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CIAO DATE: 04/03
Bolivia Alert: A Primer on Bolivia’s Elections
Paul Crespo *
Hemisphere Focus: 2001-2002
June 26, 2002
Overview
On June 30 Bolivians go to the polls to elect a new president from among a field of candidates that includes two former presidents, a socialist economist, a business executive, and several radical populist, agrarian, and indigenous leaders. The winner will have to deal with an increasingly polarized society, a fractured and poisonous political environment, a stagnant economy, corruption, poverty, and increasing social unrest.
This election offers Bolivians a stark choice between dramatically opposing visions of the nation’s future, pitting those wanting to maintain present free market-oriented policies against those who would scrap them and return to a statist model. This is particularly significant now because Bolivia’s future may hinge on how it develops and exports its huge, mostly untapped, natural gas reserves. Meanwhile a growing populist movement that advocates radical political change is also challenging supporters of the established democratic order.
In an April 2 editorial the Bolivian news daily Los Tiempos observed that, due to the country’s crisis conditions, “It will be one of the most intense and hard-fought election campaigns” in recent history. How Bolivia deals with issues such as coca eradication, privatization, and political reform is also important for the United States. The election stakes are high for this incredibly poor, land-locked country of eight million with a long history of political instability and democracy that is less than 20 years old.
Not among the presidential contenders in this race is the current caretaker president, Jorge “tuto” Quiroga, who as vice president last August replaced the ailing former president (and earlier dictator) Hugo Banzer, who died in early May this year. Quiroga, of the center-right National Democratic Action party (ADN), is completing the final year of Banzer’s five-year term. The Bolivian constitution prevents the U.S.-educated engineer from running until the next elections in 2007-something his productive year in office indicates he intends to do.
This past year Quiroga aggressively attempted to address a host of social, political, and economic problems facing Bolivia. Throughout Banzer’s presidency, continuous strikes, violent confrontations between the military and coca farmers, and allegations of high-level corruption produced serious social turmoil and continued to erode public trust in the political system. More recently, a scandal surrounding the impartiality of the Electoral College damaged public confidence even further.
To deal with these issues, Quiroga declared war on corruption and nepotism and negotiated with angry highland Indians (led by another presidential aspirant, Felipe Quispe) to reduce tensions with coca growers. He focused on improving the economy by developing the gas industry and negotiating new loans and credits from multilateral lenders for the agricultural sector. He also dispatched fresh military troops to confront other disaffected coca growers, or “cocaleros,” in the Chapare region.
Without follow-up from his successor, however, many of these efforts may stall, social tensions will escalate, and the investment Bolivia needs to bring its gas reserves to market will not materialize.
US-Bolivia Relations
Bolivia’s relations with the United States center primarily on the drug trade and the U.S.-promoted coca eradication and substitution program-generally regarded as a role model effort. According to some analysts, the Quiroga government prematurely claimed victory in the war against coca farming in early April. Although the anti-coca side made dramatic strides since 1997, some reports indicate that coca cultivation is again on the rise and Peruvian and Colombian drug traffickers may also be moving some of their narcotics operations into Bolivia.
Any future government may be hesitant to continue aggressively pursuing a coca eradication program, however, because although successful, it is increasingly causing violent clashes with large segments of the rural population. Some fear drug traffickers may capitalize on these clashes by arming the cocaleros, which could escalate the crisis further.
Additionally, the loss of this illegal revenue has caused serious damage to the Bolivian economy. Setbacks with this program could affect relations with the United States and may cause increased strains in coming months if President George W. Bush’s administration also fails to persuade Congress to quickly renew the Andean Trade preferences Act with its trading privileges that Bolivia and other Andean countries lost in December.
Into this context steps an alphabet soup of parties and a gaggle of presidential contenders. Current polls put AND party candidate Ronald MacLean’s support at less than 10 percent. Surprisingly, the New Republican Force (NFR), which presidential candidate, former AND member, and military officer, Manfred Reyes-Villa, founded in 1995 has recently surged to the forefront in the polls.
