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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/19/will-there-ever-be-elections-again-in-bolivia/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/19/will-there-ever-be-elections-again-in-bolivia/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Will There Ever be Elections Again in
Bolivia? <br>
</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">by Vijay Prashad - August
19, 2020<br>
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<p>On November 10, 2019, President Evo Morales Ayma of
Bolivia <a
href="https://cadenaser.com/ser/2019/11/10/internacional/1573419943_665959.html">announced</a>
his resignation from the presidency. Morales had been
elected in 2014 to a third presidential term, which
should have lasted until January 2020. In November 2019,
protests around his fourth electoral victory in October
led to the police and the military asking Morales to
step down; by every description of the term, this was a
coup d’état. Two days later, Morales went into <a
href="https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2019/11/12/economia/1573545832_667308.html">exile</a>
in Mexico.</p>
<p>On November 16, Morales <a
href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/11/16/politica/014e1pol">told</a>
Mexican daily newspaper La Jornada that the coup that
unseated him “was prepared” by the U.S. embassy in La
Paz. The reason for the coup, he said, was—among
others—Bolivia’s considerable lithium reserves and his
government’s failure to surrender to North American
multinational mining corporations. Morales told La
Jornada’s Miguel Angel Velázquez it seemed his “sin” was
that he “implemented social programs for the humblest
families.”</p>
<p>The coup was justified by the Bolivian oligarchy and
the United States government as the restoration of
democracy. By “democracy,” the oligarchs and the U.S.
government mean rule by elites who politely hand over
resources to mining firms at concessionary rates; they
do not mean that the people—who should have sovereignty
over their lives and their resources—actually govern.
This is why there is no anxiety in large sections of the
Bolivian oligarchy and the U.S. government that Bolivia
will not have an elected government in at least a year.</p>
<p><b>A Coup Government Remains</b></p>
<p>Morales was replaced by Jeanine Áñez, a minor
politician who was outside the constitutional chain of
succession. Áñez said that she would not seek election
after her interim period was over, but quickly turned
her back on that promise; this was the first of many
promises she would break. The presidential election was
set for May 3, 2020. Due to her government’s inability
to control the coronavirus, the election was postponed
until September 6, 2020.</p>
<p>Áñez and her coalition are polling far <a
href="https://www.celag.org/encuesta-bolivia-julio-2020/">behind</a>
the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Morales’ party whose
ticket consists of Luis Arce Catacora for president and
David Choquehuanca Céspedes for vice president, as well
as behind the center-right Civic Community party of
Carlos Mesa (a former president of Bolivia who also ran
against Morales in the October 2019 election and lost).
Afraid of a humiliating loss, Áñez pressured the Supreme
Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to postpone the election to
October 18, 2020. There is no guarantee that there will
not be a further postponement.</p>
<p>The TSE is now headed by Salvador Romero, whom Morales
had decided not to reinstate when Romero’s term ended in
2008 because of Romero’s dangerously close relationship
to the United States government. After he was not
reinstated, Romero <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07LAPAZ38_a.html">complained</a>
to Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia.
Goldberg met Romero warmly but could not force Morales
to put him back in his position. Nonetheless, the United
States provided Romero with a nice post: he took a job
in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, at the National Democratic
Institute. (The National Democratic Institute, based in
Washington, is loosely affiliated with the U.S.
Democratic Party.)</p>
<p>While in Honduras, Romero ensured that the <a
href="https://tinyurl.com/yy78ttdp">violent</a>
conditions during the 2013 Honduran presidential
elections did not provoke any kind of international
condemnation as the far right’s Juan Orlando Hernández
(favored by the U.S. government) defeated the left’s
Xiomara Castro. Romero and others like him covered up
the dirty tricks (such as minimizing the significance of
a power outage as Hernández pulled ahead of Castro
during vote counting) that led to Hernández’s victory.
