Bolivian Referendum Results Analysis

[Joanne98]

For the Movimiento a Socialismo and Evo Morales, Sunday was indubitably a good day. After having won the Bolivian presidency in 2005 with approximately 54% of the popular vote, Evo surprised everyone by not only winning the recall referendum convoked by the right-wing opposition, but by winning big, with over 62% of the vote. Commentators that had lamented Evo’s loss of support by his “frightening of the middle class” and “loss of the urban vote” were left surprised that Evo was able to not only consolidate his support in rural Bolivia to near unanimity, but make substantial inroads in urban centers such as Cochabamba, in which vocal anti-Morales sentiment is frequently heard. He even captured about 40% of the vote in Santa Cruz, the heart of the autonomist movement, and 49.6% in Chuquisaca, where just weeks ago he was violently prevented from entering its capital Sucre. A minor opponent of the government, Jose Luis Paredes, the governor of La Paz, was easily recalled, as was a major opponent, Manfred Reyes Villa of Cochabamba.

It is extremely likely that, as he announced in his victory speech, Evo will use this as a mandate to push more aggressively for his project of social transformation – a new, indigenous-centered constitution, nationalization of formerly-privatized industries, and a pursuit of land reform in Eastern Bolivia. He would be correct in doing so – with his achievement of such a clear mandate, it may be now or never for his government to act decisively. However, he needs to be conscious of numerous pitfalls along the way.

Government Support in Autonomist Regions Surprisingly High

Looking at the bright side, Evo’s roughly 40% approval in the autonomist states suggests that the opposition to his government voiced by regional leaders and the press does not represent significant sectors of society in the so-called “Media Luna” of opposition. Despite the radical opposition voiced to his government in his two years in power, this percentage actually represents an increase over the level of support he got there in 2005. However, his 60% disapproval there, along with the easy margins of victory for the opposition governors, suggests that the application of any kind of assertive policy that affects elite interests will be bitterly contested. While the right-wing is likely to wince at the magnitude of Evo’s victory and some of its ideologists may have held millenarian ideas of recalling him and restoring the order that had been broken by the “indio’s” victory, it is quite possible that defeating the president outright was never part of their strategy.

After the discrediting of neoliberal economic policy and the growing assertiveness of indigenous movements in the 1990s, the Bolivian right wing and traditional political structure realized that it had to prepare to lose hegemonic control over the national government. They were a predominantly white minority in a society still rife with colonial elements and an ideology of racial distinction, and a minority whose ideas of development and Bolivian society had long failed to resonate with the predominantly indigenous population. Thus, instead of waging the losing battle of contesting national control, they undertook, quite successfully, a project of regional consolidation in Eastern Bolivia, a wealthier region of the country with significant natural gas deposits and an export-based economy that grew under the neoliberal free-marketeers as its Andean neighbors struggled. A folkloric sense of “Santa Cruz-ness” which incorporated even recent migrants from highland Bolivia recast the question of power in regional terms in the universalistic language of a “struggle against centralism and dictatorship”.


http://www.indypendent.org/2008/08/12/bolivian-referendum-results-analysis/