Three Messages that Morales and MAS Need to Hear

I have spent a lot of the past few weeks having conversations with Bolivians I know, listening to their concerns about events here and especially to their views about the one-year-old government of MAS and Evo Morales.

Too often, the government and MAS have met all criticisms by dismissing them as the rhetoric of "the oligarchy" or of right-wing elites. To be clear, a good deal of the opposition to MAS and Morales really does come from elites who see their privileges under attack and who have wanted the new government to fail from the start. But a lot of that criticism also comes from people who used to support Evo and MAS and who, importantly, could have been and should have been a reliable part of MAS' base of political support.

Here are three messages that I hear these people saying to Morales and MAS that neither the party, the government, nor the President seems to be hearing. They need to, not just for the sake of their own political fortunes, but for the sake of Bolivia as whole:

1. The Middle Class Matters

Evo Morales got elected president with a historic majority a year ago because he did two things. First, he built a solid base among Bolivia's poor and in rural areas. He wrapped himself in his indigenous identity and, with no real competition for that same base, made himself the embodiment of political hope for the nation's most marginalized people. Second, and equally important, he convinced thousands and thousands of middle class voters to back him as well. They did so with a mix of aspirations. Some hoped that putting social movements in charge would keep them off the streets. Some joined in his desire for a change of economic course. Others voted against old parties that they viewed as tired instruments of corruption (including PODEMOS which many viewed, correctly, as Banzer's ADN party with a new name).

In the year since, Morales has alienated that middle class base over and over again – with his government's efforts to undo Catholic religious education in the schools, with his resistance to compromise on the 2/3 vote issue in the Constituent Assembly, but also with his rhetoric and failure to recognize that the middle class here struggles also.

A neighbor of mine, who owns a small corner store, captured this sentiment, explaining to me that she voted enthusiastically for Evo but would never do so again. "He talks always about the indigenous, but what about the rest of us?" she told me. A President needs to be President for all the people.

Evo would help himself and the country enormously if he dedicated himself in this second year to also reaching out to the nation's struggling middle class. They worry about their children's schooling. They worry about limited economic opportunity. The young are leaving Bolivia by the thousands each month to become nannies in Barcelona or homebuilders in Madrid, leaving behind confused children and tearful parents, all for the lack of opportunity at home. A simple message of, "Yes, I am your president as well," matched with policy initiatives to address their concerns, is essential.

Lest this be dismissed by MAS politicians as unneeded, they might take account of the fact that the best political defense MAS has against the right wing is not the ability to assemble masses in plazas but to rebuild its rapidly evaporating middle class base.

2. Humility and Competence Matters

When he was inaugurated a year ago, a more humble Evo Morales told the country that he would certainly make mistakes as President and the he would be to admit them and learn from them. Today a less humble Morales and MAS administration seems virtually incapable of admitting errors when it commits them, relying too easily on excuses and charges against the opposition.

I had a long visit with another Bolivian friend of mine the other day, a smart human rights lawyer who I have known for years and who I respect greatly. She is exactly the kind of progressive person many outsiders would expect to be a big Morales backer, but she's not. When she speaks of Morales she uses words like "authoritarian" and "arrogant". Those are not only characteristics that make citizens apprehensive about their government. It makes them afraid of their government. MAS and Morales need to hear that.

Citizens also expect their government to be competent, and the results from MAS so far are decidedly mixed. The government now has its third state energy company (YPFB) head in a year. The Water Ministry, a new agency created with great hope a year ago, keeps spitting out all the competent people I know who went to work there. To be clear, MAS and Morales have made some important progress, most notably in renegotiating the giveaway oil contracts that Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada handed to foreign petroleum companies a decade ago. But, especially in the new round of Cabinet appointments, political allegiance seems to be more important than competence and that is a bad sign.

3. Reconciliation Matters

Yesterday I sat with a cluster of Cochabamba social movement leaders who professed openly about their depression at the direction of things here, and specifically the disaster of the deadly confrontations in the streets on January 11. The odor of mistrust, racism and hate lingers for many here in Cochabamba. People with dark skin tell me they worry about going into the neighborhoods of the north and wonder aloud whether light-skinned people from the north feel the same about the southern neighborhoods.

There are thousands of people who did not spend January 11 running through the streets with sticks and don't back the partisan brinksmanship (with other people's lives) played by either Evo or Manfred. They are searching for a path toward reconciliation.

A President needs to be a force for bringing people together, and not simply join with his adversaries to divide them. Watch for more groups on the left to challenge Morales this year, not just for his policies but also for a style of governing that worries them for many of the same reasons it worries his adversaries on the right.

A week ago, in its version of the "Evo at One Year" story, the Miami Herald quoted me with the tag, "sympathetic to Morales' aims." I think that is a fair characterization. I am sympathetic to the aims that Bolivians had when they voted for Morales a year ago – economic policies aimed to benefit Bolivians instead of foreign corporations, real political power for the marginalized majority, a battle against corruption, and a government that would incorporate the full diversity of the population it was hired to serve.

I still believe in those objectives and I think there are many good people in this new government that do as well and who are working hard toward that end. But faith in the process and in Morales' leadership is eroding among many people who once believed in it.

Evo and MAS need to hear that and need to deal with it, now. If they do, the government that began with such high hope still has a good chance of succeeding. If they don't, the future of the President, the party, and the country, looks full of trouble.