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Crises and fear grip Bolivia as divisive elections loom

Crises and fear grip Bolivia as divisive elections loom

Irish Timesa day ago
Bolivia
marks the 200th anniversary of independence from
Spain
on Wednesday standing in the shadow of yet another of the crises that have scarred its two centuries as a nation state.
The country enters its third century essentially broke, warning recently it might soon be forced to default on its debts. A chronic shortage of dollars means it cannot pay for enough fuel imports, and queues at petrol stations are common.
Rising inflation and growing shortages of basic goods make daily life an increasing grind in what has long been one of Latin America's poorest nations. In June the United Nations warned '[a]cute food insecurity is expected to deteriorate' in the country, as the lack of fuel further hinders agricultural activity following a below average harvest last year. So alarming was the report amid the worsening situation the government rushed to clarify that the UN did not think Bolivia was facing actual famine.
This deepening economic and social crisis forms the background to what threatens to be one of the most divisive, and potentially violent, elections in the country's history, with voters set to go to the polls on August 17th to elect a new president and legislative assembly. The electoral contest has been defined by the implosion of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism party (or MAS, after its initials in Spanish). Having dominated Bolivian politics for the last 20 years, the MAS has in recent years descended into internecine warfare even while in power.
READ MORE
In part this self-immolation is the fallout from the party's unpopularity, brought on by the exhaustion of its economic and social model. This sought to use state oversight of the economy to redirect funds to Bolivia's poor indigenous, largely peasant, majority. 'This was justifiable but the government could not guarantee the investments to sustain it,' says María Teresa Zegada of the Centre for Studies of Economic and Social Reality think tank in Cochabamba.
This model was exposed once the commodities bonanza that coincided with the MAS's first decade in power ended. The nationalisation of Bolivia's gas reserves by Morales in 2006 is now widely seen as a strategic error. At first it showered the state with the funds for lavish social spending. But it slowly starved the sector of investment, leading to declining exports in one of the economy's only foreign currency earners, setting the stage for the current economic crisis.
But the civil war in the MAS is also a highly personalised fight between the two men the movement elevated to the presidency, incumbent Luis Arce and his former boss
Evo Morales
, the charismatic leader who ran Bolivia between 2006 and 2019 and an icon of the Latin American left.
Evo Morales has called on voters to spoil their votes in the Bolivian presidential election. Photograph: Marcelo Perez del Carpio/Bloomberg
Morales's bid for an unprecedented fourth term failed in 2019 after suspicions of fraud led to mass protests that eventually saw the army step in, forcing him into exile in Argentina. But when the MAS returned to power with the election of his former economic minister Arce, Morales thought he would resume effective control and eventually take the top job again. But Arce moved to sideline his predecessor, willed on by many elements in the MAS that had grown tired of Morales's obsession with power. The resulting internecine warfare has led to an assassination attempt, claims of a staged coup and accusations of 'lawfare' being waged by the president against his predecessor.
Arce has won from a compliant electoral court a ruling barring his predecessor from seeking a fourth term. Morales is also facing charges that he fathered a child with a minor while president. He denies this though it is not the first time he has faced allegations about sex with minors.
Now wanted by prosecutors, he has holed himself up in his home Chapare region, where he got his political start as a union leader of local coca growers fighting eradication efforts led by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. From there he has called on voters to spoil their ballots, warning: 'Without Evo there will be no election'. Violence has already broken out. In June pro-Morales protesters blockaded highways and confronted police, leaving five people dead, including four police officers.
Arce was forced to abandon his own ambitions for re-election due to dismal approval ratings, so the MAS candidate is Eduardo del Castillo, a 36-year old lawyer who until recently was interior minister. He is polling in the low single digits.
Andrónico Rodríguez may represent the Bolivian left's best hope in the upcoming presidential election. Photograph: Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images
With another former MAS leader having quit the race last month the best chance of the indigenous-dominated left holding on to power looks to reside with the 36-year-old senate president Andrónico Rodríguez.
A one-time protege of Morales he also entered politics through the Chapare coca-growers movement. He has since broken with the MAS and is contesting the election at the head of the leftist Popular Alliance. Morales has labelled his former acolyte a 'traitor' for ignoring his calls for a boycott. But if Rodríguez can convince enough of Morales's supporters to back him rather than spoil their ballots he could force his way into a run-off round in October.
His campaign pitch centres on tackling the economic crisis with measures that are 'neither neoliberal nor antisocial'. Such an appeal could resonate in a society still scarred by the memories of the economic 'shock therapy' that followed the country's last default in 1984, which led to large spikes in unemployment and poverty. The leading candidates on the right – cement magnate and Burger King franchisee Samuel Doria Medina and former president Jorge 'Tuto' Quiroga – are campaigning on pledges to slash the size of the state.
But any move to rein in subsidies on fuel and food could inflame an already volatile situation. 'Out on the streets [the next president] will have to pacify the social movements and somehow alleviate the economic pressure the country is under,' says Zegada.
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