Washington Post Article on Evo Morales and the Elections

The Washington Post was in town a couple of weeks ago to do their opening shot at reporting on the "Evo phenomena" (my words, not the Post's). On the assumption that Bolivia's elections will eventually go forward (still my bet) an army of foreign press is on its way here to report the story. Some do a better job than others.

I think that Monte Reel at the Post (with help from Bill Faries) did a fine job of capturing the emotions on the street that power the Morales candidacy, as well as where Morales himself is coming from and the solid criticisms leveled against him.

For those interested in what is going on, the piece is well worth a read. Here is the link. And full disclosure, I spoke with the reporters when they were here.

...But the Campaigning Continues

Perhaps it is a sign of what the major Presidential candidates think will really happen in terms of rescheduling elections. Or perhaps it is just what politicians do when they don’t know what else to do. But the campaigning continues fast and furious here in Cochabamba.

On my mid-day bike ride around the city I rode past dozens of perky Tuto Quiroga campaigners, adorned in bright red shirts and smiles to match. Morales backers were out working the same intersections, waving the MAS’ blue flags. It remains a mystery, however, what these campaigners actually do at the city’s major public spots, other than wave their parties’ colors. Perhaps there are voters who just side with the candidate with the nicest color scheme

Samuel Doria Medina made himself visible today with a full page ad in some of the Bolivian papers, a long block of text which essentially says, “Look folks, none of the top three candidates are going to get anywhere near the 51% of the vote required to win the presidency outright, so let’s start talking coalition now.” Whether it is sincere or not, it makes great strategy. Medina the peacemaker against those battling extremists of the right and left (Quiroga and Morales, respectively). It also so happens that the person who really will elect the next President is Medina (the likely third place finisher), depending on which of the other two he decides to ally himself with.

Then there is Cochabamba’s own Manfred Reyes Villa (aka Bon Bom) who finished third place for President in 2002 and opted this year to run for the now-elected position as governor of the state of Cochabamba. I give his campaign the award for being the VERY MOST ANNOYING. Not a day goes by when the air isn’t pierced with the wailing of his sound trucks touting some campaign message. At this point I don’t care what he promises. Anyone who thinks we need to have our ears damaged probably needs to lose just for that.

So it goes in the wild world of campaigning for an election that may or may not happen and if it does we know not when.

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.

Bolivia's Election Crisis – A Bolivian Perspective

Readers:

One of our projects here at The Democracy Center aims to let young Bolivians speak with their own voice to foreign audiences about events here. We have a terrific team of young people, from both Bolivia and the US, working on a host of articles. Below is the first, an update and an analysis of the political crisis here that threatens to scuttle the scheduled December 4 elections. Earlier this week Bolivia's President warned that the suspension of the elections would push the country into the "abyss".

The article below was written by activist Boris Rios and adapted to English by Gretchen Gordon, a Democracy Center intern. We plan to continue publishing these so it will be helpful to have your feedback on how you like hearing directly from Bolivians in this way.

Jim

----------------------------------------

The Uncertainty of Elections in Bolivia

According to the Bolivian constitution, interim president Eduardo Rodriguez must hold national elections within a timeframe of no more than 180 days from the start of his presidency last June. The realization of these elections, however, remains up in the air due to a recent ruling by Bolivia’s constitutional court. Conflicts surrounding the distribution of congressional seats are now putting elections, scheduled for December 4th, at risk and bringing the country to the brink of a new crisis.

In May and June of 2005, Bolivia was embroiled in mobilizations of various social movements and social sectors motivated by the call for nationalization of the country’s natural gas resources. The protests resulted in the resignation of then president, Carlos Mesa, which ultimately led to the constitutional succession of Bolivia's Supreme Court President, Rodriguez, to the presidency. It’s worth clarifying that Mesa's resignation was not a demand of those mobilized in the streets, but rather an exit of his own choosing.

The Start of the Conflict

Once the date of elections was set for December 4th, three conservative members of congress from the department of Santa Cruz initiated a constitutional challenge to the elections. Their challenge cited electoral law mandating that “the distribution of total seats between departments be determined by law based on the number of their inhabitants, according to the last National Census…” which would be the census of 2001.

If enacted, the demand would decrease the number of congressional seats for the departments of La Paz, Oruro, and Postosi, and increase the number of seats for the departments of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

The Constitutional Court upheld the challenge, passing the responsibility of the modification of seat distribution to the Congress.

Now, the National Electoral Court, the institution responsible for the execution of elections, has established a deadline of this Thursday, October 28th, to add and subtract from the list of candidates for seats affected by the constitutional court ruling in order to proceed with elections as scheduled.

The Fight in the Congress

The decrease in seats for the departments of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosi and the increase of the same for Cochabamba and Santa Cruz was immediately rejected by the departments (states) negatively affected.

Yesterday, after weeks of gridlocked negotiations, the congress met for a vote on the various proposals for redistribution. The first proposal, put forth by Santa Cruz, was overwhelmingly rejected; at which point the entire Santa Cruz congressional delegation walked out and returned to Santa Cruz.

Today, the congress is scheduled to reconvene, likely without the representatives from Santa Cruz. While the other affected departments have all reached agreement on a compromise distribution, the Santa Cruz delegation maintains a hard line of nothing less than a gain of 4 seats as in accordance with the census.

The Base of the Conflict

The central theme of the current Bolivian conflict is a political power play in the national Congress that goes hand in hand with a recent shift in economic power. In the years of dictator-turned president Hugo Banzer (who was from Santa Cruz) and since, the elites of Santa Cruz have been the recipients of significant economic support from the Bolivian government. The same investment in industry that increased job opportunities, economic growth, and personal wealth for Santa Cruz’s elite, has led to a corresponding increased in immigration from other regions.

It is not a coincidence that the department of Santa Cruz which has recently been calling for regional autonomy was the instigator of this demand for a redistribution of seats, one which will directly increase the congressional power of the department.

What hangs in the balance is equality between departments: the departments which have suffered economically, and because of this have decreased in size, are struggling against political invisibility and the loss of their voice in government.

As it stands, the current crisis in Bolivia could end in the postponement of elections, putting the country in crisis once again. On one hand, President Rodriguez has promised that whether or not there are elections, he will leave his post at the end of his interim term, potentially leaving the country in a power vacuum. On the other hand, social movements, and specifically the sectors supporting the Movement Towards Socialism party of Evo Morales, see in the conflict a move to prevent the possibility that Morales win the elections and become Bolivia’s next president. Morales is currently leading most public opinion polls.

Because of the looming crisis, president Rodriguez has announced that he is considering issuing an executive decree establishing the number of seats in each region, and holding elections based on that configuration- with or without agreement in congress.

Words to Eat

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
-- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM 1943

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
-- George W. Bush, address to the U.S., March 17, 2003

I think that Evo has about as much chance of becoming President of Bolivia after next December’s elections as I have of being Bush’s pick for the US Supreme Court.
--Jim Shultz, July 14, 2005

Yogi Berra once wisely noted that one should never make predictions, "and especially about the future." Last July I wrote the Blog entry above, predicting that there was no real chance that Evo Morales could become the President of Bolivia as a result of the (maybe) national elections scheduled for December 4th. A lot has changed in the past two months and I'd like to take that prediction back.

Today I think there is a very real chance that Evo Morales could win the Presidency in the coming elections and here is what has changed.

One: The consolidation of the Bolivian left.

In elections past, such as in 2002, the Bolivian left has gone into national elections in a pretty fragmented state. MAS and Morales were joined by a host of other serious left candidacies, reform candidacies, and parties that weren't really left but made some populist noises (Manfred Reyes Villa in 2002). The 2002 election was also largely ignored by left social movements. In contrast, Morales and MAS have succeeded in forming a relatively unfired left with broad social movement participation and no real ideological competition. The right and center, on the other hand, are deeply split.

Two: It looks more and more likely that Morales will come in first.

The polls, including dubious ones, all show MAS and Morales either well out front in the popular vote or basically tied with Quiroga. I think the MAS lead will only solidify. Quiroga's candidacy doesn't seem to be catching on. An observation here. There are two kinds of political bases to operate with in Bolivia, regional and class. Medina opted for region when he picked the godfather of Santa Cruz autonomy to be his running mate, which looks to be paying off. Medina looks set to carry Santa Cruz. Morales has a mix of the two. He has a solid regional base in Cochabamba and looks to have won himself another in La Paz/El Alto. Quiroga has no regional base, really. He is banking that a certain class positioning and product-style marketing will build him a base that cuts across regions. Picking a running mate who is a newscaster with no political experience fits the strategy. It doesn't seem to be working.

Three: If Morales comes in first, the social movements will use street pressure to make him President.

If Morales comes in first, even by a few points, the voices from the streets will be loud and clear. "He won the vote now deliver the Presidency." There is no constitutional requirement on this but I think the social movements are well-prepared to send a hard message that Bolivia will become ungovernable if Morales is passed over for whomever finishes second. I am not saying that is the most democratic way to settle an election. I am merely reporting what I think is a likely outcome. Thousands of people chanting and yelling and setting off fireworks outside the Congress doors can have a bit of an impact on the people voting inside. Add to that street pressure the attractiveness, to the Medina forces, of cutting all kinds of coalition deals to turn a weak third place finish into real power in the government, and you can start to see the outlines of a January Morales inaugural.

Again, predictions are wobbly territory in politics, and in Bolivian politics, they are downright iffy. But, aside from the still hovering question of whether there will be elections at all December 4th, this is how the changing dynamics look to me this morning.

Rumors

The Bolivian Congress and President remain locked in negotiations over how to apportion Congressional seats among the country’s regions, an issue that threatens to sidetrack the scheduled December 4 elections. Now the official word is that the government has until the end of the month to settle the matter (end of next week, essentially) before the elections really do get postponed.

Personally, I think that they will work out a last minute deal. The cost of not holding elections is too high. I think the country would basically explode in protest. But, as always, todo es posible and we’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, there are a variety of important rumors floating around Bolivia these days, some of which have come to me from some pretty high-level sources. I present these for what they are at this point, rumors and nothing more. But perhaps some of our readers can shed light on which, if any, can be verified.

Medina Ready to Back Morales in the Congress Vote

A very high level source told me this week that Samuel Doria Medina, the almost certain third place finisher in the December vote, is ready to throw his support behind Evo Morales in the Congressional vote for President, if Morales and MAS come in first place in the popular vote. The latest poll shows the two of them together (Morales and Medina) winning about 45% of the vote. As the undecideds fall into one column or another by lections day, that total could easily pass the 51% needed.

A Morales/Medina alliance could take two forms. Medina and his UN party alliance could just vote to make Morales President and not join the government. This options doesn’t win them any political spoils in terms of jobs and power but it lets Medina and his allies say “it wasn’t us” if the MAS government goes up in political flames down the road. Alternatively, Medina and his backers could join a MAS government. A ver.

The US Government is Telling US Citizens to Get Ready to Leave Bolivia

I have been hearing this one for weeks, from a variety of sources. Supposedly parents at the American school in La Paz have been told to make alternative arrangements for their children at schools in the US. US citizens have supposedly been told to have their travel papers in order, etc. I have yet to hear any of this from any source that has been told this by the US Embassy directly. I have also spoken with US employees here who would surely have been among those told, and they claim they have never heard any such thing. Still, the rumors persist. The question, if it is true, is, as one reader put it here last week: What does the US Embassy know that we don’t?”

A Coup or US Intervention in the Works?

This has also been the subject of a good deal of Internet speculation. What is this US military base in Paraguay? What is he US doing there? What kind of forces does it have at its disposal there? Are plans under way t use the base as some sort of staging area for US intervention, for example, if a MAS government takes office? Another source of mine here claims that the US government has been carefully cultivating relationships with “anti-Evo” forces in the Bolivian military, presumably for some sort of US-backed coup down the road.

Again, I repeat, these are only rumors at this point. Not a single one of them is firmly documented. They may turn out to be totally false. However, surprising revelations usually do surface first as rumors. If anyone out there has real documentation that can shed light on any of these, please post away.

Seven Years

It was seven years ago this weekend that my family and I closed the door for the last time on the dinky green rental house where we lived in San Francisco’s Noe Valley and headed back here to Bolivia. Seven years.

I don’t think that too many people really plan on becoming an “ex-pat”. I think you move away for what you expect to be “just a bit” and you wake up one day a few years later to realize you have a whole life that isn’t in the US anymore.

We were supposed to be here for a year, maybe two. Long enough for our kids to go to middle school here. Long enough for me to write a book, The Democracy Owners’ Manual. We stuck a bunch of things we couldn’t part with in an 11’ by 7’ storage crate to await our return.

Well, our two oldest wrapped up middle school quite a while ago now. The book is long since written and published. The storage crate is probably starting to get a little lonely. We are still here in the Andean foothills and it looks like we’re going to be here a long while more. I mean, we have dogs here. Who sets down shallow roots and then gets dogs?

Bolivia. What is it that makes so many people fall in love with this country? How does it seduce us?

Is it the people? Is it the short trips to the corner store that turn into a long visit talking about everything from politics to the relative merits of the soft round bread versus the harder variety shaped like footballs? Is it the humility, a culture in which the emphasis is about something other than what material we can acquire and how? Is it that being a half hour late for everything is actually okay?

Is it the sky? Is it the mountains that rise above this city where we live, alternately snowcapped or green in summer, dry and brown in winter? Is it the green jungles, the barren altiplano, and the fact that all of these geographies reside a day’s drive from one another?

Is it the culture, the music, the dances, the indigenous imprint that runs through the place? A Bolivian friend of mine, Carlos, once told me. “We really don’t have museums here. We don’t need them. Out culture isn’t dead and on display. It is alive and everywhere.

Is it having my friend the curandero read my coca leaves? Is it living in a place where five year olds take the public bus to school by themselves without a fear that it is risky? Is it the cajones that people demonstrate everyday standing up for their rights?

I worry sometime that Bolivia is an endangered species. Will the culture of McDonalds take over here too and crowd out the small hamburger stands on the street? Will the lure of the material unravel the undercurrent of the spiritual?

Sometimes I worry that I am making things worse myself. I have drawn a lot of attention to Bolivia with my writings over these years. A lot of people have come here following the thread they thought they saw in those writings. Maybe enticing more foreigners here isn’t such a good thing.

Just in case that is true, forget everything I just said above. Bolivia is a rotten place. Don’t come here. Go somewhere with a beach. Bolivia doesn’t have a beach. Try Mexico. Cost Rica maybe.

My wife and I have three Bolivian kids. We don’t have any that aren’t Bolivian. In a couple of generations I imagine some Bolivians wondering, “How did those Bolivians get such a weird name? Shultz? What is that? In the future I will disappear into the fabric of Bolivia, a fine thread of white woven into the bright blues and reds, the rich blacks and browns.

Seven years.

Gracias Bolivia. Le debo mucho.

A Chilling Warning from a Top Bush Administration Official

It isn’t exactly happy reading, but I think it is must reading. Today's New York Times carries an article about a speech yesterday by a former high-level administration official, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001-2005. Wilkerson is deeply critical of the Bush administration, both in terms of its policy and its competence.

He says, among other things:

"If something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

Here's a link to the article.

The Latest on Bolivia's "Maybe" Elections

They were the elections that weren't scheduled to happen, but came to be when a President resigned and two Congressional leaders were forced to leave aside their presidential aspirations. Then they were scheduled, got declared unconstitutional, then constitutional again, but they still might not happen, even though the candidates are campaigning fiercely.

Do we all follow that now? Welcome to the "tal vez" world of the Bolivia's national elections, best as I can tell of course.

Will There be a Vote December 4th?

Well, the elections are still scheduled, technically. They also now have a new blessing of constitutionality from the National Election Tribunal. However, the Congress is still in hot debate over whether and how to reapportion the various seats in Congress between the regions of the country, to conform to the most recent population census. Again, technically, the Congress has until Thursday to come to an agreement. It doesn’t look good right now. If they don't reach agreement I don’t know what happens to Dec. 4th. To be honest, neither does anyone else, really. But this is Bolivia, "todo es possible".

The New Poll

Los Tiempos, the Cochabamba daily, splattered the results of a new poll across its front page the other day, reporting Tuto Quiroga in the lead. That lead, however, is less than a percentage point (Quirgoa 29.2%, Morales 28.3%, Medina 16.5%), well within the margin of error. This is especially the case in Bolivia where realistic polling in the countryside is tricky at best. Any US pollster worth her salt would have called it a tie.

The Los Tiempos coverage was accompanied by a smashing graphic in which a tall, suit-wearing Tuto stands a head above his opponents, arms crossed and looking a bit like Clark Kent without glasses. A boyish looking Evo Morales is wearing a green t-shirt with a coca leaf on it and his arms hidden behind him. My bet is he is holding some of that cash from Cuba and Venezuela, though it is hard to be sure.

Interestingly, according to the poll, Quiroga isn't winning in any of the three big regions of the country. He is getting wiped out by Morales in La Paz (43.2% to 15.6%) and beaten handily by him again in Cochabamba (34.8% to 28.9%). In Santa Cruz he is losing to Samuel Doria Medina (33.3% to 30%). That translates into a lot of Congressional seats Quiroga wouldn’t win and makes his task of winning a Presidency vote in the Congress all the harder.

Tuto's "Only if I'm First" Threat

As I have noted with a series of foreign press this week, if you want to follow these elections you need to think chess. Every move portends a series of political moves ahead. Getting to the real possibilities takes a lot of analysis. Take for example this. Tuto Quiroga, some weeks ago, made a public pledge that he would not accept the Presidency unless he comes in first place in the voting. The standard analysis here is that if Evo finishes first with 30% or so, the task of finding a coalition partner that gets him 21% more is insurmountable. Quiroga and Doria Medina cut a coalition deal and whoever comes in second heads that coalition.

Well, if Morales and MAS finish first and Quiroga second, and if Quiroga keeps that pledge (repeated by his running mate a couple of days ago), legally, the Congress has to elect Evo Morales President. Bolivian law stipulates (a recent reform) that the Congress must select from among the top two vote getters and only the top two vote getters. If Quiroga pulls out that only leaves the fellow wearing a coca leaf on his chest in a Los Tiempos cartoon. It is safe to assume that the US Embassy is not too fond of that particular scenario.

What is Tuto Quiroga thinking? He may be making a play to get Medina voters to come to his side, making him the only viable anti-Evo. He may have decided that becoming President after finishing second to Morales is not a Presidency he wants to have (frankly, not a bad calculation). Here is where chess becomes poker. Is he bluffing in a play to get votes? Is he serious?

Compared to the democratic circus underway here in Bolivia, those "so-called elections" that Arnold Schwarzenegger has called back home in California next month don’t look like anything.

The President Who Killed and the Country that Keeps Him Safe

The last time I saw Bolivia’s deposed President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, he was sitting quietly in the Miami airport waiting to board a flight to Washington DC (he flew first class, I flew coach). While “Goni”, as he is known, looked a little sad and alone, he did have some major advantages over a number of people whose lives he affected as President.

In contrast to Anna Colque, for example, Goni wasn’t dead. Colque was the 24-year-old student nurse assassinated on a rooftop in February 2003, as Goni sent out troops to put down protests against his proposed tax on the poor. Colque’s crime was coming to the aid of a handyman, killed by Goni’s troops on the same roof. Goni also has an advantage over Luis Colque, the dead nurse’s son. Goni was not left motherless at age two by government repression.

The US Harbors an Indicted Criminal

Today marks two years since Goni’s penchant for killing his own people led to his ouster, a move backed by a broad swath of Bolivian society. Today he, and a handful of his closest advisors, live happily in places like Washington and Miami.

Sanchez de Lozada has been formally charged by the Bolivian government with murder and the government has formally petitioned the US for his extradition. That would be the same US government that has demanded over the years that Bolivia extradite “drug criminals” to the US for trial, no murder required.

So far the US response to Bolivia’s political request has been pretty clear. First, the Bush administration has failed to even start the process by notifying Goni that he faces an extradition request. Perhaps the State Department is too busy hunting for Cuban sleeper cells in Bolivia. Second, when the families of the wounded and dead marched on the US Embassy earlier this month to back the extradition request, Bolivian police tear gassed them to their knees.

Message understood?

Can You Spell I-M-P-U-N-I-T-Y?

More than one hundred people were killed, and many, many more seriously injured, during Goni’s brief but bloody return tenure in the Bolivian Presidency (2002-2003). Here’s a link to a recent article about one of those killings.

To be clear, Mr. Sanchez de Lozada did not personally pull the trigger in those massacres. For that matter neither did Osama Bin Laden fly any jets on 9/11 or Saadam Hussein personally carry pout the massacres they he is rightly charged with. To be clear, the crimes that Goni is charged with are also of a far smaller scale. However, the precedent by the US is clear. You do not have to personally pull the trigger to be guilty. You can issue the orders.

Chileans had to wait thirty years and the brave actions of a Spanish judge in order to see even a glimmer of justice for the vast crimes of their dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Bolivians do not want to wait so long.

Sanchez de Lozada has a loyal following of FOGs (friends of Goni) in the US. Last year I publicly took the John Kerry campaign to task for saying that President Bush erred by not taking action to keep Goni in office in 2003 (with what action, US troops?). That eventually prompted a note from the Kerry campaign advisor who wrote the speech, revealing how it was that the Democratic nominee would take such a position. His advisor explained, “Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada is a personal friend of mine, and a person I greatly respect.” Some loyalties, it appears, run deeper than murder.

People from the US ought to care that our government is harboring an international criminal. The US ought to respect the legitimate demands of Bolivia’s government that Goni be sent home to stand trial. Here is a page where you can send a note to the US State Department suggesting that Sanchez de Lozada be sent home.

The Letter Bolivians are Waiting for from the IMF

News Item: The Bolivian research organization, CEDLA, reports that the newly announced reduction in Bolivia's budget deficit (down to 3.5% of GDP) is a direct result of the country's new steeper oil and gas taxes, a product of social movement mobilizations earlier this year. Los Tiempos, October 16, 2005

[Perhaps then, we should expect the issuing of the following any day now.]


Memorandum

TO: Bolivian Social Movement Leaders

FROM: Rodrigo de Rato, IMF Managing Director

RE: Congratulations

--------------------------------------------------------------

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I want to congratulate you on the fine work that you have done in reducing Bolivia's budget deficit. Really, kudos to you all.

As you know, the IMF has been greatly concerned with Bolivia's rising budget deficit in recent years. You may recall that in 2003 we told your government that it had to reduce its deficit by $240 million dollars in order to stay in our good graces. Yes, the medicine was drastic but global economics is serious business (and, well, let's just forget that whole IMF-sparked Asian meltdown thing). Your government told us such a deep cut couldn't be done so quickly, that the result would be social chaos. Okay, 34 people were killed and the army and police had a shooting war with each other on the steps of the national palace. Win some, lose some, no?

But look at what you have done! A budget deficit of 3.5%! Well, that beats my good neighbor around the corner at the White House. I'll mention it to him at the big barbeque next weekend. He doesn't listen to our deficit warnings either, but the guy gives a great barbeque!

Raising taxes on foreign oil companies? Ingenious! Who'd have thought? You know, there are a lot of economists who say you can’t do that kind of thing. Shell, Enron, British Petroleum and those others will just take their marbles and walk away. Lucky for you I guess, your marbles (all 53 trillion cubic feet of them) are stuck in the ground. Actually, I'd like to apologize. Maybe we should have thought of suggesting raising taxes on the oil companies back in 2003. Taxing Bolivians just made so much more sense to us.