Romero <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/world/americas/honduras-election.html">told</a>
the New York Times that despite “the general perception
of fraud,” the election was fine. After she took power
in November 2019, Áñez—with the backing of the U.S.
government—<a
href="https://www.notimerica.com/politica/noticia-bolivia-salvador-romero-elegido-presidente-tribunal-supremo-electoral-bolivia-20191221023119.html">brought</a>
Romero back to Bolivia to head the TSE.</p>
<p><b>Fractures in the Right</b></p>
<p>All is not well in the camp of the far right in
Bolivia. Áñez does not command the field. Carlos Mesa,
the candidate of the center-right, is eager to make this
election between himself and the MAS, with Áñez stepping
aside to allow the votes of the right wing to
consolidate behind him. But he has had no luck; she
would prefer that he stand down and prolong the wait for
an election while she leads.</p>
<p>Áñez came to power due to the shock troops of the far
right, groups such as the Santa Cruz Civic Committee (a
misnomer), the Resistencia Juvenil Cochala, and the
Unión Juvenil Cruceñista. The main figure who had
galvanized these groups was Luis Fernando Camacho, a
businessman from Santa Cruz with the sensibility of a
fascist thug. After the coup, Branko Marinković, who had
absconded to Brazil after he was charged with sedition,
returned to Bolivia and tried to regain control of these
various far-right platforms. The rivalry between Camacho
and Marinković, and the uncertainty about the
possibility of a right-wing triumph at the polls, has
stayed the hand of Áñez and Romero; they would prefer to
have no election (using the excuse of the pandemic) over
an election that returned the MAS to power.</p>
<p><b>Protests for the Election</b></p>
<p>A week of blockades, marches, and gatherings in early
August <a
href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/07/national-strike-continues-across-bolivia-demands-grow-for-anez-to-step-down/">took</a>
place across Bolivia to insist on an election. The
protests demanded that the election date of September 6
be reinstated. That is unlikely to happen. But the
protests have put the TSE on notice that any <a
href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/08/13/bolivian-movements-and-trade-unions-propose-to-hold-elections-on-october-11/">further</a>
delay of elections—or blatant intervention in election
results when they do take place—is likely to result in
public outcry.</p>
<p>All the polls suggest that the MAS will win the first
round of the election; if the far right and center-right
do not coalesce after the first round, and if the left
is able to unite, then the MAS might win a two-way
second-round election. If the left remains disunited,
then this promises to hamper the election prospects of
MAS.</p>
<p>In power for 14 years, MAS moved an agenda that made
impressive gains for the people. At the same time, over
that long period, MAS was not able to please every
social sector, every time. Fissures in the camp of the
left opened up when Morales was in office, so much so it
was the country’s largest trade union federation
(Central Obrera Boliviana, or COB) that publicly <a
href="https://www.infobae.com/america/america-latina/2019/11/10/la-central-obrera-boliviana-pidio-la-renuncia-a-evo-morales/">asked</a>
for the resignation of Morales.</p>
<p>Groups such as COB, the Ponchos Rojos, the National
Confederation of Indigenous Peasant Women, and the Pact
of Unity led the recent protest; they galvanized the
people behind the demand for the immediate resignation
of the Áñez regime and for immediate elections. Unity
between these groups—which have excited the core of the
left with their public actions—and the MAS is not yet
established. These fissures weaken the left as these
organizations proceed toward a continuation of struggles
and the election. If the left were to stand together,
the return of MAS to power is virtually guaranteed. The
main task of the left is to consolidate the unity of the
popular forces and to promote the young leadership that
has come to the surface in these mobilizations. Unity,
they say, is their focus.</p>
<p>Still, though, many people in Bolivia fear that the
full array of dirty tricks—including blackouts during
the counting of votes—will steal the election from them.
It is not hard to imagine that this is what a coup
regime has in mind; it did not annul democracy to allow
democracy to remove it from office.</p>
<p><i>This article was produced by </i><a
href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/"><i>Globetrotter</i></a><i>,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.</i></p>
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