN THE mid-1990s, when he was vice-president, Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, an Aymara Indian, oversaw the introduction of bilingual education: pupils were to be taught in their indigenous language as well as Spanish. You might think that would still endear him to Bolivia’s Indians. Not so, to some of them at least.

Having disappeared from the political limelight for a decade, Mr Cárdenas recently emerged as a powerful opponent of the new constitution promoted by Evo Morales, a fellow Aymaran who, as president since 2006, claims to be refounding the country along indigenous-socialist lines. Ahead of a referendum in January in which voters approved this document, Mr Cárdenas appeared in opposition television advertisements. He says that the constitution’s endorsement of “community justice” is a “mechanism of abuse”.

document.write(‘<script language=”JavaScript” src=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/web.economist.com/all_articles;nav=world_politics_v_the_americas;pos=mpu_left;tile=4;sz=350×300,336×236,300×250,250×250;subs=’ + isSubscriber() + segQS + ‘;ord=’ + ord + ‘?” type=”text/javascript”><\/script>’);

On March 7th a mob of indigenous people several hundred-strong attacked Mr Cárdenas’s house in a village on the shore of Lake Titicaca, violently evicting his wife, Lidia Katari, herself an indigenous-rights activist, and two of his children before setting fire to his belongings. The few police who turned up did nothing. The assailants claimed that they had staged an act of “community justice” against Mr Cárdenas. They later said that they would not allow him, the police or public prosecutors to enter the area, claiming that the new constitution gives them control over a large swathe of surrounding territory.

Mr Morales may well have had nothing to do with the attack. But his opponents have long claimed that he is opening the way to this kind of mob rule. The government information service implausibly claimed that Mr Cárdenas had staged the incident himself as a publicity ploy.

Certainly, Mr Cárdenas has emerged as a potential leader for an opposition hitherto dominated by lighter-skinned Bolivians from the eastern lowlands. Under the new constitution, a presidential election is due to be held in December in which Mr Morales will seek a second term. And he suddenly looks rattled.

In an opinion poll in January by Ipsos-Apoyo, a respected pollster, the president’s popularity rating had slipped to 53%, nine points down from November and the lowest level for two years. Since then the government has been shaken by a corruption scandal at YPFB, the state-owned oil and gas company which Mr Morales revived. Santos Ramírez, the company’s president, was sacked and arrested, accused of orchestrating backhanders of over $3m from a company contract. Other YPFB officials are implicated.

What makes this so damaging is that Mr Ramírez was a senior leader in Mr Morales’s Movement to Socialism. And the nationalisation of the natural-gas industry, along with the new constitution, is the president’s main initiative. The opposition claims that the policy of giving state companies free rein to sign contracts—which the government says is necessary to sidestep bureaucracy—is a recipe for graft.

In another sign of growing official paranoia, Mr Morales blamed the YPFB imbroglio on the CIA, expelling an American diplomat this week who he claimed was involved (he turfed out the ambassador last year). He still has a bedrock of support among poorer Bolivians of Indian descent in the west of the country. But he is starting to look as if he is on the defensive.

Indians challenging Morales in Bolivia face danger

From the Associated Press

SANCKAJAWIRA, Bolivia (AP) — Evo Morales’ opponents have figured out one thing as they look ahead to presidential elections this year: To beat Bolivia’s first Indian leader, you need to run an Indian.

Morales’ supporters have come to the same conclusion — and shown no reluctance in attacking an indigenous politician for suggesting he might challenge their champion in elections expected in December.

When Victor Hugo Cardenas, a native Aymara like Morales and a former vice president, hinted he would run, the response was brutal: A mob of Aymaras violently evicted Cardenas’ family from their house here on Lake Titicaca’s shore, beating his wife and 24-year-old son with whips and sticks so badly they were hospitalized for two days.

Then, on Friday, the community ceremoniously banished the Cardenas family. A man and a woman in red ponchos bullwhipped the politician’s effigy, then symbolically buried it.

“We don’t pardon those who betray our brother Morales,” a leader of the 400-strong mob, Alfredo Huaynapaco, told The Associated Press. Reporters found the house garbage-strewn, nearly all the furniture gone. “Taken over by the people,” someone painted on a wall of the two-story brick home.