Anyway, just because you were right this time, don’t go all silly on us and demand that Bolivia actually control the gas and oil. You got lucky on the idea of boosting taxes, okay. But, please, from here on out leave the driving to us.

Blog from Solitude

Dear Readers,

I am back from the Bolivian countryside. Thank you for the many comments in my absence. Perhaps you would like me to leave more often. I thought of you while I was gone. I wrote you the following. Enjoy it or hate it, your choice.

One quick response to a question raised in the comments section while I was away. Yes, I have taken an economics class. Thank you for asking.

Jim

---------------------------------------------------

Greetings from the middle of the Bolivian nowhere.

I sit in a tiny Quechua Indian village tucked away in a hidden valley three hours from Cochabamba. I've been coming here since 1991, for many and varied reasons. The first time that I came here I helped our friend Sister Lourdes cart a box of hot, pissed off bees from the city. She liked to make honey. Too bad the net around the hive tore when we were carrying it across the river.

That same year I backpacked four hours to come here with my wife to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. We hitchhiked out atop a truckload of granite from a quarry a few villages away. Two gringos sitting on top of a truckload of big rocks. No, that didn't attract any attention at all. Then we all came here in 1995 when we adopted our son and wanted a sane place to try out being a new family. And so on and so on…

This week I have come all by myself to this gathering of adobe houses, sheep, goats, humble farmers, and gentle weavers. By myself but with my wonderful dog Simone. I'll be here for five days, a retreat to see if I really can write this novel that has been filling my mind and a half dozen file folders for a decade. Here's a little day by day account of what it is like to be out here alone for five days. If somewhere in the middle of it I go slightly mad, please be so kind to excuse me.

Day One

An Australian friend of mine told me yesterday that she could never spend five days by herself, that she would drive herself crazy. Hey, I can drive myself crazy at home. Usually it is over such important questions as, which of the two pairs of sneakers that I own I should wear that day (I only wear sneakers). At least here I won't drive anyone else crazy, like over the fact that I am reliably late for everything I ever do. I have tried to explain to people that I have my own time zone but no one buys it.

Simone and I spent most of the day getting here, driven here by a man with a rickety Nissan for hire and no apparent fear of driving along washed out gravel roads on the ridges of cliffs. At dusk Simone and I found a break in a thundershower and took a long walk through the village (annoying all goats along the way) and to a spot where you can see the whole panorama of this spectacular Andean valley.

I tried rewriting the opening of my novel for an hour or so, with little satisfaction. Maybe I'll post it here at week's end so the people who dislike my political views can also dislike my feeble attempts at fiction as well. We have so few opportunities in life to bring people genuine satisfaction, seems like I owe it to them, no?

Day Two

I am taking a break from the painful task of pruning and editing the weed patch that is my attempted novel. Sitting outside of the tiny 11'x7' room that is my temporary home here, I can see across the dry river to the hillside across the way. A woman who looks like a white and pink dot in the distance is sitting weaving at an old, primitive loom propped up against the front of her brown adobe house with its thatched roof. She is my nearest neighbor here. I can see the family's small supply of clothing stretched out across what looks like a pile of sticks, left to dry in the sun. A half dozen chickens are running around the laundry pile. I don't think that any of the clothes actually belong to the chickens. I haven't been out here that long.

Day Three

The only clock here in the countryside is the one that rises in the east and sinks in the west. People here know its rhythms and order their life accordingly. For the second day I was witness to the morning rush hour here. An old woman with a dingy white felt hat and a wide brown skirt was menacing her goats with a tree branch as they strolled past my door. She was trying to persuade them off to some pasture where they could spend the day eating.

I think a lot of people would like to do that, spend the day eating.

Simone and I also ran into a large black and white cow on one of our walks, attended by a small girl walking behind it. The dog and I both agreed that large cows have right-a-way.

We've taken to ending each day here with a long walk at sunset up to one peak or another. Today we got a late start and by the time we reached our destination dusk was making the rocky trails hard to see, with at least another forty minutes ahead of us for the walk back. Concerned farmers and short women carrying drop spindles seemed to pop out of nowhere on the path back, warning us (my dog and I) that it was too late to walk. We had offended, it seemed, their sense of timing with the sun. Thanks to an early, bright moon, we survived.

Don't ask about the novel. Simply put (and I believe this is a literary term), it sucks. And chewing coca leaves while writing, I might add, while perhaps making one slightly more alert, does not make the quality of the writing any better.

Day Four

I had a visit this afternoon from my friend Lucio. He lives here in this village with his wife Fresca. Fresca is one of the community’s best weavers. They have three children. On some Christmases they come to our house for dinner. Lucio told me a story that says a lot about what is going on in Bolivia right now.

Lucio's oldest daughter, Marina, is twelve. She doesn't live here any more. The local school stops at the fifth grade. To go on any farther she had to move three hours away to the city to live with an uncle. Her father visits her every two weeks or so. She comes home during the long breaks for Christmas and summer. That's it. She is twelve and that is the contact she has now with her parents and her two younger siblings. This year her brother is finishing fifth grade. Next year he'll be in the same boat.

So the family is thinking of leaving for the city, thinking of leaving the land that their families have tilled and lived on for generations. What else can they do to keep their family together? Five families have already left this tiny community this year for the same reason. In ten years who will still live here? Anyone? All for the lack of some classrooms and a steady commitment by the government to send teachers here.

Welcome to Bolivia. This is why the cities are expanding. Life in the rural parts of the country is slowly becoming economically unsustainable.

The cities aren't doing much better. There, families are looking for ways to send their more ambitious children abroad. Spain is the favored destination now. Easy to get in with a tourist visa. You speak the language. Less hostile in general than the USA and more economic opportunity than Argentina. Barcelona is becoming a Bolivian colony I hear. Sounds fair to me, from a historical point of view.

