Forgetting to Buy Beer, and Other More Serious Observations on Bolivia's Election

[A note to readers: This Sunday as Bolivia votes The Democracy Center will be blogging in real time from locations around the country. We also invite all our readers in Bolivia to use the Blog comments section as a space to add their own reporting and commentary, and links to other sources, as the day progresses. So watch this space starting Sunday morning for the latest news and analysis on Bolivia's vote.]

It was the one task I ended up with after we divided up assignments for Sunday, and I screwed it up. Buy beer. It wasn't a hard thing to do. Just a few cold ones to have on hand here in the office Sunday for people who might come by while we're busy reporting.

But I missed the deadline.

By law in Bolivia, for 48 hours before an election, it is illegal to buy, sell or consume alcoholic beverages. Really, if you go to one of the big liquor or grocery stores here in Cochabamba you will find a giant yellow ribbon – the kind used elsewhere to mark off road accidents – stretched across the usually active shelves of wine and beer. Those are the official rules, at least.

But the real story is this. On Sunday millions of Bolivians will essentially be confined to their neighborhoods – driving is also prohibited. Left with nothing to do but pass the day with friends and family, you can be quite sure that those cold bottles of Taquiña, Paceña, Huari, and Sureña will not be left capped. The day will not be dry. The big winner on Sunday will not be Evo or the opposition but beer consumption.

And here is where the policy of "don't drink and vote" provides a useful metaphor for Bolivian politics as a whole. On one hand there are the official rules, and then there are the way things really are. If you want to understand Bolivia, it is important to sort out the difference.

A Nation Divided

Reporters have been calling all week with the same question – What will be the outcome of Sunday's vote? What the numbers will be I can't say. Several recent polls have shown Evo riding to a strong victory, surpassing easily his 54% vote in 2005. I still haven’t heard from anyone, however, a solid answer to one key question: Where will Evo and Alvaro get the thousands of new votes they need to compensate for their likely loss of support in places like Sucre? Supposedly Evo's natural base among the rural poor will come out Sunday in greater numbers and with greater pro-MAS enthusiasm than it did in 2005. Maybe so.

It is also true that for people to vote against Evo they have to have some sense that the alternative is more attractive. And if there is one thing that the opposition here has certainly managed to do in recent months, it is to make themselves look really unattractive.

Nevertheless, even if Evo does win officially on Sunday, the real results – like the real consumption of beer – will be something different. There is a reasonable chance that we will wake up Monday morning in a country where a majority of the voters support the President, but where he can't set foot safely in five of the nine nation's departments (states). He sure wasn't able to this week; enough to cancel a planned visit here by the Presidents of Argentina and Venezuela.

Win or lose, Evo seems to have settled in as the revered leader of half the country, and the devil in disguise for the other half. That presents a real problem for governing.

Evo the Ink Blot

Okay, lets be clear. There are certainly very important policy differences between the right and the left in Bolivia, and between MAS backers and MAS adversaries. One side wants to give chunks of land to the landless, the other does not. One side wants regions instead of the nation to control natural resources, the other does not. One side wants to insert the government deeper into the economy, the other does not.

But as I talk to people in Bolivia about Evo and Bolivian politics – and I talk to lots of people, all kinds – it isn't policy I hear about, it's something else. What I hear mostly is a raw reaction, pro and con, to Evo as Ink Blot.

The people who live out where I live in rural Tiquipaya support Evo with gusto. My daughter's young kindergarten teacher is campaigning for him. The wrinkled man who drove me home from the town plaza late last night speaks of Evo like he is his nephew. My neighbor with the braided hair, who takes a switch to the backside of her slow-moving cow, will be one of the first in line Sunday to vote to keep him in office. And they are for Evo for reasons far more powerful than policy. They are for him because they see in him, for the first time in their lives, a President who shares their humble background and who is genuinely dedicated to lifting up their lives.

Similarly, when you get anti-Evo partisans from the middle class to really let fly with their criticism, here as well it isn't policy that you hear about. It's fear. "He is going to take our homes." "He wants us to become just like Cuba." "He has no respect for professionals."

No matter that Evo has repeated a dozen times, including last weekend, that his government respects private property and he has never come close to seizing someone's house. No matter that his so-called gas "nationalization" policies are really just contract renegotiations with foreign oil firms. The fear, mistrust, and the rumors remain.

There is a reason for this. While Evo campaigned in 2005 pledging to be "the President of all Bolivians", for two and a half years he has done nothing substantial, in word or deed, to assure the middle class that he means it. Change, particularly the deep change underway in Bolivia, makes people very nervous. They need their leaders to reassure them not frighten them. Evo has not reassured Bolivia's middle class (a status that in other places would be called the working poor) that he cares and understands their struggles and dreams as well as he understands those of the most impoverished.

If you don't think attending to the needs of the middle class is important for its own sake, then consider its importance politically. If Bolivian politics really is a blood fight between "right and left" then the only certain way to keep the right from swinging back into power is to deny it the one thing it must have to survive – middle class support.

Which brings us to those rebellious departments in the east.

