Evo on Hunger Strike Over Election Rules

The new Bolivian constitution approved by more than 60% of voters in January mandates new Presidential and Congressional elections this coming December. But the precise rules that will govern that election are still in dispute, with all sides jockeying for rules that will play to their political advantage.

Yesterday, following a heated debate in the Congress, President Morales announced that he will go on a hunger strike to pressure the opposition-controlled Senate to approve the legislation required for the elections to proceed. Here are the dispatches, all solid, from AP, Reuters and Bloomberg.

At issue are such debates as whether Bolivians living abroad will be eligible to vote – a huge population and one likely sympathetic to Morales – and how Congress will implement the new constitution’s requirement that a dozen congressional seats be set aside for indigenous representatives, another key Morales base.

Morales opponents charge that he is using the hunger strike, and a threatened mobilization of his base to surround the Congress, as coercion against them. Morales backers say that his opponents are blocking implementation of popular will as expressed over and over again at the ballot box.

In reality, this is just the latest round of heated debate over the political rules of the game in country where the forces of politics are in the midst of historic changes.

In 2006 and 2007 the opposition tried to shut down the country over the rules governing the Constituent Assembly, with crowds in the street used to shut down the Assembly altogether. Before that it was Morales and his allies who used those tactics against Presidents Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa on issues such as gas and oil exportation, making the country ungovernable under their watch.

Both sides use the powers at their disposal to gain an upper hand. In the end a compromise of some sort will be reached and the elections will be held. If current polls hold true, Morales will likely win that vote by the same landslide with which he won in December 2005.

But the real issue facing the country – how to create economic opportunity with dignity for all Bolivians – will remain the same.

Writing About Bolivia

Over the past few weeks I have received a number of e-mails from people I respect a good deal asking me to use this space to write a critique of two recent pieces of writing about Bolivia.

One is a piece on Evo Morales in the current issue of Atlantic, written by a freelancer, Eliza Barclay. The brief article carries the provocative title, “The Mugabe of the Andes?” Barclay, a visitor to Bolivia, argues that Morales is like Mugabe because he is dividing Bolivia along racial lines. Aside from the fact that racial division in Bolivia is hardly a Morales invention, it is a real stretch to compare an African despot who steals elections by violence with a South American President who keeps winning them by historic majorities. The Atlantic editors, who generally produce a good magazine, should have known better.

The more onerous piece of recent writing about Bolivia that deserves notice is a new book by one of the Democratic party’s most well known pollsters, Stanley Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg has been stumping coast to coast for his new book about some of his past clients, Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders. Those leaders and ex-consulting clients include Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Ehud Barak, Nelson Mandela, and Bolivia’s ousted President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Mr. Greenberg famously helped Sanchez de Lozada win the presidency in 2002, a performance documented up close in Rachel Boynton’s well-done film Our Brand is Crisis.

What is it this month about bad comparisons between Bolivian presidents and their South African counterparts?

This is, to be sure, a remarkable leap of chutzpah for Greenberg. He lifts up a man driven from office by his own people, for acts of violent repression, and casts him in the same league with Mandela, one of the 20th century’s most respected liberators. Mr. Greenberg was paid well, we presume, for his service as a spinner for the former President. So it shouldn’t be all that surprising that he is putting his spin skills to work now to try to paint his former client into a political saint. "A fearless and radical social reformer,” is how Greenberg describes the man whose troops shot children in 2003. Mr. Greenberg’s view contrasts pretty starkly with the families of those killed under Sanchez de Lozada’s command. They, unfortunately, won’t have a podium at Barnes and Noble this month.

But that’s it. That’s all I have to say about these articles. Other people can respond with their respective defenses of Morales or critiques of Sanchez de Lozada. I am not interested in doing either.

Instead, I’d rather use this post to do something more positive, to highlight writing in English about Bolivia that I think is worth reading. I hope readers will add their own suggestions about Spanish language resources.

Books on Bolivia

I begin with books. I have a healthy respect for books on a subject, having written and edited three. It is huge effort to write a book and (with apparent exceptions) there are many points along the way where you are challenged both as to your facts and as to your analysis. My last two books have been ‘peer-reviewed’ by the academic presses that published them. I can say first hand that you don’t go unchallenged, and the writing is the better for it.

So here are a few books on Bolivia worth a look (and apologies for those I left out):

Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance: Ben Kohl and Linda Farthing, who co-wrote this book, are both friends of mine. They are also very capable analysts of Bolivia who have lived here off and on for decades and their work shows it.

Llamas, Weavings, and Organic Chocolate: Multicultural Grassroots Development in the Andes and Amazon of Bolivia: Kevin Healy, the author of this book, is another friend, and a writer with decades of experience in Bolivia. His book has become a classic on development issues.

Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: William Powers wrote this book as a memoir of his time working on sustainable environment issues in the eastern part of the country.

The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia: Some readers of Ben Dangl’s book on recent Bolivian events may dismiss it as being too blindly ‘left’ in its perspective. But Ben takes his research seriously and spends a good deal of time visiting Bolivia to do it.

A Concise History of Bolivia: Herbert Klein’s history text is also considered a classic, written with a great mastery of the nation’s history. But to be honest, its dense writing style takes a subject that is fascinating and makes it a little painful to read.

Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952-82: James Dunkerlee is as solid a Bolivia expert as they come, based at the University of London. His book offers up the kind of sharp history that can only come from someone who has spent years of his life pouring though original sources as few others have.

Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present: John Crabtree is a well-respected research associate at Oxford University and his newest work is a seriously done look at recent events.

Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization: I also include our new book here for two reasons. One is that my co-authors and editor would be really ticked if I don’t. Second, I think you should read this first.

[Note: I have used mainly Amazon links above because that’s where these books are available at the lowest price. But independent booksellers also have the book and if you have the extra cash, buy it from them to help keep independent booksellers alive.]

News Coverage

Keeping up with day-to-day events in Bolivia means sifting through press coverage and figuring out what is most worth your time to read. Here are some observations about news coverage of Bolivia:

The Foreign Press

Foreign coverage of Bolivia (in the U.S. in particular) has come a long way since the Water Revolt nine years ago. Back then about 90% of foreign press coverage came out of one long-time A.P. correspondent in La Paz, who had the unfortunate habit of using President Hugo Banzer’s press releases (written by a close friend of his) and turning them into A.P. dispatches. He later lost his job when it was revealed that he was lobbying the Bolivian government on water issues at the same time he was writing about those issues.

Today there are nearly a dozen foreign journalists who count Bolivia as their regular beat. A handful of them actually live in Bolivia. Dan Keane built-up the A.P. bureau in La Paz into a very respectable news operation, and his recent return to the U.S. is journalistic loss. Both the BBC and Reuters have able correspondents here as well, Andres Schipani and Eduardo Garcia. Eduardo, a Spaniard, deserves extra mention. He had the resolve to return to Bolivia after nearly being killed in the same 2007 car crash that took the life of the BBC’s wonderful Lola Almudevar. Jean Friedman-Rudovsky also reports ably from La Paz for Time magazine.

The rest of the foreign journalists live elsewhere in South America, covering Bolivia from where they are and visiting here a few times a year. Simon Romero writes for the New York Times from Caracas, as does Tyler Bridges for the Miami Herald and other McClatchy papers. Joshua Partlow, who came here after a long stint in Iraq, covers Bolivia for the Washington Post out of Rio de Janeiro, as does Julie McCarthy for NPR. Patrick McDonnell covers Bolivia for the Los Angeles Times from Buenos Aires. Most of the other papers and outlets use freelance reporters or the A.P.’s articles.

