To the Brink…Elections Postponed

Well it is official (for now at least). The ongoing haggling over the distribution of congressional seats has forced the postponement of Bolivia’s December 4 national elections. Until what date is anyone’s guess.

This afternoon, Bolivia’s National Electoral Court, the government body that runs elections, issued a formal declaration that, due to the delay in finalizing the congressional seats, it is now too late to make all the needed logistical preparations for the election. For months Bolivia has been wandering through the political minefield of unconstitutionality (very little about these elections actually conforms to the national constitution). Now Bolivia has taken all this one step further, into the minefield of national unpredictability.

What Next?

Watch the pressure on Congress to reach an agreement go from hot to boiling and watch that pressure now start to spill into the streets. With Evo Morales holding a steady first place lead in most recent polls his backers have started to see a real chance to take power in January. They see the postponement of the election as a prelude to outright cancellation, a conspiracy, they claim, to block his route to the presidency. Saturday his backers are set to hold a massive rally in his base in the Chapare region of the Cochabamba tropics. Morales has already hinted at launching street mobilizations to mount pressure on the Congress, a move that may be followed as well by social movement leaders in El Alto.

Morales’s greatest ally in the scramble for a quick resolution may be the nation’s interim President, Eduardo Rodríguez, who is watching his promised brief stint as Bolivia’s leader turn into a nightmare. He pledged to come in, hold clean elections, and get out. His exit is looking less and less clean every day and he is clearly working hard to push for a compromise and resolution. My bet is that negotiations over the weekend will be hot and heavy in hopes of a breakthrough Monday. If there is one, then the elections might be delayed just a week, until December 11th.

Brinksmanship

I had an interesting chat today with one of the many foreign journalists trying to make sense of all this and he asked me, “Why can’t these people in Congress come to a decision?” It is a reasonable question, particularly from outside the nation. [I have also found many reporters keenly interested in the “will there be elections” question for another reason. They need to figure out whether to come here or not, and when.]

This is not about Congress being unable to decide. This is about a competition of interests – regional, ideological, partisan, and personal – and a willingness by those involved to push things to the brink to win their demands. Set aside, for the moment, the debate over the legitimacy of each region’s position (there is more than one side to any issues, to be sure). The longer this goes on and the closer Bolivia gets pushed to the political brink, the more likely the holdouts (Santa Cruz and now Cochabamba in this case) are to get their way or something closer to it than what is on the table.

This is not unique to politics in Bolivia. US Republicans shut down the federal government during a budget fight with President Clinton. That showdown ended with the GOP looking irresponsible and with Clinton passing the time away with a thong-clad intern, two events that didn’t end well for any of those involved.

The stakes in Bolivia are higher still right now. Stay tuned over the next few days as the Bolivian political roller coaster starts shifting into high gear.