Neither police nor prosecutors have acted against the aggressors. While Morales condemned the violence, he also said: “The Bolivian people have no tolerance for traitors, nor do they forgive them.”

Cardenas, who wasn’t with his family at the time, brought his injured wife and children to the relative safety of their apartment in La Paz, the capital. He told the AP in an interview Monday that his sons still wake up jumpy at night, but a flood of telephoned insults has diminished.

The 58-year-old university professor and linguist has had a long career of representing Bolivia’s oppressed Indian majority. Like Morales, he grew up poor on Bolivia’s barren high plains. He made his name as a social agitator during military rule that ended in 1982.

Rising to vice president under President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada from 1993-97, he did much to enshrine in Bolivia’s legal code greater equality for its natives — particularly in bilingual education — in a society where Indians only won the right to vote in 1952 and still face discrimination.

“The political fight is part of my personal history. They jailed and tortured me during the dictatorships but never did anyone take action against my wife and children. And if (former dictator Hugo) Banzer couldn’t shut me up, neither can Morales,” Cardenas told the AP.

Until Morales’ 2005 election, no other Indian had attained a higher political post. But many Morales supporters resent Cardenas’ association with Sanchez de Losada, a mining industry executive who fled into U.S. exile during his second term after troops in 2003 fired on Morales-affiliated protesters, killing 63 people.

Cardenas says Morales’ ruling Movement Toward Socialism has turned Bolivian discrimination inside out, exploiting age-old resentments.

“The indigenous peoples are used as shock troops,” Cardenas told the AP in August. The Bolivian Indian “had a lot of respect in the world (but) is now seen as a symbol of the discrimination of revenge, of confrontation and racism.”

Two days later, Morales won a recall election by a 2-1 margin.

Cardenas later campaigned against the centerpiece of Morales’ “anti-colonialist agenda,” the new constitution, saying that instead of truly empowering the Indians, it will concentrate power in an undemocratic leftist regime.

In January, the new charter was endorsed by 61 percent of voters.

Until Cardenas’ family was attacked, he didn’t appear to be a big concern for Morales. But now even the president’s supporters think the sacking and banishment will become a touchstone in this year’s campaign. Pro-Morales congressman Jorge Silva predicts it will encourage the opposition to “use known indigenous figures to divide and weaken Morales.”

The banishment came under a centuries-old community justice system still practiced in highland settlements once ruled by the Incas, where old methods often trump the modern democratic state.

But Cardenas claims his neighbors were put up to it by a pro-Morales activist in the National Federation of Peasant Women, Beatriz Quispe. He’s filed a formal complaint against Quispe, Huaynapaco and two others. The chief prosecutor’s office said it would interview them this week.

Meanwhile, Cardenas says he is working on uniting Morales’ foes in the highlands as well as the pro-autonomy eastern lowlands, where wealthy landowners resent the president’s attempts to expropriate land for redistribution to the poor.

Cardenas and Morales have not yet formally declared they’ll run in elections expected in December, and the opposition is badly splintered, with nobody approaching a national leader.

Already, another indigenous politician has announced his presidential campaign — Mayor Rene Joaquino of the highlands mining city of Potosi — but he hasn’t used anti-Morales rhetoric.

Joaquino, 42, is Quechua, from Bolivia’s largest ethnic group, the Incas’ direct descendants. The Aymara are No. 2 and dominate La Paz.

The two ethnic groups meld in Bolivia’s new political elite, which is copper-colored and proud, Indian and mestizo. It runs the ministries, the military and police, Congress, the state-run energy company YPFB and more than three in five city halls.

Some analysts say Morales can no longer control this new elite, some of whom show little regard for civil liberties while others have ignored his anti-corruption agenda.

“Morales’ greatest adversary these days isn’t the opposition, it’s MAS itself, due to the great corruption scheme involving a good part of the executive branch,” said Carlos Toranzo, an academic who consults for the U.N. and European governments.

Valdez reported from La Paz, Bolivia. Associated Press Writer Frank Bajak contributed from Lima, Peru.