In my recent trip to the U.S. I heard a few familiar criticisms about coverage from these writers. Most comes from supporters of Evo Morales who believe that the corporate-owned media (all of the above are corporate-owned but for NPR) write with a markedly anti-Morales bias. Romero, of the New York Times, seems to have a regular following of critics on a handful of Blogs.

I have had a good deal of personal interactions with each of these reporters and have watched their writing over the years. I have a solid respect for their work. I may not always agree with their analysis but they are each hard-working reporters who go to great efforts to speak to a variety of sources. Unlike the ‘parachute journalists’ who come in for a week and count themselves as experts, these ongoing reporters have a depth to their work and it shows.

Unfortunately, foreign bureaus are closing fast, including some of those mentioned here. So more and more of the foreign coverage we see is going to be coming from the 'parachuters' who come and go. That's a loss.

The Bolivian Press

While this post is about sources in English, the Bolivian press is still an important source for daily events so I include it here. For those interested in reading Bolivia’s regular dailies, COMTECO, the telecommunications cooperative here, puts together a great shortcut. It produces a daily summary of the top headlines from all the major daily papers in Bolivia, with links to the articles. You can find that here and also subscribe if you like to have the summary sent to your e-mail. Keep in mind however that the daily press in Bolivia is owned by the nation’s wealthy elite and generally reflects their point of view. As a balance to the conservative dailies, you can keep an eye on Red Erbol, which has a great Bolivia news Website. The Bolivian government just launched a daily paper biased towards the government, Cambio, but I don’t know if it is available yet on-line.

Organizations and Independent Sources

There are a number of organizations that produce independent reporting and analysis about Bolivia. Here are a few (with links embedded in their names):

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) has been putting out good writing on Bolivia for years, as has the Andean Information Network. The Center for Economic and Policy Research produces occasional briefing papers on Bolivia that have good information in them.

And the Blogs

Okay, here’s the deal, I don’t read Blogs. I know that’s funny since I write one, but I don’t. I get an in-box full of articles and links everyday, from both Spanish and English writers. I just don't follow the Blogs. There are lots of Blogs that write about Bolivia, some of them valuable and some of them just silly. In other words, Blogs that cover Bolivia are like Blogs in general, it is up to readers to sift the garbage from the good.

Among the Blogs I do know, two worth looking at are Upside Down World, edited by Ben Dangl, and the material published by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Luis Gomez at Ukhampacha Bolivia.

And finally, of course, there is this Blog, which we hope you will continue to read regularly, as so many do.

To all our readers, thank you for your kind interest in what we write here. Those of you who have other suggestions of what to read about Bolivia, I hope you will post a description and a link in the comments section below.

Mob Attacks Home of Former Vice President -- and Another U.S. Diplomat is Ousted

On Saturday a mob invaded the altiplano home of Victor Hugo Cardenas, the Aymara intellectual who served as Bolivia's Vice President under President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (1993-97). Cardenas was away at the time but members of his family, including his wife and children, reported being physically attacked before their home was taken over entirely in an act of political violence spurred by Cardenas' recent opposition to the new MAS-backed constitution. The former Vice-President had also made indications that he was considering running against Morales in next December's presidential elections.

Lidia Katari, Cardenas' wife, is also a well-known and respected figure in Bolivia, who during her time as Bolivia's 'segundo dama' was known for continuing to wear traditional indigenous clothing.

Los Tiempos on Sunday quoted a campesino leader, Alfredo Huañapaco, as justifying the attack on the basis of Cardenas' 'traitorous' acts against his people and that the hose "served no social function." The mob that took over the house claimed its intention to turn it into a home for the aged.

Critics of the government, including Cardenas, were quick to lay blame for the attack on Morales, including claims that national officials had refused to provide the house with security after the family had received threats. PODEMOS leader and ex-President Jorge Quiroga put the attack in a line-up of "violent acts" by Morales supporters, including the burning of the Cochabamba governor's office in January 2007.

Speaking for the government, Interior Vice-Minister Marcos Farfán told the press that the government had nothing to do with the attack and, in fact, sent security forces to the house and to expel those who had taken it over.

Today, in the wake of the attack, Cardenas announced formally that he will challenge Morales for the Presidency in December. He joins a field that will likely include former President Carlos Mesa, Sanchez de Lozada's other Vice-President (2002-2003) among others. Cardenas declared, "What is real, what is concrete is that the government headed by Evo Morales on Saturday did not provide protection for my house or for the lives of my family."

Regardless of what one thinks of either Cardenas, Morales, or any other political figure, the protection of democratic space is essential, and that includes the open right to dissent. As long-time readers of this Blog know, for more than four years we have practiced that here with a 100% uncensored comments section that allows even the stupidest of things to be said without filtration.

The principle that we believe in for our own work we believe in for the larger public debate as well. All political figures, whether of the left or the right, ought to reaffirm that principle in Bolivia, not just in word but also in deed.

Update Tuesday Morning

The sacking of the home of the former Vice-President and the brutal attacks on his family continue to grab front-page headlines here, as it should.

Yesterday brought a new round of denunciations against Saturday's attack – not only from the Morales government's usually critics but from UN officials, religious leaders and prominent members of MAS as well. Jorge Silva, a MAS member of Congress is quoted in Los Tiempos saying, "there is no justification to violently attack, to invade a home, or to beat people."

While both President Morales and Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera voiced a general condemnation of the violence, both also sought to justify it in public comments. Morales (also quoted in Los Tiempos) said, "The people do not tolerate or forgive traitors."

Garcia Linera declared (according to a Red Erbol report), “We regret this act. Those responsible need to be sought…there is no justification for doing damage, for attacking private property." But he then went on to offer a justification as well, "We reject the provocative declarations of the ex-Vice President. What is it that Victor Hugo Cardenas did such that his own [indigenous] brothers assumed this grave reaction?" Linera went on to suggest that Cardenas' house might be expropriated by the state.

Erbol also reported mixed reaction from Bolivian indigenous leaders to the Saturday attack, which left several members of Cardenas' family still hospitalized as of this writing.

Cruz Chura, leader of the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), declared, “I have understood that on more than one occasion the community summoned Victor Choquehuanca [Cardenas] to defended, to argue why he denied his [indigenous] family and he never had the dignity to respond to the authorities of this region."

On the other side, Pedro Nuny, Vice-President of the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB), called on those of the altiplano to calm themselves and said there was no justification for what occurred Saturday. "This act is not justified, because here in the lowlands we have suffered the taking of our offices because we think in a different manner than those violent groups here. Brothers, we do not defend Cardenas, he has to pay for the things that he has done to this country, but now he is the victim."

Personally, I do not find it very hard to see the principle at stake here. Just as this Blog has denounced, over and over again, violence against the innocent at the hands of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and others on one side of Bolivian politics, the same must hold true for the other side of Bolivian politics as well. Political argument should be confronted with political argument, not violence. Political movement should be confronted with political movement, not violence. And people's families should be left out of it entirely.

It is also certain that a real political candidacy has been born out of Saturday's attack. Cardenas, who has been little more than a footnote in Bolivian politics for more than a decade now bears the badge of martyr. Watch him now become the rallying point for a variety of political forces opposed to Morales' reelection later this year, drawing foreign headlines of, "In Bolivia a Battle Between Two Indigenous Candidates."

And One More U.S. Diplomat Sent Home

Not to be lost in the public uproar over the Saturday attack is the declaration yesterday by President Morales that he is sending a second U.S. diplomat home to the U.S., Embassy assistant, Francisco Martinez.

Evo accused Martinez of interfering in Bolivia's domestic affairs, including "ongoing" relations with opposition groups and contact with ex-agents of the police that the government has charged with plotting anti-government activities. The sending home of Martinez follows the ousting, last September, of the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg, amidst accusations of his interference in domestic politics. Late last year Morales also expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from Bolivia, claiming it too was intervening in political affairs. It's longtime Cochabamba headquarters is being converted into an auto showroom.

