The Second (or Third) Coming of Manfred Reyes Villa

In Bolivia, national elections have become something like Easter. There seems to be one a year but never on the same day. Next December 6th Bolivians will go once again to the polls, for the fourth time in as many years. They will decide whether to give President Evo Morales an unprecedented second term under a new constitution that now allows the nation’s President to seek re-election.

For months a collection of would-be candidates have jockeyed for position, seeking to forge alliances among the wickedly fragmented opposition and forge a candidacy that might actually challenge Morales. It is a field that has included, among others, a former President, a former Vice-President, a former-Governor, a prominent mayor and others.

But now, after four years of fumbling and failing to generate a genuine national opposition to Morales, it looks like one might finally be emerging. The leader of that coalescing opposition is not a new face in Bolivian politics, but one of its most well-known – former Cochabamba Governor Manfred Reyes Villa.

This week candidate Reyes Villa made headlines with his selection of a running mate who will have to wage his campaign from a jail cell in La Paz. He will be joined on his ticket by the imprisoned ex-Governor of Pando, Leopoldo Fernandez. His pick for Vice-President awaits trial over charges that he played a leading role in the massacre of a dozen supporters of Morales in his state last September.

Who is Manfred Reyes Villa? What are his chances of unseating Morales? What does all this say for the current state of play of Bolivian politics?

First, some background.

Evo vs. the Fragmented Pack

For most of the three decades since Bolivia returned to democracy, until 2005, Bolivian national politics was a simple and straightforward game of musical chairs. Three political parties essentially rotated the Presidency among themselves every five years, each taking a turn to benefit from the spoils of political power.

In 1993 and in 2002 it was the conservative ghost of Bolivia's old revolutionary party, MNR, which bartered itself into the Presidency, led by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Goni). When Sánchez de Lozada and the MNR were retired from the Presidency by the one-term rule, an odd-couple "mega-coalition" took over, farming out the Presidency alternatively to two once-adversaries, Jaime Paz Zamora of MIR and dictator-turned-democrat Hugo Banzer of the ADN.

None of these parties ever garnered much more than a quarter of the popular vote and the differences between them didn’t go much farther than their party logos and selection of which political family would be rewarded with government jobs. In terms of policy all adhered carefully to the fundamentalist economic policies pushed by the World Bank and IMF and the repressive anti-drug policies insisted on by Washington.

The elections of December 2005, however, changed that formula completely, in two ways.

First, Bolivians elected a new President and a new party to office, with a historic 53% majority that dwarfed that received by any of his rotating predecessors. The political wave that gave Bolivia its first indigenous President also dispensed the MIR and ADN to history and left the once dominant MNR party of Sánchez de Lozada with nothing more than eight seats out of more than 150 in the Bolivian Congress.

Second, Bolivia dramatically changed the way it selected the Governors of its nine departments. These powerful positions – sources of massive job patronage and opportunities for corruption – had always been filled by Presidential appointment. Under reforms adopted in 2005 those Governors were now elected directly by a vote of the people.

When Morales took office in January 2006, Bolivia’s political map left the opposition parties in Congress in tatters and shifted that opposition to the governors, a majority of whom were stuanchly if not radically opposed to the new President and his plans for “the change.” This was opposition of a very different sort.

Here we break for a short political science lesson.

In most democracies the tug of war between government and opposition takes place in the national Congress (or its equivalent). Both sides vie for a national base that can back its proposals and position it to win the Presidency the next time around. Bolivia’s opposition governors, however, were operating in a whole other world.

In the departments of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, Tarija, Beni, and Pando the local governors advanced their political positions not by using moderation to build a national base, but by using heated rhetoric and tactics to feed anti-Morales fervor among their local political base. Morales, inclined to confrontation as a habit, gave the same right back at them.

What this meant is that, while Morales has had to contend with a political opposition that could fill the streets and shut down major cities with protest and violence, he has not faced any significant political force that can challenge him nationally at the polls. While anti-Morales forces were turning out people by the tens of thousands in Santa Cruz, Morales has been traveling the country, handing out bonuses for students, tractors to campesino farmers and solidifying a base of political support among rural people, the poor, and working class voters in he cities that has turned him into Evo the Invincible at the ballot box.
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In three national elections in three years Morales and MAS only increased the strong base of support they had in 2005. Over the course of a July 2006 vote for delegates to a national Constituent Assembly, the August 2008 referendum on the continued service of Evo and the Governors, and last January’s vote to approve a new Bolivian constitution, Morales built up his base enough to win a stunning 2/3 of the vote.

Manfred the Political Daredevil

As politicians go, in any country, Manfred Reyes Villa is an interesting study – a man with an uncanny ability to repeatedly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Reyes Villa is a former Army Captain with close ties to one of his country's most repressive dictatorships. In the early 1980s he served as the personal guard to the brutal Luís García Meza. Later however, he shed his uniform and converted himself into a very successful local Cochabamba politician.

