Bolivia elections could return it to Venezuela-Cuba-Iran bloc. That would be a tragedy | Opinion
It’s drawing little attention, unfortunately, but there’s a political tragedy unfolding in Latin America that should be ringing alarm bells everywhere.
Bolivia’s Oct. 18 presidential elections might result in former President Evo Morales’ populist leftist Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party’s return to power. Morales and his party have a history of electoral fraud, political repression, intimidating opposition parties, corruption and close ties with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and the world’s other worst dictatorships.
If MAS wins the elections, it will most likely not be thanks to the support of most Bolivians, but because of a divided field of about a half dozen anti-Morales candidates. Their selfishness and short-sightedness are dividing the anti-Morales vote, and could be paving the way for his party to regain power.
Among the main culprits is right-of-center interim President Jeanine Añez, who took office last year with the mandate to organize free elections. Shortly thereafter, she betrayed her promise not to run for office herself. In the best tradition of Morales, she is now abusing her presidential powers in her quest to stay in office.
Most polls show that the MAS will not win the first-round vote and would be forced to run a runoff with the second-place candidate. In that case, many believe that an anti-populist and pro-free-market candidate would win. This is why Bolivia’s elections have not caused much alarm in the democratic world.
But that calculation might be wrong. It doesn’t take into account undecided voters or COVID-19-related factors that may tilt the vote toward Morales’ candidate, Luis Arce.
Morales himself is campaigning for Arce from Argentina, after being barred from running for office himself. Morales’ unconstitutional election in October 2019 to a fourth-term in office was declared marred with irregularities by two separate electoral monitoring missions from the Organization of American States.
According to a recent poll by Bolivia’s Mercados y Muestras polling firm, published by the Página Siete newspaper, the Morales-backed candidate has 24 percent of the vote, followed by former president Carlos Mesa with 20 percent, interim president Añez with 15 percent, plus other candidates with smaller percentages.
But the same poll also shows that 20 percent of likely voters are undecided. That percentage probably includes many Morales supporters who are afraid of disclosing their true preference to pollsters, one of the poll’s organizers told me.
In addition, when Bolivian voters are asked by pollsters if they plan to go to the polls despite the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 20 percent of Mesa and Añez’s supporters said they will probably not turn out, while only 3 percent of the Morales-backed candidate give the same answer. Morales’ supporters are more likely to vote than others, pollsters say.
Several U.S.-based Bolivia watchers tell me that a Morales party victory is very possible.
“When you have a very polarized electorate, where one of the poles is totally unified and the other is split among many candidates, the winner will be the first one,” Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor and Bolivia expert, told me. “It’s an old rule of politics, which applies perfectly well in today’s Bolivia.”
Making things worse, there is a widespread belief among many anti-populist Bolivians that a Morales party victory would make it even more authoritarian. Morales, who ruled between 2006 and 2019, now thinks it was a mistake on his part to give the opposition even limited space to compete in his fraudulent elections last year, they say.
Clearly, Bolivia’s anti-populist candidates should learn from Venezuela’s opposition, which last week announced a united front of 27 pro-democracy parties.
Bolivia’s pro-democracy presidential hopefuls should cast aside their personal ambitions and unite behind the most popular candidate among them.
Legally, it’s too late to do a primary election to pick a single anti-populist candidate. But that could be easily resolved by hiring a reputable international polling firm and finding out who is the most popular candidate among them. All anti-populist candidates could commit to supporting whoever comes out No. 1 in that poll.
If Bolivia’s anti-populist candidates don’t team up, they would be responsible for a potential Morales party victory that would push the country into populist authoritarian rule, greater political repression and even greater poverty. It would be a real — and totally preventable — political tragedy.
Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show at 8 p.m. E.T. Sunday on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera
