Democracy or dictatorship?
In recent weeks, Bolivia, the South American country located in the heart of the continent, has been occupying the attention of the world and the headlines of the international press.
What is the reason? Leftist Evo Morales, shown to the world as the first president of indigenous origin in the history of Bolivia, left power after about the Senate and the fourth person in the chain of constitutional succession. There are, both internally and internationally, dissimilar voices that speak, since there was a coup d'etat of the extreme right in combination with the army, until the constitutional succession was given due to the resignation and self-exile of the president, who was “rescued” by an express plane sent by order of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Although I am a citizen of the United States, I am Bolivian of origin and I am temporarily living in Bolivia, having seen on the ground the events that happened in the immediate post-election stage. I will try to make, as far as possible, an objective analysis of the events and the current situation.
On October 20, elections were held in Bolivia for president, vice president and the total renewal of the Legislative Assembly (Congress). Nine political parties and alliances were submitted to the electoral contest, of which only two had a chance of winning: the Movement to Socialism (MAS) of Evo Morales, who was running for the fourth time in a row, and the Citizen Community (CC) a center left political alliance with the journalist and historian Carlos Mesa as candidate for the presidency.
The Bolivian State Political Constitution (CPE) establishes that national, regional and local authorities can aspire to re-election only once consecutively. However, using different “legal” tricks, Evo Morales managed to run and win a third term and run for a fourth in the elections of October 20, still ignoring a binding referendum that denied the possibility of his candidacy.
During his thirteen uninterrupted years and eight months of government, the socalled indigenous president had important achievements such as the inclusion of the original communities in the political and social life of the country, maintaining a constant economic growth and inflation control, and the drastic reduction of extreme poverty.
In the last five years, taking advantage of an absolute majority in the Legislative Assembly, he managed to collect all the powers in his hands: executive, legislative, judicial and electoral; to the point that they all responded to their exclusive orders and whims. At the same time, he was gaining the support of important groupings and organizations such as the always answering Central Obrera Boliviana, the Confederation of Peasant Workers, the powerful transport unions and many others – always based on perks, gifts and concessions.
Meanwhile, Morales was pursuing and imprisoning how several opponents he encountered along the way, using prosecutors and judges who fully responded to his orders. Any organization that revealed itself against his mandates was brutally repressed, either directly or by controlled judicial means. These are the reasons why he was acquiring the characteristics of a despotic and dictatorial government, and gradually he was losing support even from many rural and native communities, not to mention the middle classes that were favorable to him at first.
For the recent presidential elections, there was already widespread discontent, especially in the urban population. Still, facing a weakened and dispersed opposition, Evo Morales was sure to win the elections again. However, there was a strong citizen movement to vote in force for the candidate with the greatest chance of forcing a second round of voting. That person turned out to be Carlos Mesa, an intellectual of much prestige but seen as almost apolitical. Pre-election polls claimed that if Evo Morales did not win in the first round, his defeat was certain in the second. (La Semana)