Capitol Capers

Gas and oil nationalization, maybe. Land reform, more than likely. Regional autonomy and decentralization, no question. But who, even a month ago, would have imagined that Bolivia would be exploding over a proposal to relocate the nation's capital from La Paz to Sucre? I don't even think that the coca leaves saw that one coming.

Bolivia is once again in a state of turmoil. This week university students in Sucre led violent confrontations with police that have many asking whether September in Sucre will turn into January in Cochabamba – when conflict over the 2/3 vote issue spilled into the streets and left three people dead.

How did we get here? The answer is a mix of political opportunism and political incompetence by all sides.

Si No Podemos, Tampoco Pueden Ustedes

First, there is the political game by the opposition to try to stop Morales and MAS' efforts to rewrite the nation's constitution. PODEMOS and its opposition allies, after getting beaten badly in two back-to-back national elections – for President in 2005 and for delegates to the Constituent Assembly in 2006 – took on a new tactic. They started throwing everything they could think of in the way of the MAS' powerful political train to see what would stick.

It seems that PODEMOS ["We can"] adopted a new slogan: si no podemos, ustedes tampoco pueden – if we can't then you can't either.

They tried the "Evo is Hugo Chavez with a different haircut" tactic, which never caught on. Then they found traction with the demand for a 2/3 vote on everything at the Constituent Assembly in Sucre, because it resonated with public fears that maybe the MAS juggernaut was too powerful and Evo's aims to broad. When that issue ended in compromise the opposition went looking for something new to throw on the tracks. For a while they tried to slow Evo and MAS down with charges that the government was being run by foreign advisors, but that didn’t really work. And then came Sucre.

Okay, I have no evidence other than that we know the demand to move the capital began somewhere within PODEMOS, but I am guessing that it went down something like this:

Hey, have you noticed that the Constituent Assembly actually looks like it might write a constitution.

Well, I have heard about it second hand, but a lot of our delegates don't actually go to any meetings.

We need something new to derail this thing and fast.

[A pause for deep thinking.]

HEY, I HAVE IT! Let's start a demand to have the capital moved to Sucre!

From a purely Machiavellian point of view, you really do have to hand it to these folks. They pulled an issue out of nowhere but old history and in a few weeks have used it to close down the Assembly process completely. While it is certainly arguable whether all this is good for Bolivia (that is not necessarily the opposition's leading concern right now), it has certainly been good for the opposition. I mean, stopping the party in power from doing what they don’t like is what an opposition does. Frankly, I wish that Democrats in the U.S. had demonstrated such insistence and skill when President Bush lied the U.S. into war.

MAS Takes the Bait

I am continually astonished, and disappointed, at how easily MAS takes the bait from these opposition tactics. When the demand went out for autonomy, MAS could have said, "Absolutely, autonomy, we're for it, move government closer to the people, but now let's talk about what kind of autonomy." Instead they let Santa Cruz leaders and others turn it into an anti-MAS rallying cry, and an effective one. When the 2/3 vote issue emerged, MAS could have proposed the same sort of compromise that it eventually agreed to, just absent the massive street protests and absent the deadly conflict in Cochabamba in January.

A friend of mine here who is a shrewd analyst of Bolivian politics – someone sympathetic to MAS' aims but critical of its operations – laid out to me how the same pattern is at play on the Capital-to-Sucre debate. Of course Sucre is free to make such a demand, he argues. MAS dismissed the demand as mere politics. "Of course it is politics," he told me. "It's all politics."

Instead of dismissing the idea of even talking to Sucre leaders about it and instead of closing down the Assembly over the issue, MAS had much better political cards to play. They could have played compromise – offering the region some additional development projects (a big motive for the demand is the assumption that having the capital brings development and jobs) or even a department or two.

They also could have played hardball:

Hermanos, here is what we calculate to be the cost of moving the capital and what that translates out to in terms of the teachers, rural doctors, highways and other goods that each department would have to give up to pay for it. Now, if you are insistent, we'll go ahead and put this to a vote on the same ballot as the new constitution and you can go out and try to convince the rest of the country to vote for it. By the way, a third of the electorate lives in La Paz.

But MAS did none of this, and instead, just as they have before, swallowed the opposition's bait and landed themselves in the midst of a crisis. It is a shame that Morales and MAS do not have the same skill in domestic diplomacy that they have shown in foreign diplomacy. You have to hand it to a government that, in the same week, can send its foreign minister to Iran to build new relations there, and send its Vice President to Washington and win approval from Democrats for extension of Bolivian trade preferences.

…And You Really Want The Capital.

And what of Sucre itself? I have no doubt, despite however 'political' the original demand may have been, that the students and others on the street are sincere in their desires to have the capital moved to their city. I also have to wonder why. Sucre residents might take a look around at the smoke, flying rocks, and violence on their doorstep and ask, "If this is what we bring to our small and peaceful city by just having the Constituent Assembly, what will come with a whole capital?" Maybe they should ask instead for some new schools, some new clinics, and the tax department.

Meanwhile, MAS is now discussing the possibility of moving the Constituent Assembly to Oruro. I've been there, and not during carnival. It's a nice place. Might even make a good capital.