In 1993 Reyes Villa was elected to his first of four terms as Mayor. Despite ever-present vague charges of corruption (his then-political party, NFR earned the street nickname, “Nuevo Forma de Robar" – New Way to Steal), Reyes Villa became a popular figure. He used deep excursions into public debt to help finance big, flashy public works projects, including a shiny new airport and the planet's largest statue of Jesus.

In 2002 as Bolivia headed into a new round of Presidential elections it truly looked like Manfred's year. The handsome Mayor led his nearest rival in the polls, Sánchez de Lozada seeking a return to office, by nearly two to one. The third major candidate, Evo Morales, didn't even seem a factor.

Then a team of U.S. political consultants hired by Sánchez de Lozada went to work on Manfred-the-frontrunner.

In a campaign captured brilliantly in the documentary "Our Brand is Crisis", the Goni camp hammered away relentlessly at Manfred 'the former military man' (using an old photo of the candidate in uniform) and used aerial photos of his family's numerous real estate holdings in Bolivia and Florida to remind voters of the corruption charges that seemed to swirl always around him. Reyes Villa's support started to plunge.

Then just before the vote, the U.S. Ambassador delivered a final blow. Washington’s chief diplomat issued a withering public attack against Morales and threatened a cutoff of U.S. aid if Bolivians elected the cocalero as President. Offended voters flocked to Morales, nearly boosting him into first place. Most of those votes came right out of Reyes Villa’s electoral hide. He finished a disappointing third.

But less than a year later Cochabamba’s erstwhile Mayor seemed to be once again sitting pretty.

After the election Reyes Villa refused overtures by Sánchez de Lozada to join the MNR's governing coalition, forgoing the chance to dole out thousands of government jobs to his supporters. Instead he settled in as an opposition figure and almost immediately Sánchez de Lozada's tepid public support began to diminish even more. In February 2003 Sánchez de Lozada called for a tax increase on the country’s working poor in order to meet the IMF’s belt-tightening demands, setting off political conflicts that left 34 Bolivians dead. Being on the outside of the governing coalition was looking like a better and better place to be.

Then just months afterwards, Reyes Villa did the political equivalent of buying a ticket for passage on the Titanic after it had already hit the iceberg and was headed to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Surprising most everyone, Reyes Villa suddenly reversed course and threw his political support behind the embattled President. As a reward he was given political control of Cochabamba’s state government and with it hundreds of jobs to dole out to supporters. But he also grafted his political fortunes to Sánchez de Lozada's just as his old adversary was headed to his political grave. In October 2003 Sánchez de Lozada sent out troops to shoot down protests against his gas and oil export plans. Reyes-Villa’s new ally resigned in a political storm and headed to exile in Maryland. Only months into his new alliance Reyes-Villa was left with behind with only deep voter memories of he and the deposed President smiling side by side.

Then in 2005 Manfred saw the opportunity for a political comeback and took it.

He opted out of an iffy second run at the Presidency and chose instead to enter a much safer race to become the new elected Governor of the state of Cochabamba. He stitched together his old support base in the city and added on to it new support in the countryside with promises of the same kind of public works that had made him so popular as Mayor. Against a weak MAS candidate hand-picked by Morales, Reyes Villa won the new Governor post handily.

In his first year as Governor, once again, Manfred looked to be in great political shape. While other governors waged bitter battles with Morales over issues like regional autonomy, a sunny Reyes Villa just kept on paving roads, cutting ribbons, and using public funds to put his photo, scissors in hand, in the Sunday papers (just as Evo does with national funds).

Then, as 2006 drew to a close, Reyes Villa demonstrated once again his curious knack for shooting himself in the foot when he stepped out of the familiar world of local politics and tried to go national.

In a move that seemed mostly aimed at baiting Morales supporters in Cochabamba, Reyes Villa called for a re-vote on the regional autonomy issue, just months after Cochabamba voters had soundly defeated it. He also called for Morales to resign. The President's backers took the bait fully, marched onto the Governor's office and burned it, sending Reyes Villa fleeing. When backers of Reyes Villa and Morales confronted one another in the streets of Cochabamba on January 11, 2007, three men were left dead and scores of others badly wounded. Reyes Villa took local political peace and set it ablaze underneath his feet.

Then Reyes Villa through down another gauntlet directly at Morales, calling for a national referendum that would force each of the nine governors and the President and Vice-President to all submit their political futures anew to the voters. Morales eventually called the opposition's bluff and in August 2008 Bolivian voters went back to the polls once more. Morales was continued in office by a vote of nearly 2/3. Reyes Villa was defeated badly and was cast yet again into political exile.

Until now.

In Search of a Unified Opposition

There are many reasons why opponents of Morales would wish to have a unified campaign against him in the December vote. The biggest one is this. Under the new Bolivian constitution a candidate can be elected without a second round runoff under two circumstances. The first is how Morales won in December 2005 – winning the backing of a majority of voters (50% plus 1). However, even if Morales does not win that majority again on December 6th he can still escape a runoff against his nearest challenger if no other candidate comes within 10% of his total. In other words, if Morales finishes with just 40% of the vote, he escapes a runoff as long as no one else cracks past 30%.

It is little wonder then that Morales and his backers have looked gleefully upon the usual battles of personal ego and political rivalry that have divided his opposition into limp little chunks.

Under normal circumstances the national opposition leader would be former President Jorge Quiroga, who heads the main opposition party in Congress (PODEMOS) and who finished second (a poor second) to Morales in 2005. But the bookish Quiroga is a weak political figure at best, so much so that his PODEMOS party has basically ceased to function.

This in turn has left a half dozen other serious candidates trying to vie for the position of lead challenger to Evo. One of them was Sánchez de Lozada’s former Vice-President, Victor Hugo Cardenas. They Aymara scholar seemed to generate some early steam behind his candidacy last March after a mob of Morales backers attacked his altiplano home, but since then his candidacy has fizzled. Today he announced his withdrawl from the race but endorsed no one else (for now). Presidential wannabe Samuel Doria Media, owner of the country’s Burger Kings, can’t seem to get anyone to take his second attempt at the presidency seriously. The rest of the prospective field includes a pair of other indigenous alternatives to Morales, including the Mayor of Potosi. But none of them seem to have any hope of carving into Morales’ solid base.

Then there is Reyes Villa.

In the past few weeks, the once Mayor and Governor of Bolivia’s third largest voter block seems to be stitching together an alliance of those most disgruntled with Morales. This includes a young Santa Cruz woman who was once a Morales protégé and MAS member of the city council, the current Governor of Beni, the past Governor of La Paz, and a growing list of well-known opposition figures.

With his selection of the jailed Fernandez as his running mate Reyes Villa is now positioned to win support from the most hard-line adversaries of Morales, including the conservatives and wealthy elites of vote-rich Santa Cruz.

In short, while it seems unlikely that all of the various corners of the opposition will fold their tents and join forces with Reyes Villa, he has clearly established himself as the only serious candidate the opposition has and in politics that counts for a lot.

What All this Means

If past history and current polls are any measure of voter sentiment, Morales is headed to a second term regardless of how well Reyes Villa does at shedding his old curse when he goes national. Journalists and pundits may focus attention on the heated anti-Evo sentiment to be found in he cities, but once you head beyond the city limits you find community after community where Morales can count on support that measures 80% and higher. This includes the largest population cluster in the country, La Paz, El Alto and the altiplano.

The chances of Reyes Villa unseating Morales or even forcing him into a runoff remain extremely remote. What this does mean, however, is a few other important things:

First, even if he loses in December, Reyes Villa is likely to end up the undisputed leader of the national opposition and that opposition is likely to be much stronger that any Morales has faced in his first term. Even if the new constitution’s formula for electing Congress gives MAS new advantages to securing majorities in both houses, whatever minority Reyes Villa ends up with will be a lot more strategic and forceful than the current one, because it will be part of a national opposition instead of a fragmented regional one.

Second, if he plays his political cards right (which is still a leap) Reyes Villa will also be very well-positioned for a third Presidential run in 2014. If the rules of the new constitution hold (I’ll get to that in a minute) Morales will not be allowed to run for a third term when his second one expires. By design, Morales has made his MAS party a political vehicle for only one national candidate, himself. There is no one else being groomed to succeed him and it is unlikely that MAS can field anyone else who can hold onto his base. One scenario is that in a post-Evo world MAS will start to fray apart along the lines that divide it internally.

Or there is this scenario – the far more likely one.

Morales and MAS will wait for their moment and will propose that the new constitution be amended once more, allowing Evo to run yet again. If and when they do that, watch for all hell to break loose. If there is one thing that scares Morales opponents more than any other – more than land reform, more than national takeovers of private businesses, more than alliances with Hugo Chavez – it is Evo in a perpetual presidency for life.

A perpetual presidency is also, as a matter of practice, a bad idea. Governing regimes that feel unchallenged make bad policy, invite corruption, and dilute democracy to something less than real democracy.

In my view as a democrat with a small “d” Bolivia does need an opposition that functions. MAS and Morales will govern better if they are challenged at the polls, if they are challenged on policy and ideas, and if they know people are looking over their shoulders for mismanagement and corruption. They will govern worse without those things.

To be clear, I am not saying that an opposition led by Cochabamba's former Mayor will deliver those things. There is a good chance it won’t. But what is sure is that for the first time in the Morales presidency a genuine national opposition is forming and it likely to change the political path ahead, in ways we can anticipate and in ways we can’t.

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