Topic: Bolivia Elections - Evo Morale's party set for comeback majority

[Indomitable_Carp]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54591963

Evo Morales' party Mas, under their new leader the UK-educated Luis Acre, are set to win the Bolivian election with a landslide 52.4% of the vote, less then one year after massively disputed claims of vote-rigging in 2019 led to Morales being forced from power and into exile and interim government being put in place.


So where to begin?

Bolivia is one of Latin Americas poorest and least developed nations. Alongside Paraguay, it is also the only South American country in which the self-identified indigenous or mestizo population form a majority (20% full indigenous, plus a further 40% mestizo).

Despite this, like much of Latin America, Bolivia has always been ruled by its small white ruling elite, a hangover of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial caste systems.

Morales, an indigenous Bolivian, led his indigenous-dominated party to power in 2005 representing the first time an indigenous leader had led Bolivia. Despite his often fierce anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric, he has led a mixed-economy in what has largely been a successful experiment for the country. The old white economic elite have stayed the old white economic elite and foreign investment has continued to flow in, however the indigenous majority have experienced their largest increase in living standards in history. He also managed to win support from many parts of the softer-left.

In this time the country's Gini coefficient which measures income inequality has dropped by 19% and poverty rates dropped 59% to 35%. The country was also South Americas fastest growing economy, growing by 5% year-on-year for a decade. Furthermore, despite over 40% of the country speaking one of the countries 36 native languages, for the first time these languages were given official status alongside Spanish, representing something of a cultural coup and long-overdue state recognition, making it a pluri-national state for the first time.

In a country famous for instability and coups, his party managed to increase their electoral majority in the subsequent 2009 and 2014 elections.

This hasn't been without controversy however. Much of the endemic corruptions of the pre-Morales years has continued. Internationally his (ultimately very successful) partial-nationalisation of the country's hydro-carbon industry, coupled with his often fierce anti-capitalist rhetoric, difficult relationship with the Catholic Church, and support for some of the worlds more-questionable left-wing regimes, has (probabably unfairly) made him something of a pariah for many countries.

The other area in which people took issue, despite his democratic route to power and democratic consolidation of power, was the very strong cult-of-personality that had evolved around Morales. On the face of it, this came with all the problematic connotations of strong-man leftwing leaders.


So what happened next?

In 2016, Morales led a referendum to try and change his own 2009 constitution, allowing him to run for a third consecutive term under the 2009 constitution (a fourth consecutive term including his pre-2009 term). This referendum was rejected by a 51.3% majority in a very close run referendum.

Despite losing this referendum, and where things became problematic, Morales applied to the constitutional court (which was itself elected by the Mas-dominated legislature) in 2017 to overturn the term limit. The constitutional court ruled in favour of Morales, and the term limit was abolished anyway. This paved the way for the now-constitutionally legal albeit controversial 2019 election.


2019 election

Which brings us to the 2019 election. Morale's party won another overwhelming 47.08% majority (albeit decreased from the 61.36% majority of the 2014 election).

However the Organisation of American States (OAS) quickly claimed there was "clear manipulation” of voting data, a hidden server, forged scrutineers’ signatures and phantom vote. The US quickly backed this position, as did multiple other states including the UK, EU and Bolivia right-wing neighbouring states, with international calls for a re-run.

Despite this, these claims of vote-rigging have subsequently heavily criticised as false, with the OAS verdict ultimately being attributed to a computing error when making their analysis of the results (https://cepr.net/press-release/major-coding-error-reveals-another-fatal-flaw-in-oas-analysis-of-bolivias-2019-elections/)

This did not stop Morales quickly losing the support of the army and police, and there was street battles between opposing sides. The thoroughly lovely leader of the opposition Jeanine Áñez, from the old "white", conservative Catholic ruling class who had described Bolivias indigenous communities as "satanic", formed an interim government until elections could be held in May 2020. Morales himself went into exile.

With the arrival of our good old friend Covid-19, the May elections were suspended. This (unelected) interim government was responsible for human-rights abuses (including the massacre of 8 indigenous rights protestors), corruption and incompetence in the face of the pandemic (with Áñez basically being accused of being completely out-of-touch, with Bolivia ultimately being one of the worst hit countries - although funding disputes in the legislature mean Mas are not clear of the charge of politicking the crisis either)


2020 election

Leading us to this election, in which Morales party, under a new leader, have secured a 52% majority (a 5% increase on the 2019 vote), and the right have conceded defeat even before the final count. What role Morales will continue to play is unclear- the new leader has stated he will maintain independence with Morales taking a backseat.

With this in mind however, it means Morales and his party would ultimately have been better served by standing a new leader for the 2019 election which they would have been likely to win regardless. What is clear is that the interim-government did, as some claimed at the time, effectively amount of a coup after a legitimately won election, and it has ultimately helped kill tens of thousands of Bolivians and perhaps finished off Bolivia's economic elite as a dominant political force.

You can only hope the new government will be successful, and continue the more beneficial aspects of Morales's reign, as Bolivia is definitely somewhere that needs it. You would also hope that the international community can also try and construct a more sympathetic tone to what is clearly Bolivia's democratic mandate, although this would also depend on the new leader toning down some of the sharper rhetoric of Morales and the cult-of-personality that went with it (which looks likely)


Edit: If someone could please edit the title to correct Morales' name that would be good   

[BoRed]

Good to see democracy prevail over "pro-democracy" forces for once.

Bolivia election: Evo Morales's leftwing party celebrates stunning comeback

Exit polls for presidential election project win for Luis Arce as rival concedes defeat

Evo Morales’s leftwing party is celebrating a stunning political comeback after its candidate appeared to trounce rivals in Bolivia’s presidential election.

The official results of Sunday’s twice-postponed election had yet to be announced on Monday afternoon, but exit polls projected that Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), had secured more than 50% of the vote while his closest rival, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, received about 30%.

Mesa conceded defeat on Monday lunchtime, telling supporters that a quick count showed a “very convincing and very clear” result. “There is a large gap between the first-placed candidate and us … and, as believers in democracy, it now falls to us … to recognise that there is a winner in this election,” Mesa said

Arce, a former finance minister under Morales, had earlier claimed victory in a late-night broadcast from La Paz. “We have reclaimed democracy and above all we have reclaimed hope,” said the 57-year-old UK-educated economist, who is widely known as Lucho.

Arce vowed to end the uncertainty that has plagued his bitterly divided nation since October 2019, when hotly disputed claims of vote rigging against his party resulted in mass street protests, the presidential election being scrapped and Morales being forced from the country by security forces in what his supporters call a racist, rightwing coup.

“We will govern for all Bolivians … we will bring unity to our country,” said Arce, who should be sworn in as president in the first half of November.

Fireworks echoed around La Paz as news of the forecast victory spread, although a Mas spokeswoman called on Arce’s supporters to await the official result. “We know there are high expectations but we must comply with the rules in order to have a good celebration,” said Marianela Paco.

Morales, who has towered over the election rerun despite living in exile in Argentina, hailed “a resounding victory” for his party. “Sisters and brothers: the will of the people has prevailed,” tweeted Bolivia’s first indigenous president, a key member of Latin America’s leftwing pink tide who governed from 2006 until his dramatic downfall last year.

Even Morales’s nemesis, the rightwing interim president, Jeanine Áñez, conceded that the left had come out on top. “We do not yet have the official count, but the data we do have shows that Mr Arce [has] … won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy,” Áñez tweeted.

Leading members of the Latin American left, who hope Arce’s apparent triumph may help revive their fortunes, celebrated the result. “Viva the Bolivian people! Viva democracy!” tweeted Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of the Brazilian Workers’ party (PT).

Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, tweeted: “A great victory! United and aware, the Bolivian people have used votes to defeat the coup they carried out against our brother Evo.”

If confirmed, the victory would represent a sensational political fightback for Mas, which was left reeling last year when its leader was forced to flee the country after trying to secure an unprecedented fourth term as president.