The United States and Bolivia

Published by the Huffington Post on Feb 25

With the Obama administration’s policy towards Venezuela pretty much decided, and the embargo on Cuba considered untouchable because no one is willing to risk losing support among Cuban Americans in the swing state of Florida, that leaves Bolivia as a left government in the region where the hostility of the Bush administration could be quickly reversed. However there are a number of outstanding issues between the two countries. The United States and Bolivia currently do not have ambassadors. Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador on September 10, on the grounds that he (and Washington) were intervening in Bolivia’s internal affairs. Among other offenses, the U.S. embassy was caught trying to use Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar for spying; U.S. ambassador Phillip Goldberg had met privately with opposition leaders at a time when elements of the opposition were engaged in destabilizing violence; and the U.S. seemed to lend tacit support to the Bolivian opposition by not condemning this violence or even offering condolences when dozens of government supporters were massacred in Pando on September 11. The Bush administration responded to the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador by expelling Bolivian ambassador Gustavo Guzmán. But there are also other important issues for Bolivia. On September 26, the Bush administration suspended Bolivia’s trade preferences under the ATPDEA (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act). The official reason was that Bolivia had not been co-operating sufficiently in the war on drugs. But according to the UN’s 2008 report, Bolivia’s coca cultivation had increased by just 5%, compared to a 27% increase in Colombia, the biggest beneficiary of U.S aid in the region. The Bolivians are eager to begin a new chapter of improved relations with Washington. To demonstrate this willingness, the Bolivian government refrained from filing a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States for the suspension of its trade preferences. Their legal case is quite solid; under WTO rules, countries are allowed to establish rules for preferential access to their markets, but the rules must be applied equally to all countries receiving the preferences. But before filing a complaint at the WTO, Bolivia wanted to see if the new administration is interested in improving relations. Then there is another holdover from the Bush administration: Bolivia’s new constitution declares that health care (along with water and other necessities) is a human right and cannot be privatized. In keeping with their constitutional law, Bolivia asked the WTO for permission to withdraw the previous government’s commitment to open up its hospitals and health care sector to foreign corporations. According to the WTO’s procedural rules, if there are no objections to such a request within 45 days, it is approved. The European Union, home to some of the big health care corporations that might have an interest in the issue, responded that it had no objections. On January 5, the last day of the waiting period, the Bush administration objected. The Obama team has not yet decided whether it will rescind the Bush administration’s objection to Bolivia’s WTO request. Presumably they will; if not, it would be an unmistakable signal of continued hostility. Far from being an arcane detail of constitutional or international law, it has real meaning to millions of Bolivians: the struggle against water privatization was a significant part of the movement that brought Evo Morales to power. This is the political origin of the constitutional provisions establishing these essentials as human rights that cannot be infringed upon by private interests: many poor Bolivians had found themselves unable to afford water after it was privatized and user fees tripled. Bolivia has also kicked out the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and it does not look like they are coming back. To the Bolivians, the U.S. is using the “war on drugs” throughout Latin America mainly as an excuse to get boots on the ground, and establish ties with local military and police forces. They see the whole process as destabilizing and a threat to their sovereignty and democracy. Despite all of these differences, it is still possible that Washington might choose to normalize relations with Bolivia. There are apparently some divisions within the administration over tactics. The “doves” apparently include Thomas Shannon, the current top State Department official for the Western Hemisphere, and a holdover from the Bush administration. These officials can see that there is a public relations problem in abusing Bolivia, the poorest country in South America and more importantly one led by the country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales. To most of the world, he is the Nelson Mandela of Bolivia, with his government bringing an end to centuries of apartheid-like exclusion of the country’s indigenous majority. For the “doves” in the new administration, it would be better to avoid a public fight with Bolivia, so as not to distract from the guy who is sitting on what may be the largest petroleum reserves in the world – in Venezuela – and whom they have already successfully vilified in the media. On the other hand, there are hard liners who feel the need to “lay down the law” with Bolivia. We will soon know who has prevailed.