The U.S. State Department denounced the decision, calling it "“unwarranted and unjustified.” The U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, Denise Urs, told the press, "We can't understand how the president can assure us that he wants better relations with the United States and at the same time continue to make false accusations."

We haven't had the opportunity to look at the actual facts in this case yet. But one thing is certain, this isn't going to help Bolivia's cause to get the country's exports put back in the ATPDEA trade preference program. So far the prospects of a new Bolivia/U.S. relationship don't look too good.

Bolivia Votes on a New Constitution

Update Monday Evening

The Obama administration weighed in today on yesterday's Bolivia vote, prodded to do so by a reporter at today's daily press briefing at the U.S. State Deprtment in Washington.

Here are the comments of the State Department's acting spokesman, Robert A. Wood (Jan. 26, 2009):

Question: Do you have any reaction to the referendum which was held in Bolivia which is widely seen as kind of a power grab by Evo Morales […] ?

Wood: We congratulate the Bolivian people on the referendum, and I don’t think the results are final at this point, but we look forward to working with the Bolivian government in ways we can to further democracy and prosperity in the hemisphere.

Question: Do you have an opinion on whether this referendum furthered democracy in Bolivia?

Wood: Well, a free, fair democratic process certainly does contribute positively, but what I said was I wanted to wait until we can see the final results. But we certainly do congratulate the Bolivian people on that referendum.

Posts from Sunday

10:00 pm:
The Leaders Speak

With clear results in showing a strong 60% to 40% victory for the new constitution, the leaders of the main factions of the nation spoke publicly to their supporters.

Santa Cruz Governor Ruben Costas spoke first, declaring that Bolivia was in “a tie” over the issue [editorial note: This probably rules out any future career for Costas as either a soccer referee or math teacher]. He declared that those who had voted No did so to stop the violence in the country and to block Morales’ efforts to create a totalitarian state.

Interestingly, Santa Cruz civic leader Branco Marincovich sounded a rare conciliatory tone, calling on the government to work for a social pact that would allow the two factions of the nation to live in peace with one another.

In La Paz, meanwhile, Morales sought to put the constitution vote in deeper historic terms. Speaking from the Presidential Palace he told supporters that the vote marks the clear legal recognition of the nation’s indigenous people, “those who have been the most discriminated against, humiliated and excluded.” He called on the governors, mayors and sector leaders in the country to come together to implement the various autonomies set forth in the new constitution.

That’s it for tonight. We’ll have more in the coming days as the final results are tallied and the political fallout from this historic vote becomes clear. There is no doubt that this marks a significant turn in Bolivia’s history. However, what that significance will be in practical terms remains far less clear.

Thanks for joining us for our election coverage today.

8:15pm:
Constitution Passing with 57%

The results are still preliminary and vary somewhat depending on the media source, but the margins are all wide enough that there is little doubt of the result. The constitution backed by President Evo Morales and MAS will be approved by a solid majority of about 57% Yes / 43% No.

Bolivians are still waiting for their President to walk out onto the balcony over Plaza Murillo in La Paz, to make his victory comments, and for his adversaries to have their word as well. In Cochabamba groups are setting up in the Central Plaza to mark the victory with music. But a few things are key to note based on these preliminary results.

One is how deeply polarized Bolivians remain by region. According to UNITL, for example, the constitution was approved 75% to 25% in La Paz, while it was defeated 35% to 65% in Santa Cruz. In fact, the Morales/MAS victory, while substantial, is based on winning four out of nine of the nation’s departments.

Similarly, the nation is deeply polarized between rural and urban voters. ATB reports that, with 95% of the votes in, urban voters approved the constitution a 52% Yes / 48% No, while rural voters backed it 82% to 18%.

What does all this mean?

It means that Bolivia has a new constitution, passed legally and fair. It means that there are likely to be conflicts ahead as the regions that reject it declare that they are not bound by it. It means that if the opposition has any real desire to become a marginal force nationally, it needs to figure out how to do more than run commercials with Jesus on television and begin to speak to rural voters who never saw their ads. It means, as before, that Morales continues to enjoy solid majority support for his political agenda, but no so solid as four months ago (when he won 67%). And it means that Bolivia remains a fractured country that will be hard to govern.

6:30 pm:
OAS Says all Normal

Well, the polls are closed now and the counting has begun. Amidst charges of fraud from Morales opponents, the OAS, which has 68 election observers out in the field today, has issued its first statement.

The OAS says it looks to it that the voting took place with full regularity. But that preliminary analysis is based simply on a finding that most all of the nation's polling places has the required equipment and materials so that people could vote. It is doubtful that MAS opponents, especially if they lose as expected, will drop their charges of pressure on voters. But if they believe that Morales support in the rural areas of the country is manufactured rather than valid, they haven't spent much time talking to people in the countryside.

1:00 pm:
A Quiet Day of Voting

We’ll be blogging here periodically throughout the day. As of 12:35pm it appears that voting is going smoothly throughout the country, on this day without cars on the roads or legal drinking (both are banned on Election Day). Radio Erbol reports that 40% of the nearly 4 million eligible voters had already gone to the polls by noon.

Some of the opposition governors – the usual Evo adversaries from Chuquisaca, Santa Cruz, and Tarija –have been claiming for weeks that the National Election Court is engineering electoral fraud today on behalf of President Evo Morales and his backers and they have called on international observers to go to the countryside where, the governors claim, pressure is being used on voters to support Morales and his proposed constitution.

Nevertheless, it seems commonly believed here that the new constitution backed by Morales and his MAS political party will easily win the simple majority vote (50% plus one) that it needs to gain approval, though it may receive substantially less than the 67% support Morales won in last August’s referendum vote.

The campaign was marked by remarkably little activity on the street, except in the very final days, but a virtual carpeting of the radio and television airwaves by both sides, much of it pretty wild. The religious-backed ads featuring rival pictures of Morales and Jesus, may have crossed a new high water mark for political overstatement. But that’s a tough competition to win.

What does seem clear from most of my conversations the past few weeks is that this vote, like all of the recent national votes (the August 2008 referendum on Morales and the governors, the Constituent Assembly vote in 2006) is not so much about what is on the ballot as the person not on the ballot today, Morales. The content of the proposed constitution seems to be secondary to the basic question: Do you support Evo or oppose him?

Today Morales remains politically strong, mainly because out in the countryside and in places like El Alto, he can count on 4 out of 5 voters to support him on virtually anything. In August that translated into a renewed mandate and the dispatch of two key rivals among the governors. Today it will likely mean approval of a new constitution. But if those numbers drop substantially below what he won four months ago, that will also be a measure of how solid his support will remain as the opposition struggles to unify behind and anti-Morales candidate in the December elections that would be triggered by that same new constitution.

More later today, and we hope others will use the comments space today to share their observations as Bolivians vote.

A Strange Campaign Over an Uncertain Constitution

Bolivia is ten days away from a national vote that by all measures ought to be a historic watershed – to approve or not a sweeping new national constitution.

Yet the streets are quiet. Neither here in urban Cochabamba where I work nor in rural Tiquipaya where I live, have I seen anyone handing out leaflets. There are no auto caravans roaming the streets with loudspeakers. There are no armies of campaigners wearing Si! or No! t-shirts. I've seen no announcements for big rallies in the stadium. All of the usual trappings of popular Bolivian election campaigning seem to be hiding in hibernation somewhere, as if everyone just sort of forgot.

How would Jesus Vote?

The airwaves however are a different story. My television watching friends (since television is the devil I don't own one) tell me it is wall-to-wall propaganda by both sides, most of it so over the top that facts aren't even a light consideration.

One ad, seeking a No vote, touts a bloody fetus and declares that the new constitution would legalize abortion. It doesn't, nor does it come close to doing so. Another ad shows two men kissing, beckons voters to "not be a part of the sin" and urges a No vote. The new constitution includes vague language about discriminatation based on sexual orientation. The best ad of the bunch features side-by-side images of President Evo Morales, the constitution's main promoter, with Jesus Christ (who to my knowledge has remained neutral so far). Declaring that the new constitution eliminates religious rights (another, 'it doesn't') the ad asks voters, "Whose side are you on?"

Jesus, who has not run for public office in Bolivia, is a popular figure here.

Morales and his MAS party aren't staying out of the exaggeration Olympics in all this either. Their ads proudly proclaim that the new constitution would put the nation's natural resources into the hands of the people. But the actual articles, especially after the huge compromises made in October, leave things a good deal mushier than that.

A Long Way from the Original Vision

The Bolivian demand for a new constitution did not begin this month or with the election of Evo Morales in 2005. It has been a demand for decades from the nation's long-marginalized indigenous majority, who see in the current constitution the vestiges of legally-enforced privilege and of old colonialism.

Their vision of how a new constitution would come about is almost tragically different than what has transpired. Their dream was of a process outside of politics, a Constituent Assembly of citizens from their communities that would mirror the communitarian decision-making process of their pueblos. In the end they got their constituent assembly, though one so dominated by political parties that you had to be a member of one to be a delegate. Then even that went out the door as political parties met behind closed doors in Cochabamba and adopted 100 amendments, as part of a desperate reach for a compromise that would pave the way for the January 25th vote and steer the nation past the bloody conflicts that broke out over the constitution and other issues in September.

As many critics have noted: If this was government of the people, by the people and for the people, it was a really small number of people who made the decisions.

What would the New Constitution Really Mean?

With 411 separate articles, stretching across a range of issues as wide as the imagination, the number of people who genuinely understand the real implications can probably be counted on two hands. I am not among them, nor have I ever had any desire to be. Nevertheless, if one listens to the various proponents and critics, and talks to any of the genuine experts, the big issues seem to come to this:

Political Reforms

You want my opinion? I think it really all came down to this, issues of how the political playing field would be laid out that will affect the fortunes of politicians and their constituencies for decades to come.

Evo wanted unlimited opportunities for reelection, or at least two (the current constitution forbids back-to-back terms for President). The opposition wanted none. They compromised on one reelection term, in a vote that would take place next December.

MAS wanted to abolish the Senate, the opposition strong hold, and have a unicameral Congress. The opposition likes the status quo. They compromised on increasing the Senate by nine seats and establishing, for the lower house, that a certain undetermined number of districts will be reserved for indigenous community representatives, elected in a manner to be chosen by those communities according custom.

Land Reform

This was going to be the 'big enchilada' of constitutional reform, or one of them. The large land tracks of the wealthy were going to be divided up and handed out to campesinos who had none. If Morales and MAS had redistribution of wealth on their minds when elected, this was going to be where it really happened, which is, of course, why so many wealthy landowners in places like Santa Cruz went so utterly bananas.

How does it look now? Under the compromise amendments approved in October, if you have huge tracts of land and you are using them in some form of production (which could be just chasing one small herd of cattle around to its various corners), you are in the clear. Productive land got 'grandfathered' in, meaning it is exempt from any changes. If some of that big land is just sitting around drying out, it will be in the government's sights, and the policy on compensation is as vague as Cochabamba street directions.

Anybody who buys land in the future will be limited by the new constitution, if it is approved. Whether the cap is 5,000 hectares of 10,000 hectares will be decided by a parallel vote on the 25th.

Gas and Oil

Back in the people's hands? Well, not quite. The Morales approach to gas and oil has never been confiscatory, despite silly claims otherwise. It has been 'renegotiation,' not 'nationalization' and the new constitution does little to alter that course. The pre-compromise version said that the government could contract with private oil and gas companies to perform certain services. The language won by Morales adversaries amended that to let oil firms join in 'risk sharing' arrangements with the government. That is also called co-ownership and is a far cry from, "It was your gas, now it's our gas, thanks."

National Health Care Services

Called 'Social Security" here, this is an issue which has drawn criticism from the left (which is ample). The pre-compromise version of the new constitution declared that these services would be free to all. The new version only guarantees "access". Any good policy student worth her salt knows the difference here. Guaranteed access means you can have it if you pay, and how much is unclear.

Will it Make a Difference?

There are certainly, amidst 411 articles, many other issues – from education to indigenous and regional autonomy – and many points of view on them (though not from Jesus, to my knowledge). There are also other criticisms. I spoke about the new constitution recently with former President Eduardo Rodriguez, as legitimate a constitutional scholar as the nation has (he was also formerly President of the Supreme Court). He pointed out some simple problems of consistency. In one article the new draft guarantees the right to declare oneself a conscientious objector and in another declares military service to be obligatory. How conflicts like that one will get worked out is anyone's guess.

Amidst all the unknowns and the vagaries of the constitution being put before the people in ten days, one thing is quite crystal clear. For the vast majority of the people the vote on January 25th will not be about the specifics contained in 411 articles but how they identify with the process of 'change' represented by Morales.

It will be an emotional vote. If it passes, as expected, some opponents will weep that the end of the world is at hand. Perhaps the U.S. Embassy will see a spike in applications for visas, as it did after Morales' 2005 election. Supporters of the new constitution will similarly weep with joy, and will proclaim the vote as a clear mandate for a break with the past and a move forward to a Morales-dominated political future.

But the fact is that a new constitution will likely change little here. It will not make the buses less crowded. It will not create better paying markets for the corn crops growing in my neighbors' fields. It will not improve the quality of the teaching or the learning at the public schools set to start up again next month. It will not give people yearning for opportunity much new chance of employment.

These things will depend on what they have always depended. Will Bolivia's economy take a huge hit as the global economy festers? Will Bolivia have the public resources to meet the desperate needs for investment in education, health, and infrastructure? Will the government, at every level, break through the poly-partisan habits of public corruption and inefficiency that siphon off those resources before they do the people any good?

Why haven't I dedicated hours developing detailed analyses of the 411 articles (other than my natural laziness and that weeklong bout with 90,000 hiccups)? Because after 11 years in Bolivia (and seven governments) I know enough to know that what counts is people's day-to-day lives and I know the difference between what effects them and what doesn't.

On January 25th Bolivians will go to the polls with great hope and great emotions. But a lot of them will be a lot more concerned that the rains keep falling and that someone will buy their corn at a good price.

A Bolivian Opposition Primary?

Welcome back from the holidays and welcome back to some updated analysis of Bolivian election politics.

Three weeks from today Bolivians will go to the polls yet again, this time in a referendum on a new national constitution backed by President Evo Morales and MAS. The fact of the vote itself was a major breakthrough, the product of tense, internationally monitored, negotiations between MAS and its regional and party opponents. In October, a wide array of Bolivia’s warring factions agreed to bring the proposed constitution to a vote, in exchange for MAS acceptance of hundreds of amendments large and small.

In the view of some, the deal was wise political compromise that brought Bolivia back from the brink of even wider violent conflict. In the view of others, the sweeping changes were a sellout by MAS, rendering the new document little different in effect than the one Bolivia has now.

Regardless of one’s view on the compromises that paved the way for the January 25th vote, two stories here are worth more attention.

The first is what the vote this month signifies as a measure of ongoing Morales/MAS public support. The second is the call from some corners of the opposition for a nationwide ‘primary’ vote to determine one sole candidate to go up against Morales in the new Presidential elections likely next December.