Families leave the countryside for the city, for lack of schools and work. Bolivians leave the cities to seek their fortunes abroad. Families get left in the dust. Economics at work. If Bolivia loses its rural life, as it may well in the next generation if nothing is done, it won’t just be Bolivia that will be the loser, it will be all of us. Maybe we need an Endangered Species act for Ways of Life.

In other local news, the event of my getting lost last night seems to be the lead story here. At least, I am told, it was at a community meeting this morning. "Some gringo with a black dog was wandering around last night in the dark," it was reported. I apparently was forgiven when people figured out it was the same gringo who brought Christmas presents for the children last year. Good thing we did that.

Tonight Simone is insisting that we leave earlier and take a clearer trail. Sometimes dogs know best.

Day Five

My blue canvass bag is packed. In an hour or so I leave. As soon as my ride comes. The iffy Nissan. I will miss being in this place, a lot. But I also know that it is time to go home. This morning I heard one of the local goats having her say and I thought it was a cell phone ringing. Yup, time to go back to the city.

For those of you concerned about such matters, Simone had a lovely time. She got in many fine naps and a half dozen solid hikes. These, besides food, are her two favorite things.

Oh right, the novel. Well I have about seventy pages down. Some if it is awful. Some of it might actually be good. This, of course, is what editing is for. Below is a snippet from the start. All comments welcome.

I promise to be relatively back to normal here next week and writing things of a more sane, albeit, perhaps more boring nature.

---------------------------------------------

BORDER CROSSINGS

Thomas McDermott was the only passenger still awake. Thomas McDermott and a tiny nun with dark hair ten rows back who was knitting away calmly at something unidentifiable under the faint beam of an overhead light. Sitting alone near the front, under an overhead light of his own, Thomas was writing carefully in a small journal bound in black cloth. The darkened cabin flickered in shades of pale blue from a movie that no one was watching. It was a film that Thomas had just seen a few weeks earlier, a Hollywood epic about a union soldier after the civil war who “went native” and joined an Indian tribe.

All around him the others were asleep, wrapped up tight in red polyester airline blankets, their heads at odd angles. Children collapsed against parents, wives against husbands, lovers against lovers. In the first class cabin just a few rows ahead a mountainous man with wisps of black hair strung sideways across his bald head was snoring so loud that he seemed to be competing with the jet engines. His roaring, combined with the red blanket wrapped around his huge frame, gave him the appearance of a small volcano.

As he leaned over to write, Thomas ran his left hand through the youthful mop of red hair that kept falling in front of his eyes. He had no desire to join any of them in sleeping. He had too much on his mind to sleep. And Thomas, of all people, was not going to snooze his way through what was going to happen, he calculated, in just about an hour.

Since he was small he had always had a fixation with the imaginary lines on the earth that one finds only on maps and globes. When he was eight his mother drove Thomas and his older sister Julie six hours through the California and Nevada deserts to visit Hoover Dam. Its massive curved concrete face had won it the distinction of being one of the great "man-made wonders of the world". As much as Thomas enjoyed rolling marbles down the steep slope and watching them disappear into the Colorado River below (his mother’s idea) what he loved far more was standing atop the great dam’s center with one foot planted in Nevada and the other in Arizona. After a half an hour of straddling across two states his sister and mother finally had to pull him back to the car.

That was before. Before he blew his life as he knew it to smithereens with a three-minute phone conversation.

Tonight Thomas was going to make his first crossing of another imaginary line on the map, the one that divided the planet into north and south, a line that would separate Thomas from everywhere he had lived and everyone he had known. On the other side all he had was a name and a phone number.

Bolivia and The Borg

Here is a confession. Back when I still lived in the US I used to really like watching Star Trek. Not the lesser quality sequel-upon-sequel versions, or even the original with Spock and Kirk (How many times can you watch those over and over anyway?). No, I liked Star Trek: The Next Generation, with the bald and wise Captain Picard. It helped perhaps that the show aired each Wednesday as I returned home from the mind-numbing experience of teaching a three-hour university course on policy analysis.

The show that helped clear my head of the lighter aspects of tax and welfare reform also offered up a rich metaphor: "The Borg".

You Will be Absorbed, Resistance is Futile

For those unacquainted, the Borg were a race of half human/half machines that were connected together with a common central nervous system that allowed them to act as one – not in the "community" sense, but more in the massive inhuman robotic sense. The Borg also had the practice of expanding their numbers through an unpleasant exercise in which they would basically drill into someone's brain, take their identify away and wire them up. Needless to say the crew of the Enterprise were none too keen on joining, which always prompted the following warning from the machine-like Borg:

Resistance is futile.

Right, now how does all this relate to Bolivia and the rest of the real world for that matter? As promised, a metaphor.

I have been pondering recently the similarities between the Borg and the forces of global market economics. Global market fundamentalism does indeed promise to bring us more and more together – in the Borg sense. One world. One market. One culture (materialism). One view of how we relate to nature (privatize and exploit it). One way to live. Absorption requires no cerebral drilling. It is accomplished by a series of tools: the power of markets to forces us to act in certain ways in order to chase economic survival, the conditionalities of global economic institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and the promise that unfettered markets are the pathway to economic prosperity.

And translated into other words, the message is the same: Resistance is futile.

Any people or nation that does not choose to play by the new economic rules is destined to miserable poverty.

All this is why, I think, Bolivia has captured so much public attention around the world. Since the Cochabamba Water Revolt in 2000, the poor of this country have embarked upon their own bold five-year mission to where no one has gone before. They have resisted and they have won. I guess Star Trek never made it to the Andean television screen.

Two major cities, Cochabamba and El Alto, have taken back their public water systems from mighty foreign corporations. Bolivians stopped an IMF economic belt-tightening package in its tracks. And twice Bolivians have taken to the streets to resist the selling-off of their oil and gas reserves to foreign corporations.

In Bolivia, resistance has actually proven not futile at all.

