Bolivia at the crossroads: December 2005

Military Review,  March-April, 2006  by Kent Eaton

Tags: Bolivia, Government, Leadership, president, SOFTWAREU.S. Congress

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

ON 18 DECEMBER 2005, Evo Morales won 54 percent of the vote in Bolivia's presidential election, outpolling his closest rival by 25 percentage points. The outcome of this closely watched election was stunning, primarily because Morales would become Bolivia's first indigenous president. Although the country has the largest indigenous population in South America, with approximately 67 percent of Bolivians identifying themselves as indigenous, its white and mestizo minorities have long dominated its political life. (1)

The victory of an indigenous candidate in 2005 did not materialize out of thin air. During the 1990s, indigenous groups in Bolivia mobilized to claim political roles traditionally denied them. For example, the country inaugurated its first indigenous vice-president, Victor Hugo Cardenas, in 1993, and indigenous leaders were elected as mayors after Bolivia enacted a sweeping decentralization law in 1994. These gains were certainly important; indeed, the municipal victories of Morales's party paved the way for its national victory in 2005. But because of the concentration of power in the executive branch in Bolivia, Morales's victory marks a truly historic juncture.

Morales also stunned the world because he won so handily. In the months and weeks preceding the election, virtually every poll indicated Morales would come in first, but only by 3 to 7 percentage points ahead of his closest rival. The most widely cited poll predicted 36 percent of the vote would go to Morales and 30 percent would go to center-right candidate and former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga. (2) Such an outcome would have thrown the decision to Congress, which is authorized to select the president from among the top two vote-getters when no candidate wins an absolute majority.

Because of the fragmentation of the political party system, Bolivia's Congress has selected every president since 1982. Morales's convincing victory rendered moot months of pre-electoral speculation about how Congress--one of Bolivia's most discredited institutions--would behave if given the chance to choose between Morales and Quiroga. Would Congress refuse to choose the first-place finisher as president, as it had often done in the past? If so, how would the social movements and organizations identified with Morales respond? As it happened, so many Bolivians voted for Morales that Congress was sidelined, and the new president was able to claim a greater mandate than any of his predecessors.

The results of the Bolivian election were particularly significant for the United States because of Morales's well-known opposition to U.S.-supported policies on drug eradication and economic liberalization. Some U.S commentators argue that Morales's election was reason enough to suspend aid to Bolivia, consider economic sanctions against it, and support neighboring countries that might feel threatened by the Morales regime. (3) Because of Morales's expressed admiration for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez-Frias, some observers view Morales's election as proof of Chavez's growing and pernicious influence in the region. (4) Still others see the Bolivian election largely through the lens of Latin America's shift to the left in recent years, but this is an inaccurately monolithic view of leftist leaders in the region that fails to appreciate the uniquely Bolivian features of Morales's win. (5)

While the Morales presidency will certainly pose several challenges to the United States, putting the December election in its historical context suggests that Morales's ascendance represents opportunities as well as challenges, both of which the U.S. Government must keep in mind as it promotes democratic consolidation and broad-based economic development in Bolivia.

Why Morales Won

To understand Morales's strong performance in the December 2005 election, we must examine the major political and economic transformations Bolivia experienced in the last 20 years. Many of these changes were positive, such as the deepening of a culture of compromise between political parties that enhanced governability as well as the successful maintenance of macroeconomic stability. However, several developments in this period were negative, including a widening breach between the country's traditional political parties and its increasingly vigorous civil society and the reality that few Bolivians benefited much from the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. The decidedly mixed record of the period helps explain Morales's appeal and casts doubt on the view that he threatens a political and economic order that is advantageous to Bolivia. I question those who see Morales as a savior and the victory of his party as a panacea for Bolivia's ills as well as those who believe his victory represents the "end of Bolivia" or its "last days." (6)

On the political front, the victory of Morales's Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo [MAS]) was more a rejection of Bolivia's bankrupt political establishment than evidence of the influence of foreign leaders, whether Venezuelan or Cuban. After the disastrous administration of leftist President Hernan Siles between 1982 and 1985, three main political parties dominated polities in the 20 years that followed: the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario [MNR]), the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria), and the Nationalist Democratic Action (Accion Democratica Nacionalista [ADN]). Despite their misleading names, these parties were in reality rightist or center-right parties dominated by a handful of national leaders who moved in and out of the presidency. In the absence of a majority winner, Congress would select a president, who owed his office to interparty pacts negotiated in Congress. While defenders of these pacts argue that they produced smoother executive-legislative relations in Bolivia than in the region's other presidential democracies, critics noted that the pacts tended to reinforce clientelism, corruption, and personalism. (7)