“It’s a return to the kind of mandate they had when Evo was first elected in 2005,” said Jim Shultz, the founder of the Bolivia-focused Democracy Centre.

For Áñez’s outgoing conservative interim government, which took power after Morales’s banishment, it was a stinging rebuke. “It tells us that the rightwing in Bolivia has no broad political support – not even close,” Shultz said. “The rightwing was given a chance to govern and proved that it is only interested in its own power and in itself and has contempt for the indigenous and poor of the country. They demonstrated that by pretending they had legitimacy that they didn’t, by overseeing real human rights abuses and impunity, and by being incompetent and corrupt in their governance. And people weren’t going to have it.”

One exit poll suggested Arce had achieved a thumping victory, winning a majority in five of Bolivia’s nine departments. The poll said Arce secured more than 65% of the vote in La Paz, 63% in Cochabamba, 62% in Oruro and 51% in Potosí.

It may be several days before the official result is confirmed. On Monday afternoon electoral authorities said that with nearly 20% of votes counted, 36% had gone to Arce and nearly 43% to Mesa.

In Washington, a state department spokesperson said: “We are awaiting the official results, but President Trump and the United States look forward to working with whomever the Bolivians elect. We will continue to promote democracy, human rights and prosperity in Bolivia and throughout the region.”

Opponents of Mas claim Arce is little more than a puppet for Bolivia’s exiled former president, who they suspect will now seek to return home. But Arce sought to publicly distance himself from Morales during the campaign, and on Monday allies said the man poised to become Bolivia’s next president was beholden to no one.

“Categorically, Evo will not interfere in the government of brother Luis Arce,” said David Apaza, a Mas leader in El Alto, a high plateau city above La Paz. “Comrade Evo Morales in his time was the vital element, the principal protagonist ... [But] now we believe our comrade should rest, while brother Luis Arce takes the lead.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/19/bolivia-election-exit-polls-suggest-thumping-win-evo-morales-party-luis-arce

[TSC]

Don’t pretend to know anything about Bolivian politics but after the Labour win in NZ good to note there are still pockets of the world that don’t fall for rhetoric of far right populist regimes.

[Indomitable_Carp]

Don’t pretend to know anything about Bolivian politics but after the Labour win in NZ good to note there are still pockets of the world that don’t fall for rhetoric of far right populist regimes.

To be fair, the Morales regime is also what you might describe as populist, albeit left-wing populist that actually brought real tangible benefits to a significant chunk of Bolivia's population. Unlike other populists, Morales has been a very canny political operator who has managed to successfully separate his populist rhetoric from his concrete political and economic actions to bring benefits to Bolivia. Hence his espousing of largely anti-capitalist rhetoric, while actually seeking to manage an only partially nationalised market oriented mixed economy capable of attracting outside investment

Compare that with the absolute shitshow of the interim regime, and not for the first time in South American history, it has been disastrous for Bolivia to have had yet another legitimately won democratic election undermined by the international community. The swing back to Morales' party in this election is proof of that.

The problem with Bolivia, and the reason why some people were gleeful to see his downfall (including some on these forums) is because it was sucked into the Labour factionalist infighting in this country, accompanied with some fairly lazy comparisons (from both our Labour factions) to Maduro/Chavez in Venezuela (although it should be mentioned that Morales has given public international support to the Venezuelan regime). 

The way in which the constitutional issue to allow the election was swung in 2016 and 2017 is definitely problematic, but also constitutionally absolutely legitimate. And with how some other prominent Western democracies have handled themselves in the last five years, it is hardly an outlier and certainly not enough to have undermined a legitimate election and the resultant bloodshed it caused.

[Indomitable_Carp]

A small update for anyone who is interested, now the final results are in:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/bolivia-left-return-power-evo-morales-mas

Two agonising weeks had passed since Evo Morales was driven from Bolivia and in his vice-president’s recently vacated chambers one of their party’s rising stars sat, crestfallen and drained.

