Report Excerpt: The Administration of President Evo Morales

Readers:

I am still traveling, en route Monday from the US to Europe. Here is another excerpt from The Democracy Center’s new report, “Interpreting Bolivia’s Political Transformation.” This one looks at the debate over the administration of President Evo Morales.

Jim Shultz

The Administration of President Evo Morales

Bolivia on the Brink, for good reason, devotes significant attention to the character, policies, and actions of the government of President Evo Morales. Bolivia on the Brink is substantially critical of the Morales government, and to be clear, there is ample reason for much of that criticism. However, it is also important that this criticism be based on facts and not unsubstantiated generalizations and accusations.

Unfortunately, it is with unsubstantiated generalizations that Bolivia on the Brink opens its criticism of the Morales government. The author writes on the first page, “Most people who follow Bolivian politics agree that the MAS’ aggressive policies … have polarized Bolivians more than ever before.” Nowhere, however, does the paper tell us who those “most people” are, why their views are representative, or how they were measured. We are also left to wonder why those observers believe that Bolivia is more polarized now than it was under previous governments that had to declare national suspensions of constitutional rights in order to quell protest.

More seriously, the author openly accuses the Bolivian President of murder, again without evidence or substantiation. Referring to an “unsolved incident” involving the kidnapping and murder of four police officers in 2000, the author declares that the killings took place, “presumably under [Morales’] orders,” despite the fact that Morales has never been formally charged or convicted of such a crime.

The report does, however, raise a set of issues about the Morales government that are worth closer examination.

Questions of Competence

Bolivia on the Brink challenges the Morales administration on its basic competence to govern. Citing recent violence between two rival groups of miners, the paper charges that the government “responded clumsily” to the violence. It describes the administration’s announcement of its trade policy as an “unrehearsed response.” It says that Morales has ignored any “level-headed attempts” to listen to opposition groups. It also notes, with good reason, the problems that the administration has had implementing its ambitious gas nationalization program.

On the one hand, we agree that the Morales administration has demonstrated real difficulty in assembling the expertise and resources it needs to govern competently. One clear example is in the administration’s ongoing and serious problems implementing its gas plans, including contract errors and ongoing turnover of high-level administration officials. While these problems need to be taken seriously, they also need to be understood in the Bolivian context.

First, Morales and his MAS party have sought to build a government from among segments of the population that have long been excluded from the process of governance. Bolivia’s indigenous and impoverished majority has not had the same access to higher education (often abroad) or governing opportunities that members of the nation’s wealthier elite have had. This has left the government with a significant and problematic deficit of experience.

Second, the performance of the Morales Administration should be measured by the competence of prior governments that enjoyed more standard credentials. The administration of the U.S.-educated Sánchez de Lozada, for example, was presumed by outsiders to be particularly competent. However, its privatization policies ceded control of a vital resource, oil and gas, into the hands of foreign interests and left oil and gas revenue essentially flat. On the other hand, the reforms enacted under pressure from social movements, under Morales and prior administrations, have led to a revenue increase of almost $1 billion per year.

The issue of competence deserves a more careful and balanced analysis than Bolivia on the Brink provides.

Questions of Rhetoric

Over and over again Bolivia on the Brink criticizes Morales for his use of unhelpful rhetoric, particularly against the U.S. and the Bush Administration. These references include:

• “Morales’s [sic] incendiary anti-U.S. rhetoric… (p. 26)”
• “…antitrade rhetoric was a significant component of [Morales’] campaign platform (p. 26)”
• “The implications of Morales’s [sic] anti-U.S. rhetoric…(p. 27)”
• “…whatever the domestic political gains of incendiary anti-U.S. rhetoric…(p. 36)”
• “…toning down its anti-American rhetoric… (p. 36)”
• “…the anti-imperialist rhetoric of the Morales government. (p. 36)”

The report is correct in its observation that Morales has inflated Bolivian-U.S. tensions unnecessarily with combative and overblown rhetoric aimed at the U.S. However, President Morales has toned down his rhetoric more recently, and some of Bolivia on the Brink’s characterization of that rhetoric seems, itself, overblown. In one example, the paper calls Morales’ speech before the United Nations in September 2006 so “incendiary” that it undermined Bolivia’s efforts to win extension of U.S. trade preferences. In fact, Morales’ UN speech made substantial effort to strike a diplomatic tone.

He pledged to respect private property, rejected any policies of confiscation, endorsed the need for private investment in his country, and declared, “I don’t come here to tell you how to govern or to threaten a country…I only want you as international organizations…as nations with principals of reciprocity, of brotherhood, to participate in this process of democratic change.”
The paper’s claim of Morales’ “antitrade rhetoric” is similarly misleading. Morales has spoken clearly and often about his support for foreign trade, including in his UN speech, but with an emphasis on agreements that serve the economic interests of his country rather than those of other foreign trading powers.

It is also important to note that the rhetorical tension between the Bush Administration and Morales did not begin with the latter’s inauguration in January 2006. As Bolivia on the Brink notes, the U.S.’ own rhetorical attacks against Morales helped elevate his political status in Bolivia. When he was leader of Bolivia’s coca grower unions, U.S. officials labeled Morales and his union as “a mafia” and “narco-terrorists.” The week before Bolivia’s 2002 Presidential election, in which Morales was a leading candidate, President Bush’s Ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, issued a warning to voters. “As a representative of the United States, I want to remind the Bolivian electorate that if you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of U.S. assistance to Bolivia.”

In fact, after a cordial start to Morales-U.S. relations following his January 2006 inauguration, it was the Bush Administration that ignited the renewed rhetoric war, not Bolivia. In February of 2006, just weeks into Morales’ term, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of Morales in a speech before the National Press Club in Washington. After likening Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Adolph Hitler he turned to Morales. “We’ve seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries. And elections like Evo Morales in Bolivia take place that clearly are worrisome.” Following Morales’ gas nationalization decree in May 2006, an act aimed at implementing a demand endorsed by more than 90% of Bolivian voters in a national referendum two years before, President Bush followed Rumsfeld’s lead, expressing concern about “the erosion of democracy” in Bolivia.

The exchange of rhetoric between Washington and La Paz since Morales assumed the presidency has clearly been a two-way street, a point essential to evaluating Bolivia-U.S. relations. As Bolivia on the Brink notes, “If the United States maintains a cooperative tone, then, ideally, the Bolivian government should reciprocate by assuming a less publicly hostile posture toward the United States.” We agree with the author that toning down rhetoric on both sides of the U.S.-Bolivia relationship will serve the diplomatic interests of both nations and their peoples.