Morales and the Voters

If you track the trend line in voter support for Evo Morales over the past six years, the steady and significant rise in his support is indisputable.

As a dark horse presidential candidate in 2002 Morales leapt to a surprise second place finish behind the winner, former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, largely thanks to the suspicious public denunciation against Morales by the then-U.S. Ambassador. That strong finish gave Morales nearly a quarter of the national vote.

Three years later, in the December 2005 elections Morales won, he garnered a historic 53% of the vote, more than double his support in 2002. A few months later, in the July vote for delegates to the Constituent Assembly, Morales was not directly on the ballot, but his MAS party surpassed his previous vote total once again, slightly, winning 54%.

Then last August, in a nationwide referendum on the continued service of Morales and the regional governors, a vote demanded by Morales opponents, the President trumped even the most optimistic expectations, wining a lopsided 2/3 of the vote to stay in office (while two of his most vociferous opponents were tossed out of office by strong majorities).

So the question now is: How will Evo do on January 25th?

The vote in three weeks is not only on a new constitution; it is a new measurement of Morales’ popular support with Bolivian voters. Few serious observers think that MAS will come up short of the simple majority needed to make the new constitution the law. But there is plenty of room for Morales to fall far short of the 2/3 he received in August. If he does, the opposition that seems currently to be almost neutered will smell opportunity once more.

Plenty has transpired since the August vote that can alter the country’s political math. Violence tore through two departments in September. Morales declared open season on the U.S. government, expelling the U.S. ambassador and the DEA, and getting hit back with suspension of Bolivia’s participation in the Andean Trade Agreement (at a potential cost of 20,000 jobs). The Morales administration has also been hit with a series of corruption charges, ranging from accusations that his Minister of the Presidency helped smuggle in trucks without paying the required customs charges, to Morales’ placement of a 25-year-old with no professional qualifications as the chief administrator under the Governor of Cochabamba.

If MAS wins the vote this month with 55%, say, it will declare a sturdy victory. But if its support falls even 5% from the difficult-to-meet 2/3 it won in August, watch for opponents to rally.

The Opposition Primary

If the MAS-backed constitution wins, as expected, only then will the real campaigning begin. Approval would trigger a new round of elections in December for President, Governors, and Mayors, all across the country.

Two things will stand out as very different from elections past. The first is that Evo Morales will be constitutionally empowered to stand for reelection. That is a big change in a country where presidential reelection has been long prohibited, a change that Morales fought for hard.

The second is the very real possibility that Morales’ chief opponents might agree to another historic first – a national primary which would select which one of them would take on Morales, one on one.

One of those would-be opponents, Burger King magnate and former candidate Samuel Doria Medina (pictured above) is pushing a plan for a Bolivian primary among Morales’ chief potential opponents. That would include, as a start, himself and two former Sanchez de Lozada Vice-Presidents, Carlos Mesa and Victor Hugo Cardenas. The three, and potentially others such as former President and PODEMOS leader, Jorge Quiroga, would square off in a national vote in which all voters who wish could participate.

Nothing in Bolivian law provides for such a vote, nor does it prohibit one to my knowledge. The results would have to be honored by nothing more than each candidate’s word.

Why would this be a politically brilliant move?

First, it wraps the opposition in the mantle of popular democracy. “Who picked Evo to be the MAS candidate?” they will ask. “Not the people,” they will say. Second, it generates excitement, a nationwide election in which Morales is left to look on from the sidelines. Mexico’s disgraced PRI party invoked a similar ‘let’s have a primary’ move to help resurrect itself in the last election.

Most importantly, if the opposition really can narrow itself down to one candidate against Morales, that gives it the best chance possible (still, to be quite clear, a long shot) of beating him in a year. Evo benefits enormously from being the sole candidate on the electoral ‘left’ while the ‘right’ always manages to let individual ambitions saddle it with a line-up of candidates who split the field.

So welcome back from time off to contemplate cheese dip and Santa instead of the wild terrain of Bolivian politics. With three weeks to go, politics is back on.


Note to Readers: To deal with the cascade of Spam comments submitted to the Blog I changed the settings to require moderation of any comment posted more than five days after the original post. Since nearly all the comments made here do come within the first few days, that shouldn't be a problem. If you post a comment after 5 days, you may not see it for a while. I only go through and check them every week or so.

When Goals and the Policies to Meet them Don't Match

Perhaps it is from too many years spent in the world of practical politics, but I am burdened by the twin beliefs that public policy ought to be logical and that diplomacy ought to be strategic.

This week actions taken by President Evo Morales violated both those rules, in my view. I write of them here because I think political debate and disagreement is valuable. This is not a debate over the aims that the Bolivian government seeks to achieve (I agree with those aims in this case) but the means with which it seeks to secure those aims.

New Cars Only Need Apply

Earlier this week President Morales announced an executive decree that will ban the import of any car into Bolivia that is more than five years old. Morales' stated goals are twofold, to reduce auto emissions and traffic in Bolivia and to stop the nation from becoming a dumping ground for cheap used cars being imported in from Japan.

As someone who breathes the troubled air in Cochabamba and commutes in by public transit from Tiquipaya each morning, these are both great goals. But does a ban on six-year-old Toyotas really advance them, and at what cost?

First, it is a wicked myth that the cars flooding into Bolivia these days (the Associated Press reports that the number of cars in Bolivia has doubled in six years) are junkers.

The wave of incoming vehicles can be seen first hand at a sea of steel called the Zonafraco. Aisle after aisle of 1995-2000 Toyotas and other brands, various models, stretch across a muddy field. These autos are called 'transformers', not because they can be converted into robots, like the toy of the same name (that would be cool). They are called that because they arrive from Japan with the steering column and all the controls on the right side of the car. An army of Bolivian mechanics then 'transform' all those controls to the left side, in a manner so expert now that the average buyer can't tell.

A year ago, when my family and I moved out to the boonies beyond Tiquipaya, we finally broke our nine-year no-car rule and bought one of these, a 1995 Toyota Rav4 with about 50,000 miles on it. We paid $6,500 to a woman who runs a small business importing these cars through Chile, doing the 'transformation', and the Bolivian paperwork, which is expensive and formidable.

Now even back in my car-crazed home state of California, a 1995 Toyota with 50,000 miles is far from being considered a 'junker.' It may be the vehicle of choice for a 25-year-old with a massive student debt, but it is not junk. In Cochabamba a 1995 car is considered, by most people, virtually a new car. The same holds true for the 1995 Toyota Corollas ($4,500) and similar 'transformed' Japanese imports that make up the nation's fleet of taxis and smaller public transport.

What will the new policy accomplish?

It will certainly raise the price of cars. I dropped by the Toyota dealer on my walk through the city this morning. Price of a 2008 Toyota Corolla: $24,000. Price of a 2008 Toyota Rav4: $33,000. If you can find any used 2004 models (the oldest that would be allowed for import next year) they will probably be cheaper, but not by much. And you can bet that the resale price of older cars will jump as well.

This is essentially the age-old policy of reducing demand for a good by raising its price – which is a very odd approach for a government that seeks to be an advocate of the people with limited means.

The other sure effect will be to eliminate a large number of jobs in a nation starving for them, and we aren’t talking abut jobs for a wealthy elite. One low-income family I know has been hoping to get into the expanding taxi-trufi business (public transport lines that are always full) giving jobs as drivers to at least three of them. That's gone if they have to pay $20,000 for a car. Thousands of mechanics are employed moving all those steering wheels around. Kiss those jobs goodbye. The woman I bought my car from is also no lady of wealth. It's a side business added on to the microscopic store she runs downtown selling soda and groceries.