But Actually Governing, That is Really Hard

One of the more interesting analyses that I have heard about Bolivian politics this year was a talk by Alvaro Garcia Linera, Evo Morales' running mate, when he was still discussing such a move with Bolivian social movement leaders. Alvaro noted that Bolivian social movements had indeed accomplished a great deal, but that simple resistance had also hit the limit of what it could accomplish. Not attainable through resistance, he argued, were the two big goals that top the social movements' agenda: recovering public control of the nation's gas and oil reserves and convening a citizen assembly to rewrite the Bolivian constitution.

"To accomplish these," he observed, "you need to win control of the government and there is only two ways to do that, buy guns or win elections." Linera and a good chunk of Bolivia's social movements have opted for the second. As they now embark on this new mission, contesting a national election and seeking to govern, they might take heed of a lesson I can almost hear coming out of Captain Picard's own mouth:

Resistance is not futile, but governing effectively is a really, really tough job.

Let us look, for example, at the venerable tale of SEMAPA, the public water company re-established in Cochabamba after Bechtel's ousting. It is not a pretty tale. While the company has kept rates down and has made some notable progress in expanding water service to poor neighborhoods, its management has left a good deal to be desired. The union of company workers, in particular, has succeeded in padding the payrolls with more workers than needed and has engaged in acts of petty corruption for years. This week citizens from the poor neighborhoods of the city marched on the water company's facilities and demanded reform.

The lesson? Resistance succeeded in kicking out Bechtel and its search for exorbitant profits on the backs of the poor, which was a good thing. Resistance did not assure or build an efficient public company, a task still to be accomplished. Before some readers seize on this analysis to start cheerleading for privatization, I suggest waiting until we release our forthcoming study comparing Cochabamba's performance with the private water company in El Alto/La Paz. That tale there is pretty ugly too, but in different ways.

So there you have it. The message these five years from Bolivia has been clear.

We will not be absorbed. We will not let our country be remade in an image sent from the north. We will not accept the bogus tale that only unfettered markets can make our dreams come true.

But building an alternative, that is proving to be a lot trickier than a lot of social movement leaders thought. If the left comes to govern the nation, either after the next election or one after, the challenge is going to get even harder.

A task worthy of a whole fleet of Star Ships.

-----------------------------------

A note to regular readers of the Blog: I will be away all next week, escaping along with my trusty dog Simone to a remote Quechua village. It is a break to work on a novel that won’t seem to leave me alone. I'll be back with Bolivia news and more in a week.

Anti-American

I got a note from a reader the other day asking me if I hadn’t become somewhat “anti-American” in some of my writings. It is a reasonable question to ask in these times. If we criticize the actions of the US government, does that make us anti-United States? Here are some thoughts on that.

I have never forgotten the words that a minister friend of mine spoke from his Methodist pulpit some years ago. “We need to not forget that we live in a nation founded on the enslavement of one race of people and the genocide of another.” Harsh words to be sure, but also factually accurate.

This is the USA, a nation in which our declarations about who we are have so often been at long odds with the realities of our actions. At its birth the nation’s founders declared us to be a land dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal,” while many of them were still busy selling human beings like commodities off a store shelf. Today our national hypocrisy is embedded in a war based on one lie after another, proving sadly that it takes us roughly three decades to forget that costly lesson.

To be clear however, I do love my home country. I love and miss the wildness of its character. I miss out-there gay people. I miss that glorious mix of immigrants from everywhere. I miss the wonder of little league games. I miss and love the beauty of the land, the glory of how sunrise looks over the San Francisco Bay. I cherish the folk music of the 1930s and those who keep it alive. I miss unabashed rock and roll and people who dance with their whole bodies and not just their hips. And especially, I respect and hold in high esteem those who fight for social justice in my home country, even when it has become so sadly out of fashion to do so.

But when it comes to what this nation, the USA, does in its actions abroad, the gap between our stated values and the actions we take could hardly be wider. From this vantage point of Bolivia we have reported on this many times.

We have reported the story of a Bolivian mother and her baby jailed for nearly two years in the name of helping the US look like it was winning a war on drugs. We have written about how a US corporation, Bechtel, took over Cochabamba’s water and priced it out of reach of the poor, in the name of beefing up profits for one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. We have written about how a US-controlled institution, the IMF, knowingly coerced Bolivia into an economic squeeze that provoked a bloody public rebellion.

Just as it is a fact that the US “was founded on the enslavement of one race of people and the genocide of another”, so it is true that in many parts of the world, including this one, “American’ has become a synonym for arrogance. Unfortunately, that is not an attitude based on misinformation.

There is, of course, the view reflected on that old bumper strip, “America, Love it or Leave It.” We hear that same mentality expressed today. Here is another view. When we raise our children we do not measure our love by what we let them get away with. We measure it by the ways in which we support them and push them to reach a higher standard. Why should we measure love of country differently than that?

As I see it, the people who love “America” best are not those who see immorality in the commitment of two gays who love one another and see morality in warfare based on a lie. All that, to me, is what is resolutely “anti-American”. I believe that the people who love America most are those who seek to hold it to the standards which we set for ourselves at the start: truth, justice, liberty, freedom, equality.

The day that holding the US to these values becomes “anti-American” is the day when the dream of America will formally be buried.

Under Threat in Honduras

Readers:

A very close colleague of ours, Michael Pertschuk, is doing all he can to draw public attention to the serious threats being launched against an important human rights campaigner in Honduras, Dr Juan Almendares Bonilla, executive director of the Centre for the Prevention, Rehabilitation and Treatment of Victims of Torture.

As we know, human rights work in Latin America can be a dangerous enterprise and we owe it to keep watch and offer support to one another. Below is an abbreviated version of the official call for support from Amnesty International. I hope that you will consider formally expressing your concern to Honduran authorities by senbding a fax using the contact information given below.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

---------------------------------------------------------

From Amnesty International
September 26, 2005

Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of Dr Juan Almendares Bonilla who is being threatened and harassed as a result of his work as a human rights defender.

On 12 September, Dr Juan Almendares Bonilla was intercepted by two men on a motorcycle when he got out of his car near the entrance of a clinic where he provides free medical care. The men are described as well built, and aged between 30 and 35 years. They also had a military style hair cut. One of the men put a 9mm gun to Dr Almendares left temple and demanded his mobile phone before they both rode off.