Chavez: “Holiday to honour me”

Schools turned pupils away, civil servants stayed home and banks shut their doors after President Hugo Chávez, taking Venezuela by surprise, declared Monday a national holiday. He announced the holiday on Sunday to commemorate his rise to power 10 years ago and the start of his Bolivarian Revolution. “Be alert, for the sword of Bolívar strides through Latin America,” he said at a ceremony on Monday, at the tomb of the liberation hero Simón Bolívar.

Businesses and schools were closed after they scrambled on Sunday to tell their employees and students to stay at home. Mr. Chavez’s decree, and threats to fine companies failing to comply, showed the sometimes arbitrary leadership of Mr. Chavez as well as his political astuteness to understand the move would be popular with Venezuelan workers.

wow. nuff said.

Update on Bolivia Referendum

AT about 73% of polls reporting the result is approximately 60% in favour and 40% against the new constitutional text. There have been some reports made by international observers regarding irregularities in mostly rural polls. Apparently, the right to a private vote was not fully respected. Not quite sure what that means yet, but will try to find out some more information.

New Constitution Passes in Bolivia: Election results show a divided country

Bolivia will see a new day on January 27, 2009. A day in which a process of more than 2 years comes to an end with a brand new consitution. Now begin the serious challenges; eradicating poverty, increasing investment in national industries, creating jobs and strenghtneing democracy and human rights.

Coverage from BBC, New York Times, and CBC:

Bolivians Back “New” Constitution – BBC

Bolivia’s New Constitution – NYT

Bolivians back new, pro indigenous constitution – CBC

Expect more coverage to appear once the final count of ballots has taken place.

Liberalitas Notes:

1. The political divide in the country remains very clear. The constitution passed in four provinces and was defeated in four provinces. In all cases by large margins. The province of Chuquisaca remained too close to call at this time. Support for the constitution in La Paz and Oruro surpassed the 70 percent mark. In Beni and Santa Cruz the rejection to the constitution was higher than 60 percent. The graph shows the provinces that voted against the constitution and those that voted for it (Dark red was against). Chuquisaca, which has not been called yet, is province number 2.

2. Bolivians of all colours, ethnic groups, regions, departments, and political parties welcome change and want it. They just don’t seem to like Morales’ approach to politics. Support for a parallel question asking Bolivians if they supported a limit on the amount of land one can own was high in every single province of the country. the same departments that voted against the constitution in high margins, supported the land ownership limits, possibly indicating that the policies are not what is driving the east away from Morales but the politics.

3. Unless Bolivian political leaders are able to deliver a new national pact and move forward together, the country can be headed into further political problems and a weakening of Bolivian democracy. The election set for December is the next stage for the political divide in the country to surface. The question is whether or not anything will change in the nation’s voting patterns in only 12 months.

4. Support for Morales decreased throughout the country and Morales has lost the Urban vote (more on this on a separate blog posts).
Embedded video from CNN Video

Exit Polls: Constitution Passes

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Exit polls show Bolivian voters backing President Evo Morales’ proposed constitution granting greater power to the country’s indigenous majority.

Surveys conducted by two Bolivian television stations put support for the new charter at 60 percent or slightly higher.

An unofficial quick count of actual votes conducted by a private polling firm shows the new constitution winning by 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent, with just over 60 percent of votes counted. But ballots from heavily pro-Morales rural areas had yet to be counted.

Early returns from Sunday’s referendum also show that a wide margin of voters favor placing a limit on landownership at 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres), rather than 10,000 hectares 24,700 acres.

Bolivia Breathes Change

Morales votes in favour of the constitution in La Paz

Tomorrow will be a new day in Bolivia. Either the text for the new constitution will have been approved or the last two years of Morales’ efforts to change the constitution will hit the hardest wall possible, that of losing a popular plebiscite.

Polls indicate that the text is likely to be approved.
If so, the next year will be filled with more campaigning as Morales prepares for a presidential election in December. Bolivia is divided and the referendum is not expected to change that. Support for Morales in the east will continue to be low and his support in the west is likely to remain high.

All, this is to say that 2009 will be filled with blogging content for Liberalitas.

Ruben Costas (Governor of Santa Cruz) votes against the constitution.

Video from Spanish News outlet on the referendum (Spanish only):