One person was killed this week in a clash between the government and people raising a road blockade to protest the proposed ban.

So what about those laudable goals of reducing traffic and pollution? There are plenty of good options, most all of them better than arbitrarily setting five years as the retirement age for imported cars.

If reducing the number of cars in Bolivia is the aim, the government could pick from a variety of options. It could limit imports but not shut the door on older cars that regular people can afford. It could create a buy-back program to get rid of the real junkers, as other governments have done.

If Bolivia wants to reduce the use of cars in its traffic-clogged cities, there are better options for this as well. The government could develop a plan to make Bolivia's streets something more than a death challenge for cyclists. It could encourage more use of public transit by allowing only public transit vehicles in the center of the city. It could add a heavy surcharge on families who own more than one vehicle.

Should Bolivia try to reduce emissions from cars? Again, absolutely. But anyone who has ever been in traffic in Bolivia knows that the big contamination isn’t coming from a 1995 Corolla taxi that, like 95% of them, has been converted to natural gas. It is the thick black smoke belching out of the back of those 1970s vintage, diesel-burning Dodge Microbuses. In addition to being dirty, they are also big and slow. That's why anyone here who can is switching to the much quicker (and cleaner) gas-powered 'taxi-trufi' lines.

But those lines are populated by the very same 1995 Toyota Ipsums (seats 8) that Morales' decree would now keep from entering. So where is the logic for that?

No Ambassadors from Obama

The other news-grabbing initiative from the Bolivian government this week came on the foreign policy front, at a meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Presidents in Brazil. President Morales introduced his suggestion with a spot-on prediction, "I want to make a proposal that many are not going to like." He then called on his Presidential colleagues to join him in expelling all U.S. ambassadors from the region until the U.S. government agreed to lift its decades-old economic embargo against Cuba.

The proposal was quickly shut down by the other Presidents. Brazil's Lula da Silva said, "We must be prudent and diplomatic and wait for Obama to assume power. I am hopeful that American policies toward Latin America and the Caribbean will change.”

Again, the problem here is not with Evo's objectives. The U.S. embargo against Cuba is a Cold War relic that only serves to make life worse for the people who live in Cuba and which has certainly not achieved its stated objective of bringing the Castro government to its knees. Truly, if someone poked a dog in the face with a stick every day for almost fifty years to make it move and the dog never moved, would we still buy the argument that, "it's only a matter of time?"

The embargo has never really been a policy about Cuba as much as it has been about the politics of the Cuban-American voters in South Florida. If Florida were not a swing state in U.S. Presidential politics the embargo would have come down about the same week as the Berlin Wall.

The issue, again, is not the end but the means to it.

In Washington last month I heard from people close to the new administration a consistent refrain. President Obama will have his hands full almost completely with the global financial meltdown and his efforts to pull troops out of Iraq (and put them into Afghanistan). Latin America? It will be abut as close to the bottom of the Obama priority list as a continent and a half can be. Cuba? Farther down still.

Is the best way to pave the way for a change in Cuba policy to poke a new president in the eye?

Certainly other presidents didn’t think so. If the new president of the U.S. is anything he is shrewd. He and the advisors around him, including on Latin America, will be very keen on looking strong as both the U.S. people and foreign government size him up. The last thing he is going to do is change Cuba policy because he is being threatened by the President of Bolivia. If anything, such a move by Morales and others will also make it less likely that he lift the embargo.

Diplomacy rule #1: Put yourself in the shoes of the one you are trying to persuade and ask the question, "What are the politics?"

In a Democracy Ideas Need to be Challenged

In both these cases – of used cars from the east and diplomacy with the north – the basic lesson is the same. In governing it is not enough to have the right goals. You also need to have the right policies that get you there.

Getting the right policies rarely comes from unilateral decrees declared on the fly without much thought. We all need to be challenged, to have our logic tested. It makes everything we do smarter.

In the case of Evo's call for a diplomatic expulsion threat against the U.S., his presidential colleagues provided that challenge and a policy that didn't make much sense was set aside. In the case of the ban on cars manufactured before 2004, there was no space for the policy to be challenged, no time or room provided for debate. Which is why Bolivia may end up with a very goofy policy, and one which could do a good deal of damage to the very goals it is supposed to advance.

Undermining a government and challenging its thinking are two different things.

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.

The Clinton Campaign Team Plots a Return to Bolivian Politics

The last Bolivian politician who put his fortunes in the hands of Bill Clinton's political advisors now sits in unofficial exile in suburban Maryland, fighting both a criminal indictment in Bolivia and a multi-million dollar civil case in the U.S.

In 2002, a collection of consultants from Mr. Clinton's former A-team – James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, Jeremy Rosner, and others – headed south to the Andes to work a lucrative contract aimed at putting a staunch U.S. ally, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, back in office after a five year time-out required by the Bolivian constitution. As political achievements go, they did a helleva job. They took a President widely hated for his leading role in a decade of Washington-driven privatizations and maneuvered him through a field of stronger opponents to a razor thin 2% point win.

Both the campaign and its disastrous aftermath were documented close-up in award-winning documentary, "Our Brand is Crisis," by U.S. filmmaker Rachel Boynton.

In Search of a Sequel

Now apparently the former Clinton team is fishing around for a Bolivian sequel. Last month the political consulting firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research posted a job announcement for an "International Campaign Representative" in Bolivia. The firm, which bills itself as, "a global leader in public opinion research and strategic consulting," announced that:

[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.

All this raises the obvious question – who is the mystery candidate that Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Rosner hope to sweep into power this time. If Bolivians approve, as expected, a new constitution in the upcoming January 25 vote, a new round of Presidential elections will be held in December 2009, with Evo Morales newly enabled to seek re-election.

The 2002 Goni Strategy, Overt and Covert

The 2002 Goni campaign was really a textbook case of how to apply a math equation to politics and make it work. After exhaustive polling and focus group research, the Carville/Greenberg/Rosner team came back to the former President with three basic realities (delivered, quite remarkably, on camera, thanks to Ms. Boynton):

1. He had a solid base of popular support among something just shy of 25% of the Bolivian electorate.

2. The remaining 75% would never vote for him under almost any conditions. They hated him.

3. The only way to have a chance at winning was to maintain that support among a quarter of the nation and then do whatever was necessary to make sure that no other candidate won more than 25% either.

And in 2002 that candidate was the fresh-faced former Mayor of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa, a politician known for completing a series of flashy public works across his city, and managing to make himself quite wealthy in the process. His name seemed always to be associated with the slogan, Roba, pero cumple – he steals but he delivers.

Polling by the U.S. experts also told them that the key to driving down Manfred's numbers was hammering him on two things, the cloudy corruption charges that seemed to follow him around and reminding voters of Reyes Villa's deep military past, in a nation still wary of soldiers turned politicians.

A barrage of advertising orchestrated by the men from El Norte filled the Bolivian airwaves with images of Manfred's multiple homes on two continents and of a young Captain Manfred in uniform. That drove Reyes Villa's once-high numbers down into Goni territory, but still not low enough.

The act that finally cut Reyes Villa off at the political knees, and won the Presidency for Sanchez de Lozada, was one that also came from the U.S., but this time not from the consultants but directly from the U.S. Embassy.

Just weeks before the Bolivian vote, Ambassador Manuel Rocha, an appointee of President Clinton, surprised most everyone with a highly publicized public rant against Evo Morales, a candidate trailing badly in third place. He also made a threat, "If you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of US assistance to Bolivia.”

The political impact was swift. Overnight thousands of voters, angered by such overt U.S. interference in their elections, switched their allegiance to Evo, nearly doubling his support in the polls (he eventually finished second, less than 2% behind Goni). And where did that support come from? As Morales' support leapt, Manfred's collapsed. The two shared a core political base, Cochabamba. And it was by no means a coincidence.