“It hurts,” confessed Eva Copa, the 32-year-old senate president from Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (Mas), her voice breaking and tears filling her eyes as she pondered what some thought might prove a fatal blow to their pro-indigenous project. “What has happened will leave scars.”

Visibly exhausted, Copa admitted the outlook was uncertain, for her movement and Bolivia as a whole. “The last thing the Bolivian people want is more chaos,” she said.

But the young senator was adamant Mas could, and would rebuild. “We don’t need to refound ourselves. What we’re going to do is reorganise,” Copa said. “We have faith we’ll pull through this.”

That faith was well-placed. On Friday morning authorities confirmed a stunning political comeback with Mas’s candidate, the former finance minister Luis Arce, winning Sunday’s presidential election by a thumping 26.3% margin.

His closest rival in the re-run of last October’s voided ballot, the centrist ex-president Carlos Mesa, received 28.8% of the 6.48m votes compared to Arce’s 55.1%. There was a record voter turnout of 88.4%.

Bolivian sociologist Jorge Derpic recalled thinking at the height of last year’s turmoil that “a total collapse” of Morales’s movement was possible.

“That’s why this moment is so impressive and unexpected,” Derpic said. “They have shown [the ability] to overcome the very worst moment of their 25-year history. Not every party is able to survive [something like that]. It is really impressive.”

There are many complex threads to the tale of Mas’ bounce back from last year’s nightmare, when security forces drove Morales into exile after he tried to extend his 14-year stint as president in defiance of a 2016 referendum.

But at the heart of the story are a succession of spectacular miscalculations and misteps by Mas’ opponents – and above all the caretaker administration of Jeanine Áñez, who took power two days after Morales left Bolivia on 10 November 2019.

As interim president Áñez had a simple mandate: to lead Bolivia peacefully towards fresh elections. Instead, with the help of her hardline interior minister Arturo Murillo, the conservative Christian set about pursuing Morales supporters and alienating Bolivia’s indigenous majority with a display of Bible bashing and brute force.

“They showed so much vindictiveness against the Mas and the impact [on indigenous voters] was dramatic because a lot of people basically said: ‘Look, these guys are not only going to go after Evo, they’re going to go after everybody who looks like Evo,’” Gamarra said.

Derpic said Áñez’s decision to herself run for president – only abandoning her bid on the eve of the election – caused further alarm. Some feared the right would lead Bolivia back into dictatorship and used Sunday’s vote to say no. “There was part of Bolivian society who, despite the disappointment and anger and frustration with the Mas, wanted to preserve democracy,” Derpic said.

But Mas’s resurrection also speaks to its own strengths: its powerful connection to Bolivia’s indigenous populations and working classes, and how it savvily reinvented itself to win back voters disillusioned with Morales’s refusal to relinquish power.

“They ran an intelligent campaign … and probably the most important thing was that they separated themselves from Evo,” said Gamarra.

With Morales exiled to Argentina after what supporters declared a coup, Arce pitched himself as an efficient and thoughtful leader who could bring social and economic stability to a divided nation facing a dire economic outlook and one of the world’s worst Covid-19 crises.

“He’s softly-spoken. He’s not antagonistic. He’s not full of rage and rhetoric – and that went over well,” said Gamarra, who thought Arce’s reputation as the finance minister who oversaw Bolivia’s commodity-fuelled boom in the 2000s was key.

“Jeanine could have emerged as the woman who stabilized the country,” he concluded. “Instead, I think she’s politically dead now and Murillo is probably going to be brought up on charges and will have to leave Bolivia because he has antagonised so many people.”

One man almost certain to return is Morales, although Arce has insisted Bolivia’s first indigenous president will have no role his government.

Jim Shultz, the founder of the Bolivia-focused Democracy Centre, said a burning question was whether Bolivia was entering an Arce presidency or a Morales one: “I think there might be a struggle over the answer.”

The prospect of Morales continuing to wield influence would disturb many Bolivians, including some Masistas who complain of an authoritarian drift and growing corruption in the latter years of his time in power.

Derpic, however, thought Arce’s triumph – which was even more convincing that the 2005 landslide that first brought Morales to power – was so convincing it gave him the upper hand.

