Mesa Tosses Hat into the Bolivian Presidential Ring

If Bolivians approve a new constitution next January 25th, as widely expected, that will set in motion a new campaign for President the following December (a year from now). For months, those who follow Bolivian politics have speculated – who would lead the opposition to Morales?

Manfred Reyes Villa, the former Governor of Cochabamba announced his candidacy in August. But 24 hours later voters in the department kicked him out of office by a lopsided majority. So his return now seems unlikely.

The other governors, while most enjoy strong popularity in their own regions, are widely disliked in other parts of the nation and would have trouble putting together a national candidacy.

An indigenous candidate would seem to have the most likely shot at digging into Morales formidable base. It was an indigenous woman backed by the region’s conservative elite that proved a winning formula in Chuquisaca’s governor elections earlier this year. But the indigenous candidate one hears most mentioned, former Vice-President Victor Hugo Cardenas, carries the burden of having served with the deeply unpopular Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and having been out of public view for more than a decade.

Now the speculation has a real candidate to focus on, a formidable one, former President Carlos Mesa.

The well-known historian and journalist who resigned his brief presidency in June 2005 told reporters in Lima, Peru on Friday that if the new constitution is approved in January, he’s in. Mesa, according to a report in the Latin American Herald Tribune, said that he is "ready to take part in the electoral process if and when the constitution is approved,” and announced that he is forming a new political party to carry his candidacy.”

Prospects for Mesa the Sequel

What are Mesa’s chances against Evo?

Clearly, given Morales’s unbroken string of ballot victories – strong majorities in his December 2005 election and in the subsequent vote for Constituent Assembly delegates, and his 2/3 landslide in the August referendum – Mesa starts as an underdog. But not one without a shot.

A successful Mesa candidacy will rely on two main factors, I think.

The first will be Mesa’s ability to make himself the lone candidate of the conservative and middle-class voters who form the natural anti-Evo constituency. That constituency is definitely out there and will leap to a candidate that seems reasonable and might have a chance. But the right wing and traditional elite in Bolivia are notoriously inept at unifying behind one candidate and it is a stretch to believe that Presidential wannabes such as former President Jorge Quiroga, perhaps Reyes Villa, and others, will actually defer to Mesa, with whom no love is lost. Evo’s big political advantage since 2005, on the other hand, has been his total dominance as the lone electoral leader on Bolivia’s left.

The second will be Mesa’s ability to pull apart Evo’s current base, going after its most fragile alliances. Morales will have been president for three years at that point and Mesa will challenge him on how much life has really gotten better for most Bolivians, especially if the global financial crisis comes home to roost in the Bolivian economy in 2009. Watch him form alliances with indigenous leaders not closely tied to MAS and Morales, including possibly asking Cardenas to be his running mate. Although two former Goni Vice-Presidents might be hard for a lot of voters to swallow.

Mesa’s last presidency, one he inherited when Sanchez de Lozada was forced to resign, failed because he was never able to establish a political base that matched his public popularity. He tried to position himself in the middle between left and right and ended up as political ‘road kill’ on the center divide. Mesa’s political skills have never matched his journalistic ones and it is unclear that they are much better now. I have interviewed Mesa, however, when he was Vice-President, and he is an intelligent and thoughtful man, and deserves a lot of credit for publicly breaking with both Goni and the U.S. Embassy over the government-sanctioned killings in October 2003 that forced Goni’s resignation.

One More Mystery Solved?

Mesa’s announcement in Lima (an odd choice of venue, by the way) does potentially solve one Bolivian political mystery. Three weeks ago we reported here that the U.S. campaign firm populated of former Bill Clinton aides, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research was making a sequel of its own in Bolivia. The firm, led by former Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg, ran the 2002 Sanchez de Lozada campaign, famously documeted up-close in the award-winning documentary by Rachel Boynton, “Our Brand is Crisis.”

In October, as we reported earlier, the firm posted a job announcement seeking an "International Campaign Representative" in Bolivia:

[We are] seeking a highly professional individual to work in-country as part of a political campaign in Bolivia as our on-the-ground representative. Applicant must have substantial experience in politics and/or campaigns, preferably including political organizing and communications strategy, and fluency in Spanish. Contract would begin as soon as possible. Contract likely for a few months, possibly longer. Requires very long hours and ability to multitask, deal with senior-level officials, and operate in a high-stress setting.

The firm declined to name its candidate when we asked them last month. One of the potential clients we named then was Carlos Mesa. So are the U.S. consultants who helped retuirn Goni to office in 2002 looking to do the same for his former running mate in 2009?

Look for the answer to that, and more on the coming campaign, here on the Blog.