Looking Beyond the Stereotypes

It is not only Bolivians who have made Evo an ink blot upon which to project their deepest hopes and fears. A fair number of analysts from abroad have done so as well.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal has made a virtual career making whacko off-the-wall declarations about Evo as Lucifer, as have other right-wing columnists. But the left as well has been overly romantic at times in its pro-Evo analysis of all things Bolivian. The typical left analysis goes like this:

On one side is the impoverished indigenous majority and on the other a mostly white elite fighting to keep tight control over the nation's wealth and using control of the media to provoke public opposition to Morales.

To be certain, there is some truth in that analysis. Evo is trying to redistribute power and wealth to those who have long been blocked from both. And a whiter and wealthier elite threatened by that shift in power is the nuclear core of the opposition. But when you actually live here day to day you hear other things that don't fit the mold and make it clear that the story is not quite so simple.

A few months ago in Santa Cruz I had a political chat with a woman who sells chewing gum from a small kiosk. She told me – We don’t want our money to go to La Paz and get eaten up by the bureaucracy and corruption, we want to keep it here. Are we really supposed to conclude that she has simply been brainwashed by the media against her class interest? Is her point not a reasonable one? Anyone who downplays complaints about Bolivian government bureaucracy has never dealt with one. Trust me.

Then there is that taxi driver in Sucre a week ago. He was definitely not white or wealthy but he's driving around with an anti-Evo sticker on his car. He shared with me his anger that Morales and MAS never took seriously the city's desire to have some portion of the national government returned to it from La Paz. Are we to believe that he has merely been paid to say those things by someone with a bigger agenda?

Or here in Cochabamba. What shall we make of the young mother squished next to me in a rusted Toyota taxi-trufi, headed home wearily from a 12 hour day at work. "Evo, he just fights with everyone." Where does she fit into the neat analysis of "Evo vs. the Elites?"

These are real opinions and I hear them expressed here everyday. Bolivian politics, including the politics of Evo, is a good deal more complex than many analysts and activists, left and right, would care to admit.

What to Watch for Now

Certainly the first thing to watch next is the voting and the results Sunday. Will there be conflict during the voting? Maybe in scattered parts, in Santa Cruz for example, where strong partisans on both sides come into proximity to one another. But I think mostly the vote will be peaceful.

As the results come in Sunday evening, here's what we'll be watching for:

The Evo Results and the Reactions

Will Evo win and if so will it be by a clear majority or by the something shy of a majority that still keeps him in office under the complicated rules? Win or lose, will his message to the country be combative or conciliatory? Will his next move be an olive branch or a verbal assault on those who oppose him?

How will the opposition react to the Evo outcome, up or down? Will it send peace signals if Evo wins or declare that he is, in effect, no longer President of half the nation?

Cochabamba

What happens to Manfred Reyes Villa, the embattled governor here? He is the only one among the eight governors on the ballot who has declared that he will not accept the outcome of the vote. He also declared that since the vote is illegitimate that he would not campaign, but appears to be hedging his bet. On my taxi-trufi ride into town this morning I picked up a sky blue 'Vote for Manfred' brochure that features color photos of 16 public work projects he takes credit for.

Does Manfred, if he loses, declare to the press Sunday night that he is still Governor? If he does, on Monday or Tuesday do cocaleros and other core MAS-backers seek to seize physical control of the Cochabamba Prefectura (state office)? If they do, will Manfred's backers take to the streets again as well? Once again, if there is going to be serious conflict in the aftermath of the Sunday vote, the most likely place is here in Cochabamba. But here is an update. Manfred announced today, apparently, that win or lose he'll leave his post to launch a campaign for the Presidency, trying to position himself in the center between Evo and the opposition. That would be a neat fete of political contortionism. Don't bet on it.

The Other Governor Votes

In the other 'Prefecto' votes, what happens if any of them win by a simple majority but fall short of the 'extra-majority' they are required to win under the complicated rules approved by Congress? Will the rules of what it takes to win or lose start to shift?

That Proposed New Constitution

Sunday's vote is in many ways a warm-up match for the real battle ahead, a national vote on MAS' proposed new constitution. If Evo loses the new constitution will be dead, roughly in the manner of a squashed bug. Morales and MAS will have to use all the political capital they have left to try to hold onto the Presidency in the new elections that will be triggered in 3 to 6 months. If Evo wins, and especially if he wins big, MAS will use that momentum to begin the campaign for the new constitution immediately.

And forget all the talk that will take place around issues like autonomy, etc. The real fight will be over Presidential re-election. Without a new constitution Evo can't run again in 2010 and MAS doesn't have anyone else that can compete. The opposition only has to be patient two and a half more years and to fight among themselves over who takes the Presidency. But under the new constitution written by MAS Evo can run again in 2010 and will, and the opposition has no one who can beat him, not now.

Okay, getting back to that beer metaphor, the one about the difference between the official rules and the actual ones. That is the weakness of Bolivian politics at the moment. A game with high stakes is being played but no one is sure what the rules really are, what each side will accept. Most people here that I talk with hope that whatever the outcome that Bolivia will not blow itself apart. That would be a good start.

And by the way, another member of The Democracy Center team just reported that beer is still for sale at the small market around the corner. So I guess I still don't understand the official rules here, or the unofficial ones either.