“Arce defeated not only the opposition, but also Morales,” he said. “This idea that they couldn’t win [and election] without Morales has been shattered and I think that’s a great thing for the Mas and Bolivian society in general.”

Derpic said the message from voters to Morales was crystal clear: “Evo, take a break, relax in Argentina – or Chapare if you want. [But] don’t try to be the centrepiece of the government.

“I think that that is something to celebrate,” he said. “We’ll see if things stay like that.”

[Hendollama]

I do not know much about Bolivia and the elections, except for what I have read here.

Saw this tweet today.

©halecos Amarillosᴳᴸᴼᴮᴬᴸ 🍀ʷAͤNͣOͬNͤYˡMͤOᵍUͥSͦⁿ
@ChalecosAmarill
🎥🛑En #Bolivia los FASCISTAS piden dictadura militar.

🔻Dicen que desconocer el voto del 55% de la población e instalar una junta militar es "constitucional" e instan a "salir" a las calles.

👉🏽Esto SÍ es SEDICIÓN y está penado por ley.
Translated from Spanish by
🎥🛑 In #Bolivia the FASCISTAS call for a military dictatorship.

🔻 They say that ignoring the vote of 55% of the population and installing a military junta is "constitutional" and they urge to "go out" to the streets.

👉🏽 This IS SEDITION and is punishable by law.
https://twitter.com/ChalecosAmarill/status/1320835449842225152

Can the resident Bolivians explain what's going on there?

[Hendollama]

Morales is back in Bolivia.
https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1327992481510813696

[classycarra]

Morales is back in Bolivia.
https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1327992481510813696

Presumably Arce is going to continue trying to distance himself from Morales, and continue to emphasise this is a new government as he has been so far (something which is rarely reported here, among the clamour to fit a past narrative).

Be interesting to see if Morales can manage to avoid trying to come into the foreground

[Hendollama]

Presumably Arce is going to continue trying to distance himself from Morales, and continue to emphasise this is a new government as he has been so far (something which is rarely reported here, among the clamour to fit a past narrative).

Be interesting to see if Morales can manage to avoid trying to come into the foreground

It's best he avoids coming in the foreground. The Country has already gone through enough turmoil because of his stupid decision (Legal but idiotic) to overturn the term limit. MAS would have won under a different candidate anyway.

In other news, Scientists discovered a deadly hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola that can spread person-to-person in Bolivia. 2020 just keeps on giving.
https://www.insider.com/scientists-discovered-chapare-virus-spread-person-to-person-in-bolivia-2020-11

[classycarra]

It's best he avoids coming in the foreground. The Country has already gone through enough turmoil because of his stupid decision (Legal but idiotic) to overturn the term limit. MAS would have won under a different candidate anyway.

Yep, yet for some reason Morales is all the western press focus on and largely neglect to point out that his actions, particularly with the wildfires, were very unpopular. Hence Arce working hard to differentiate from him (all while the press here solely refer to him as being Morales' colleague)

[Indomitable_Carp]

Yep, yet for some reason Morales is all the western press focus on and largely neglect to point out that his actions, particularly with the wildfires, were very unpopular. Hence Arce working hard to differentiate from him (all while the press here solely refer to him as being Morales' colleague)

Aside from the fact that our press in the UK doesn´t really give much focus to South American issues in general (compared to, for example, the press here in Spain), I think this is down to the fact that Morales did have a fairly strong cult of personality around him for an elected leader.

I think also in the minds of the much of the UK press its far easier to just lump Morales in, and by extension the whole of Mas and wider political movement, with the other leftwing strongmen of Latin America. Hence the rush to jump onto claims of the 2019 vote being rigged.

I think also, especially as far as the left is concerned, when political capital is expended defending the likes of Maduro, it allows more people to brush off their criticisms of the international response to false claims of vote rigging in Bolivia as being a bunch of cranks.

You would hope with Acre being UK educated he might start to recieve more focus (I mean as much focus as Bolivian politics will ever get over here anyway).