If your political strategy in 2002 was to pull votes away from Reyes Villa you have to give those voters somewhere else to go. That somewhere else was never going to be Goni, but it could be Evo, and Rocha's rant did the trick, overnight.

I once asked a source with connections to the campaign if it seemed plausible if Carville, Greenberg and company might have cooked up the winning scheme and paid a visit to the man who owed his Ambassadorship to their former client. "No," I was told. "They weren't strategic enough to do that." Then I asked if perhaps the attack on Evo had been set-up by Goni's own in-house Machiavelli, his long-time aid, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. "Oh yeah, he would have done it."

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled Bolivia in October 2003, as protests swelled across the nation following his government's killings of dozens of citizens. It turned out that "crisis" wasn't so much the firm's brand, but its product.

The firm’s site also includes a lovely fictional account of Sanchez de Lozada’s final bloody days. Principal Jeremy Rosner writes, “Protests organized by opposition leaders in October 2003 resulted in scores of deaths and Sanchez de Lozada’s resignation.” Mr. Rosner fails to mention that troops under the command of his paying client fired the bullets, including at children.

Fleeing with Goni was his now-co-defendant in both the criminal and civil cases arising from those killings, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. Soon afterwards Mr. Berzain joined a Miami law practice with an old colleague of his from Bolivia, the former U.S. Ambassador, Manuel Rocha.

So, What is Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Up to Now?

Now back to that question – who is the mystery candidate who Team Goni 2002 will seek to guide into office in 2009? Is it Carlos Mesa, Goni's former Vice-President who left his own inherited presidency early in the face of other protests in 2005. The historian-turned-politician has been making a lot of new political noise recently. In the current edition of the Bolivian magazine Tal Cual, Mesa calls for the construction of a new political opposition to Morales, and criticizes the existing opposition as "never representing a significant, genuine leadership."

Is it Manfred Reyes Villa, who up until the moment of the lopsided vote that ended his Cochabamba governorship in August, was declaring his candidacy for President. In his silent exile (in Tiquipya or Miami, we don't know) has he been cutting a deal with the team that cost him the Presidency six years ago?

Is it a dark horse? Perhaps the Vice-President of PepsiCo, a Bolivia-U.S. dual citizen who dropped into the country for a couple of weeks in 2005 to see whether running for the Presidency that year might be a suitable promotion. He opted to stay in Manhattan, but given the financial turmoil in the U.S. maybe Bolivian politics is looking like a better career move now.

As another ex-President (one I respect a good deal), Eduardo Rodriguez said in the same article in Tal Cual, Bolivia does need a solid political opposition. Rodriguez, the former head of the nation's Supreme Court explained:

"Political equilibriums are essential to guarantee democratic plurality and all fundamental liberties. Without the presence of a democratic opposition the tendencies toward totalitarianism and hegemony are very big. What is fundamental is to preserve democratic liberties."

I agree with that assessment, in Bolivia, in the U.S. and in general about democracy.

But it seems unlikely that Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research is assembling a Bolivian team with the pure-hearted intent of helping create democratic balance in a nation they little-understand. More likely someone has some money to spend and some big ambitions. And he or she hopes that a little magic polling from those gringos who put Goni back in power once-upon-a-time might just do the trick.

But let's not forget how high the price was, in blood and fire, last time the firm came flying into town, a bill owed to the Bolivian people that has still not been paid.

Note: We invited the press office at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research to offer a comment on their new Bolivian plans, but they simply let us know that the position had been filled, with no other comment. If members of the press would like to try their luck and seeing what the firm is up to now in Bolivia, its press liason is Jaclyn Macek at: jmacek@gqrr.com.

Dismembering the Peace Corps

Lot #11: 1 cork bulletin board, 1 wooden desk with glass top, 1 medium sized wooden bookshelf, 1 chair, 2 Spanish/English dictionaries, three books in English.

Behind a long adobe wall, just outside the small town here of Sacaba, the U.S. Peace Corps' training center has been converted into an auction house. The last material evidence of the Corps' presence in Bolivia is up for bid.

Those looking at Lot #51 can get a former staff refrigerator with a bedspread thrown in. Those interested in Lot #62 can have 7 former Peace Corps rulers, 10 folders, a stack of books that volunteers left behind for their successors, and a map of Bolivia.

In September, against a backdrop of political violence in two of Bolivia's nine departments, the Peace Corps pulled out all 113 of its members, flying them to Lima, Peru. Many people thought, at the time, that it was just the U.S. taking a temporary safety precaution. But as it turns out, the Peace Corps evacuation from Bolivia is not a temporary one.

The Bush administration, in addition to bringing a premature halt to this year's class of Corps volunteers, has also cancelled plans for any new class as well. The Peace Corps – a rare positive U.S. symbol in a country deeply skeptical of the U.S. – is gone and it isn't coming back. Its vehicles, computers, stoves, lamps, computers and other accessories will be sold Friday to the highest bidder – souvenirs of a valuable program being dismembered.

Using the Peace Corps as a Political Tool

There is really little question about the motive for the Bush administration's withdrawal of the Corps. It isn't safety, it's politics. Shortsighted politics.

Bolivia is a big country of more than 2 million square miles. The September violence, as frightening as it was, was limited to a very small portion of the country. The worst of it, in Pando, took place in a part of Bolivia so remote that one would truly need to go to great lengths looking for trouble in order to find it. The vast majority of the volunteers were nowhere near the violence, nor threatened by it. Those that might have been nearby could easily have been moved to Cochabamba or another region at peace.

The Vermont-based School for International Training's (S.I.T.) semester abroad program for U.S. undergraduates is notoriously more cautious about safety concerns than the Peace Corps. In October 2003, during the political conflicts that led to the ouster of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the S.I.T. students were whisked off to Buenos Aires while the Peace Corps remained. This time around the S.I.T. students stayed safely put in Cochabamba, and remain here, while the Peace Corps volunteers were ordered, most against their wishes, on a plane to Lima.

And if there was any question remaining about whether safety or politics was behind the U.S. move, the answer to the question became clear when the Bush administration announced that the Corps was not coming back at all.

The administration's withdrawal of the Peace Corps from Bolivia was part of a package of hastily imposed policies aimed at punishing President Morales for declaring the U.S. Ambassador here, Phillip Goldberg, 'persona non grata' and sending him home. It was as if administration officials reached into a drawer and pulled out a list titled, "What We Do if Evo Crosses A Line." It included:

· Kick out Bolivia's Ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman
· Decertify Bolivia's anti-coca efforts
· Eliminate Bolivia's participation in the ATPDEA trade program

And pull out the Peace Corps, for a long time if not permanently.

Sadly, this was not the first episode of the Bush administration pulling the Peace Corps into U.S./Bolivia diplomatic battles. A year ago a U.S. Embassy security official in La Paz illegally asked a Fulbright scholar and Peace Corps volunteers to pass along any information they came across about Cubans and Venezuelans in the country. Whether those were the rogue actions of one stupid security official or something more conspiratorial can be debated. But it left a shadow of U.S. politics over the Corps that its withdrawal now only reinforces.

The Washington Post's new correspondent for the region, Joshua Partlow, authored a front-page article two weeks ago about the dissatisfaction among Corps volunteers at being used as political pawns, and how some of them have returned back to Bolivia on their own to continue their work here. He quoted a volunteer from Maryland, whose letter to friends and family circulated widely at the time. "The Peace Corps, unfortunately, has become another weapon in the US diplomatic arsenal," wrote volunteer Sarah Nourse. She called the Bush administration's move, "one more chance for the US to maintain its tough image and hit back, harder."

