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 News from Around the Americas | December 2005 
Can Bolivia Vote Bring Stability?
 James Painter - BBC
| | Evo Morales and Jorge Quiroga: different visions of Bolivia's future. |
Sunday's elections in Bolivia were called by President Eduardo Rodriguez in an attempt to pull the country out of deeply-rooted political instability which has seen his two predecessors removed by popular protests. But will they make a difference?
Participants at a recent high-level conference on Bolivia organised by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington warned that the elections were unlikely to bring a new era of stability.
They pointed to the growing ethnic and regional tensions in the country, the virtual disappearance of the traditional parties and the rapid decline in the authority of the state as a recipe for more short-lived governments.
"The era of government by broad coalition set in motion in 1985 has come to an end," argued Peter DeShazo, the director of the Americas programme at the centre.
"Political consensus is in short supply and representative democracy is under great strain."
Part of the reason for the pessimism is that none of the candidates is likely to get more than a third of the vote on Sunday. If no-one obtains 50% of the vote, the final decision passes to congress in mid-January.
There will not be a second-round run-off as happens in most Latin American countries.
Problems
The two favourites in the elections have very different visions of Bolivia's future, and both will find it difficult to achieve any sort of national consensus or unity.
Leading the polls by a narrow margin is Evo Morales of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), a left-wing Aymara Indian who wants to legalise the production of coca, the raw material for cocaine, but not cocaine itself, and introduce some sort of state control over the country's rich oil and gas reserves - the second largest in South America.
His main opponent is Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga of a centre-right alliance. He espouses a more capitalist vision of the future, and tends to represent the interests of the wealthier sectors, particularly in the east of the country.
One of the candidates may win by a large enough margin in the first round to command some legitimacy. But even then, huge problems would remain.
Protests
Evo Morales is unlikely to have a majority in Congress supporting him, and would meet fierce opposition, particularly from the gas-rich departments of Santa Cruz and Tarija.
There has been a boom in recent years in poor, largely urban, radicalised Aymara and Quechua Indian groups demanding greater political participation and a significant shift of resources to them.
If Mr Morales is unable to push through their main demands for a constituent assembly and the nationalisation of the gas and oil sector - which many of them understand to mean "taking over foreign companies" - then even he may face the sort of blockades that have proved effective in bringing down governments in the past.
Tuto Quiroga is also likely to face the same sort of protests, but at an earlier stage of his government.
"I see more transitory governments, more social and political unrest, and no new investment in the country," says Juan Cariaga, a former Finance Minister.
"There will be more confrontation over a new constituent assembly, regional autonomy, gas industrialisation, coca eradication and land seizures."
'More positive'
Another complicating factor would be Washington's distaste for Evo Morales, who is a close friend and ally of President Bush's current bete noire in the region, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Washington will be hoping that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, which has huge investments in the gas sector, would be a restraining influence on Mr Morales.
But not every observer is pessimistic.
"Bolivians always talk about everything falling apart, and it never quite falls apart," says Herbert Klein, professor of history at Columbia University.
"The elite... eventually negotiates on a whole range of terms. There is constant conflict going on and constant negotiation. As a historian, I am more positive about where this may end up." |
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