LAB, Cochabamba Water, and the Dance of Public Protest and Public Policy

A confession – I am a schizophrenic. Well, in certain terms. I have always straddled the line between the worlds of public protest and advocacy on the one side and public policy making on the other. I’ve studied both, done both, and written about both (in The Democracy Owners’ Manual). While these two worlds are certainly related, they are also very clearly not the same worlds.

The dance between the two is at the heart of two of the most visible public battles in Bolivia’s recent history. One is happening right now – the battle to “nationalize” LAB Airlines. The other happened exactly six years ago this week – the Cochabamba Water Revolt.

Advocacy and protest is about two basic things – getting authorities to pay attention to issues they would rather not and getting them to change direction. Public Policy is about defining and implementing that change of direction in very precise ways. They are two different parts of democracy, they usually involve very different kinds of people and skills, and they are both equally legitimate and equally essential. They both need each other.

Cochabamba and its Water

The facts are basic. Bolivians never had any kind of public debate over whether to hand control their water over to foreign corporations before the government did just that under World Bank pressure. When Cochabambinos were furious at the result (50% rate increases overnight) the government not only refused to listen, it also used armed troops to try to keep people from protesting those rate hikes.

I believe it was Nelson Mandela who said, “You don’t choose your tactics, your opponents do.” In the case of Cochabamba, the government of Hugo Banzer and Tuto Quiroga made mass public protest and civil disobedience the only means by which the people could take back their water, something which remains a historic victory worthy of its reputation.

Well, then there was the tricky part – turning a romantic victory won on the street into a functioning and efficient public water company. That latter part of the story is pretty mixed.

SEMAPA, the re-established water company that took over after Bechtel’s ouster has, in fact, achieved some important things. In the first four years after the water revolt the new company connected up more than 55,000 new people to water service, an increase of 22%. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are still tens of thousands of families who still don’t have water service. Cochabamba has almost doubled in population since the first time I moved here in 1991 and SEMAPA has a long, long way to go in catching up with that population growth.

Some of the problem is the difficulty of financing water development, but some of it is about inefficiency as well. SEMAPA just isn’t that well managed and it owes the public better, especially given the sacrifices made to win back public control of water. Kicking out Bechtel and effectively managing a public water company are two different tasks and the leaders of the first were never going to be the ones to achieve the second. They city’s public leaders and professionals still haven’t risen to the task. The leaders of the water revolt haven’t adequately held their feet to the fire to do so.

LAB and “Nationalization”

Six years later history is echoing in the battle over LAB Airlines. Protests have once again erupted in Cochabamba, this time by airline workers demanding that President Evo Morales “nationalize” the airline that privatization has left lying on its deathbed and mired in debt.

Advocacy Rule #1: First you get their attention, then you press your demands.

The Morales government wanted the LAB problem to go away, or at least to land somewhere else than square in its political lap. Landing in its political lap, however, was pretty much inevitable. LAB is a staple of the Bolivian economy, the government owns almost half the company, and an administration elected to care about the people’s well-being doesn’t get to stand off to one side while 2,200 jobs threaten to go up in smoke. That it took protests to get Morales to see that is Morales’ problem. He and the people around him should have known better.

That said, then comes the tricky part. What should the government do about an airline that is just plane in bad economic shape? Morales is right to be apprehensive about any deal that leaves the government holding the bag for LAB’s more than $140 million reported debt. What does nationalization actually mean when it gets translated from slogan on the street to public policy in action? Does Bolivia become majority owner and manager of the airline (as it was for many years)? Does it manage the restructuring of the airline and then leave it in private ownership? These are really complicated issues to tear apart and look at and you don’t make public policy until you do that – if you are wise.

Public Protest vs. Public Policy

In my view it boils down to this. The protests over water six years ago this week and the protests over LAB today are both important because they forced reluctant governments to deal with legitimate public demands. On the other hand, there is a cautionary tale here for both.

The wave of public interest and involvement in water in 2000 never got converted into educated and long-term public oversight of the new water company. In the last public vote to elect members of the water company board, three percent of the population turned out. In the battle over LAB, those protesting need to apply some real world economics as they evaluate the options on the table. Both Bolivia and the thousands of Bolivian families that rely on LAB for their livelihoods need an airline that is economically sustainable, not one built on hope and unsustainable subsidies.

Without protest, governments often just pretend real problems aren’t there. Without a commitment to solid public policy and public management, those protests often fail to deliver the goods. That’s not just true in Bolivia.