Although this could be seen as an ordinary criminal offence the circumstances in which it took place would indicate that it was a premeditated and targeted event. The fact that the men did not steal other objects of value, such as Dr Almendares Bonilla's wallet, would indicate that they stole the phone with the purpose of obtaining information about his contacts and the people he works with.

During the night of 18 September, unknown individuals (men and women) made phone calls to Dr Almendares Bonilla's home and his relatives’ homes. They asked about his whereabouts in threatening tones and similar calls have been made several times a week for the last three months.

On 19 September, the office administrator at the CPTRT office in the capital Tegucigalpa arrived at work to find that the front door frame had been forced and nearly broken during an attempted burglary. This followed an earlier break-in in October 2004.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Spanish or your own language, expressing concern at the attack, threats and harassment of Dr Juan Almendares Bonilla and calling on the authorities to take immediate steps to guarantee the safety of the CPTRT's staff members.

APPEALS TO:

President of the Honduras Republic
Lic. Ricardo Maduro
Presidente de la República de Honduras
Casa Presidencial
Boulevard Juan Pablo Segundo
Palacio José Cecilio del Valle
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Fax:+504 221 4570
Salutation: Dear President/ Señor Presidente

Minister of Security
Dr. Oscar Alvarez
Ministro de Seguridad
Ministerio de Seguridad Pública
Edificio Poujol, 4o piso
Col. Palmira (Blvd. Morazán)
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Fax: +504 220 4479
Salutation: Dear Minister/ Estimado Señor Ministro

COPIES TO:

Centre for the Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (CPTRT)
Col. La Reforma, Calle Principal, Casa No. 109, Tegucigalpa, M.D.C:
A.P. 5377
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Fax: +504 238 4027 (if someone answers ask for the fax “me da tono de fax por favor”)

And to diplomatic representatives of Honduras accredited to your country.

Déjà vu – Another President Threatens to Resign

Bolivia's caretaker President, Eduardo Rodriguez, spoke to the nation on television Saturday night and threatened to resign if the Congress did not move swiftly to resolve the current uncertainty on if and when national elections will be held. It felt like last March all over again.

Then it was President Carlos Mesa who launched the threat, frustrated by the combination of a Congress, a business sector, an IMF, and a set of social movements who left him little room to govern. He warned the Congress that if it did not act as he requested on the gas issue he would take a walk. Eventually, in June, he did walk (more, I think because of wanting out than anything else). That put Bolivia into its current would-be unscheduled election season.

Now Rodriguez is playing the "act, or I am outta here" game. His frustration is understandable. By law he is obligated to serve up to 180 days as President and has made it clear from the start that his only interest is in holding democracy together until a new elected government can take office. Back and forth constitutional challenges have put that election in doubt now. A Rodriguez resignation before elections are held really does put Bolivia into the great unknown. Who takes over and how? The MNR President of the Senate? The army? No one? It is hard to believe that Rodriguez would play such a dark card if he didn't think that Congress needed a serious shove in order to resolve the crisis.

All this is a prelude to Tuesday, when the Bolivian Congress will meet and seek to debate and vote on a solution to the constitutional crisis. From the people I have talked to in Bolivian politics, I sense that there is a little wiggle room, i.e. the election could be delayed a few weeks to allow for implementation of some solution on redistribution of Congress seats. But anything less certain than that will be met with street demonstrations that will make May and June look sweet by comparison.

Bolivia Article in The Economist

A colleague of mine just sent me this new article from The Economist on the unfolding political situation here. I think that it is a very solid analysis worth reading.

That said, I would note two things for readers. First, writing that Evo Morales is in first place in the polls should also include a note (as we have on this Blog) that he would still need to build an almost impossible political coalition of 51% in order to actually take office. Second, I have not picked up any of the middle class movement toward MAS described in the article, by which people negative on Evo are “starting to think it would be less bad to have Mr. Morales in government than in the streets.”

In perspective these are minor points and, again, I think the article is solid.


THE ECONOMIST

Bolivia: September 29, 2005

LEGAL FUEL ON A POLITICAL FIRE

IN JUNE, for the second time in 20 months in Bolivia, the president was toppled by weeks of protests. Calm returned only when an early election for president and Congress was fixed for December 4th. Now the Constitutional Court has put that date in doubt, in a ruling that bears on a widening regional split. Unless the politicians move fast, more
turmoil could ensue.

Under the constitution, the 130 seats in the lower house of Congress are supposed to be redistributed after each national census. The latest census, in 2001, would take six seats from La Paz, the capital, and the impoverished Altiplano, and give four to Santa Cruz, an eastern boomtown. Western Bolivia is already sore at Santa Cruz's demands for autonomy. To avoid further rows, Congress decreed that the December poll would use the 1992 census. The court, rightly, struck this down as unconstitutional.

Many hope that the election produces a government with a clear mandate, breaking the deadlock between the political establishment and various radical movements who claim to speak for indigenous Bolivians. It could go the way of the radicals. A poll by Apoyo, a Peruvian firm, puts Evo Morales, a left-wing coca-workers' leader who backed the protests, in front with 28%.

Some among the middle-class are starting to think it would be less bad to have Mr Morales in government than in the streets. That is partly because Mr Morales is sounding more moderate, if not always convincingly. He wants to legalise coca, but says his government would have "zero tolerance" for cocaine traffickers. His campaign has played down previous talk of nationalising the gas industry. Meanwhile, the traditional parties have failed to unite behind a single candidate: the Apoyo poll gave 22% to Jorge Quiroga, a conservative ex-president, and 19% to Samuel Doria Medina, a cement magnate and former minister.

Eduardo Rodriguez, Bolivia's caretaker president, insists that the election will take place on schedule. His aides are talking to Congress on amending the electoral law. The electoral authority has said a decision must be made by October 8th. If Congress amends the law, it risks inflaming regional tension. But if the election is delayed, the radicals may take to the streets. Either way, Bolivia's interlude of calm may soon be over.