The Bolivian presidential elections to be held Sunday seems to be bereft of any surprises as to who will win the presidency. All pre-election surveys indicate that Evo Morales will not have any difficulties in winning reelection at the polls on December 6th eclipsing his seven contenders in the first-round and avoiding the need of a runoff election.
It seems a foregone conclusion that the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the party that catapulted the Aymara cocalero leader to the Palacio Quemado, will once again be close to matching its impressive showing in the 2005 election when it garnered 55 percent total of the direct vote for the Presidency, for all public opinion surveys are currently pointing in that direction.
What is still up for grabs is the composition of the Senate—not who will win it, Morales and his associates are expected to control Congress but rather whether or not he will get the coveted two-thirds majority—and with it, the ability to push through significant reforms that stalled under fierce regional opposition that effectively blocked many presidential initiatives during his first term in office.
Morales, the first indigenous head of state ever elected in this landlocked Andean nation in nearly five centuries since the Spanish Conquest, first came into power by clamoring for two extremely popular demands in this country where 60 percent of its population of 9 million inhabitants live under the poverty level: better gas wealth distribution and land reform.
While his Administration failed during his first term to make significant inroads in reducing poverty or expanding land ownership Morales was able to fuel a constant dose of political theatrics, much like his mentor, Hugo Chávez Frías has done in Venezuela, by scheduling three successive referendums that shifted popular debate from day-to-day pocketbook issues to major institutional initiatives: a vote on regional autonomy in July of 2006; a presidential recall election in August of 2008; and ratification of a new Constitution in January of 2009.
The weathered victor in all three special elections, Morales’ mix of populist economic rhetoric and passionate defense of the civil rights of disenfranchised native citizens in a land where the majority of the population is of indigenous origins—30% are Quechua, 30% are mestizo, 25% are Aymara and 15% are white—have served him well in keeping at bay all seven other contenders in the presidential race.
None of the opposition candidates have been able to articulate any credible or viable challenge to the Morales juggernaut. The primary reason for such an opposition debacle is due to the fact that, for the most part, they represent single-interest options.
The primary opposition candidate, Manfred Reyes Villa, a former mayor and Governor of Cochabamba who ran for President in 2002 and 2005, is currently running a far second under the conservative Convergencia Nacional (CN)—National Convergence—banner in all pre-election polling, garnering close to 20 percent of the vote. Reyes Villa has been a champion of more regional autonomy and a vocal opponent of the new Constitution voted earlier this year, Reyes Villa lost both these skirmishes with Morales and is only hoping to play the role of the spoiler in denying the President a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
Morales, in the closing days of the campaign has npromised to overhaul the judicial system in order to fight corruption, a charge he has leveled against all of his regional opponents, including Reyes Villa, whom he signaled out as targeted for arrest after the election on charges of misuse of funds as state Governor of Cochabamba.
The third-place candidate, Samuel Doria Medina, of the center-left Alianza por el Consenso y la Unidad Nacional (ACUN)—Alliance for Consensus and National Unity—is running further behind Reyes Villa. Doria Medina, a Harvard and London School of Economics graduate and a multimillionaire whose fortune has roots to the cement empire that his father created, the Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento (SOBOCE) and who runs the Burger King franchises in the Andean country, is expected to garner close to 10% percent of the total vote.
Morales’ grip on power, regardless of the outcome of the Senate contests, seems to be secure for the foreseeable future. The broad coalition that he and his associates have been able to patch up by attracting the indigenous, the poor and the disenfranchised electorate, which in Bolivia add up to an insurmountable majority of the population, is devoid of any considerable counterbalancing political movement. Therefore, unless those in opposition to Morales and his gradual but certain shift towards a statist, collectivist economic model can come up with a credible political alternative, Bolivia will inexorably continue on the path towards a socialist state dominated by a single-party political machine.
Other reforms in addition to the judicial overhaul that are expected to surface in a new Morales administration are slated to place additional demands on foreign investments which many analysts claim will significantly curb growth and scare off investors in the natural-gas—Bolivia has the second-largest reserves after Venezuela—and mining sectors, the two main catalysts of the country´s economy.
In foreign affairs, Morales who is closely aligned with the fierce nationalistic, anti-imperialist positions exposed by Chávez will, in all probability, continue to tow the chavista line and look towards the Venezuelan leader and his octogenarian mentor—Cuban dictator Fidel Castro—for continued direction and support. A corollary of this development will be the augmentation, under the guise of trade diversification, of closer ties with China, Russia and Iran—a development that will certainly be of interest, if not concern to the United States and the European Union.
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