Advice to President-Elect Obama, Send them Back

Here at the Democracy Center we didn't have to look too far to find what the Peace Corps means to those who participate in it, and to those whose lives they touch. Yi-Ching Hwang, a member of our staff, served a two-year stint in the Corps, working in the highland community of Quewiñapampa.

"Living in that community for two years has transformed my way of looking at and interacting with the world. It is a time I will never forget. More than two years after my service, when I returned to visit, surprisingly, from the littlest of kids to aging grandmas, they still remembered my name and warmly greeted me. It is as if I’ve never left."

Just weeks after taking office in 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Peace Corps by executive order, with a modest start of trying to put 500 volunteers in the field by the end of the year. He declared at the time:

"Our Peace Corps is not designed as an instrument of diplomacy or propaganda or ideological conflict. It is designed to permit our people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world development."

The final days of the Clinton administration eight years ago are remembered most for a flurry of last minute executive pardons, some of them highly questionable. The final days of the Bush administration seem likely to be marked by a full scale effort to lock his successor into a set of policies that will be difficult to reverse, from weakening environmental protections to locking in a hard line against governments not to Mr. Bush's liking.

Over the next few months we will be putting forward a set of proposals aimed at rebuilding the torn relationship between the U.S. and Bolivia, including steps that both governments, of Presidents Obama and Morales, will need to take.

Here's the first of those suggestions – President Obama should reverse the Bush administration's error and send the Peace Corps back into Bolivia in full force. And President Morales should make clear that the Corps is warmly welcomed and that its security and that welcome will always be protected and honored.

Young people like Yi-Ching are an asset in Bolivia, both for the work they do and the relationships they build, not government-to-government but people-to-people. The President-elect has already signaled his desire to rebuild the U.S. tarnished image and place in the global fabric. Sending the Yi-Chings of our country back into Bolivia is a very good place to begin.

Shoot-Yourself-in-the-Foot Diplomacy for Beginners

Last month when Bolivian President Evo Morales declared the U.S. Ambassador, Phillip Goldberg, 'persona non grata', the international media and diplomatic reviews were decidedly negative.

The editors of the New York Times declared, "We understand why the Bush administration and Congress are fed up with Bolivia’s president." A few hours south at the Washington Post, editors there described the ouster of Mr. Goldberg as the expulsion of, "a respected professional, on the spurious grounds of fomenting rebellion."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration reaction was starker still.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormick declared, "President Morales’ action is a grave error that has seriously damaged the bilateral relationship. The United States is the largest single country provider of development assistance to Bolivia, is Bolivia’s largest export market, and is the major provider of counternarcotics assistance."

[He got the export market wrong. Brazil and Argentina are much bigger importers of Bolivian products, including energy.]

Then the Bush administration started swinging some bats of its own. It ousted Bolivia's Ambassador to the U.S., yanked out the Peace Corp, and then pulled out what it thought was its biggest bat of all. In an announcement President Bush made himself, the administration announced that it would remove Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade program responsible for at least 20,000 Bolivian jobs.

The administration's message to President Morales was clear – you mess with us and we mess with you – the diplomatic version of a schoolyard shoving match in which the bigger boy wins. Mr. Morales and his Bolivian cohorts were to be taught a lesson about uneducated diplomacy.

The Art of Shooting Oneself in the Foot

But which country is really losing the diplomatic tussle?

First, let's be clear. Bolivia is not very important to the U.S. It is not a major energy contributor to the U.S., like Venezuela. It is not home to many big U.S. corporations, like Brazil. It isn’t a major source of immigrants, like Mexico. In the scheme of U.S. diplomatic priorities, Bolivia rates somewhere between Paraguay and Palua, i.e. not all that important.

To the extent that the U.S. does care about Bolivia diplomatically, it really has just three goals:

1. Keep Bolivia from establishing even deeper relations with Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez

2. Keep Bolivia from becoming, as it was in the 1980s, a major source of coca for cocaine production (that production has mostly relocated to the U.S. biggest ally on the continent, Colombia).

3. Try to improve the U.S. miserable image in the region (according to surveys, President Bush's popularity in the region now languishes at rock bottom, beside that of Fidel Castro).

So, given those goals, how does the Bush administrations new Bolivia doctrine of economic retaliation stack up?

Well, yesterday President Chavez was back in La Paz again. He and President Morales put pen to a new agreement in which Venezuela will take up some of the slack from the U.S. cancellation of Bolivia's participation in ATPDEA. Chavez pledged to open up Venezuelan markets to a big chunk of the textile exports that the Bush administration now says it doesn't want. So if someone in the State Department thought they were going to undermine the Morales/Chavez bond with the bigger-boy-in-the-schoolyard move, they might want to rethink that.

On coca, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you put 20,000 people out of work in a nation where honest economic opportunity is scarce, some of those people are going to drift in other directions. In Bolivia those 'other directions' often include migrating to the Chapare to grow coca that isn't destined for chewing or tea, but the illegal drug market. It was the destruction of much of Bolivia's mining industry in the 1980s that sent so many ex-miners into the coca-for-cocaine business two decades ago. So while the Bush administration claims that its goal here is to battle increased coca growing for drugs, its actual policies seemed aimed at sending former textile workers right in that direction. Truly intelligent.

Finally, if the Bush administration thinks that its retaliatory moves aimed at Morales have made the U.S. more popular in the region, it might want to take another look there as well. The real mark of declining U.S. influence in the region can be measured by the Chilean summit held by the South American presidents last montn, in response to the Bolivia crisis. The messages from the Presidents was clear – U.S., we do not want you in the room.

On this continent the U.S. is viewed as a contributor to problems, not an ally in finding solutions.

A Wiser Course

It is not a big surprise that the Bush administration would be ticked off, as it clearly was, by the ousting of its Ambassador to Bolivia. In another post we'll get into the question of what role Mr. Goldberg did or did not play in helping promoting civil unrest here last month – the Bolivian government's justification for sending Goldberg home.

But diplomacy is not about blowing off steam, it is about knowing national interests and using clear-eyed strategy as a vehicle for promoting those national interests.

Time and time again, not just in Latin America but globally, the Bush administration has shown itself to be tone-deaf to that basic fact. Now, in its closing days, the administration is not only repeating that mistake in Bolivia but also working hard to force the next President down the same path.

Congress made it clear that while it thought the threat of cutting Bolivia out of APTDEA might be a useful move at this time, actually doing so is the wrong thing to do right now. That's why, on a bipartisan basis, the Congress last month voted to extend Bolivia's participation until June 30, 2009, and leave it in the hands of the new administration to use the deadline as diplomatic leverage.

President Bush is using his executive powers to overrule that law.

Even that well-known Morales/Chavez/Castro radical, Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, knows that the Bush administration's APTDEA move is a diplomatic mistake. He declared so publicly last week, as he was traveling in Mexico with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

At the same hour that the Bush administration was holding the public hearings required by law on its axe-Bolivia plan, in Mexico Rice declared, in effect, that the hearings and supposed process of public input was irrelevant. She announced again the administration's intent to end Bolivia's participation as soon as the required 30-day waiting period was over.

Senator Lugar quickly disagreed. "When Bolivia stands at the cusp of a new era, with a new constitution, U.S. assistance should be forthcoming as an effort to help Bolivia, and not to be an impediment to its progress," said the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have made a good deal the past few months about how they are different that President Bush. Senator Obama, in particular, has repeated over and over again his intention to establish a different kind of diplomacy if he is President, one based on more dialogue and less retribution.

Reversing President Bush's certain removal of Bolivia from the APTDEA trade program may give him his first test to do that. And to show that, unlike his predecessor, during Diplomacy 101 he wasn't sleeping in class.