Considered a regional party up to this year, NFR has made important alliances, broadening its appeal. According to one poll, Reyes-Villa is the current front-runner with support from 35 percent of likely voters-an amazing number considering that all elections since 1982 have been won by candidates with less than 25 percent of the vote.
Reyes-Villa advocates a democratically chosen constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution and “strategic” state involvement in the economy.
Former president Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada of the centrist National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) party, previously tied in polls with Reyes Villa, has stayed stagnant with support of about 18 percent. Sanchez de Lozada, who speaks Spanish with a U.S. accent (because he was raised in the United States), plans to restart market reforms stalled under the current government, which followed his own administration in 1997.
De Lozada won worldwide fame when he introduced these reforms and an innovative privatization model known as “capitalization” that sold 50 percent of certain state enterprises to private bidders who paid the company rather than the government. The government would distribute its shares into pension accounts for all adult Bolivian citizens-an effective way, some say, to reduce government corruption in the privatization process while increasing capital ownership among common citizens. He is opposed to a constituent assembly or modifying the constitution through non-established means.
Another former president, Jaime Paz Zamora, of the center-left Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) party, has slipped in recent polls, but has come in third in some polls with 17 percent. MIR nevertheless has a strong nationwide organization that will help his campaign. A former Marxist, Paz Zamora was more pragmatic than ideological while president but the business class and investors still view him suspiciously. Paz also recently endorsed the idea of a constituent assembly.
Due to Bolivia’s presidential electoral rules, the candidate winning the most votes does not necessarily win the election. If a candidate does not gain at least 50 percent of the votes (a serious possibility considering the country’s political fragmentation) the incoming Congress will choose the president from the two highest vote getters. In this case, the presidency will depend on coalitions formed in the congress, as has regularly been the case in recent years. This year the “wild card” represented by the growing populist, independent political movements participating in this race will further complicate the form these coalitions may take.
As with recent elections throughout the region, independent movements and politicians are increasingly challenging the traditional parties. Indian leader Felipe Quispe (a.k.a. “the Condor”) rails against “U.S. imperialism” and advocates a social revolution against the white/mestizo order. At one point polls showed Alberto Costa Obregon, a populist, corruption-fighting judge, and independent leader of the ill-defined radical “Liberty and Justice” movement, ahead of all traditional party candidates, though recently his support has dipped below 10 percent. He is the leading “asistemico” (advocate of radical change in the Bolivian political system) and leads the effort to rewrite the country’s constitution through a constituent assembly.
Bolivia’s presidential election will be close and marked by conflict with voters facing a stark choice between free market reforms within an established democratic framework, and radical, Chavez-style populism that could lead to socialism and authoritarianism. Unfortunately, electoral disgust with the current system and an apparent groundswell of support for radical solutions and even for a messianic savior to help Bolivia is significant. Fortunately, the efforts of Quiroga have strengthened democracy in recent months. Even though Bolivians may rise to the challenge and vote to consolidate democracy and further free market reforms while avoiding revolutionary change and demagogues, they now seem more likely to follow the recent populist political paths of their Venezuelan and Peruvian neighbors.
Endnotes
Note *: Paul Crespo is managing director of Washington Partners, LLC, a consulting firm in Washington, DC. A published writer on Latin America, terrorism, and strategic issues he has varied background in political?military affairs, intelligence, international business, and diplomacy. A former Marine Corps officer, he served in the Far East and Europe. Assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he was a Defense and naval attaché (military diplomat) at U.S. embassies in the Balkans (Croatia and Bosnia), Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and Latin America (Venezuela). Most recently Mr. Crespo worked as a senior international risk and corporate security (antiterrorism) consultant and kidnap negotiator with the Ackerman Group in Miami, focusing on Latin America (primarily Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia).
He previously completed a stint as an investment advisor/broker with Lehman Brothers in New York City-also focusing on Latin America-and was executive director of the U.S.?Cuba Business Council in Washington, D.C. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, he has a masters degrees in war studies from the University of London and a masters degree in International Relations from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Mr. Crespo is a also member of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA) in Washington, DC. Back.
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