The Horizon of Evo Morales’ Long Decade in Power: Implications of Bolivia's Referendum Results
The Horizon of Evo Morales’ Long Decade in Power: Implications of Bolivia's Referendum Results
Written by Benjamin Dangl Published: 25 February 2016
Bolivian President Evo Morales lost the referendum last Sunday that could have given him the ability to run for re-election in 2019. The margin was small, but the implications are huge: Bolivia’s longest standing and most popular president finally has an end date for his time in power, on January 22, 2020.
The lead up to the election was brutal, with an array of corruption scandals and conflicts, the most tragic of which was a protest last Wednesday against the opposition-controlled mayor’s office that resulted in a fire leading to six deaths. This disaster, the key details of which are still unclear, cast a shadow over the referendum. But the corruption scandals, which had besieged pro-Morales indigenous and campesino organizations as well as the presidency, had already made their imprint on national public opinion. Just last March, the Movement Toward Socialism, (MAS, Morales’ political party) lost key regional elections in several departments, in part due to the fallout from the corruption charges.
Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, who rose to prominence as a union leader among coca farmers and as a dissident congressman, has won three general elections, including a 2014 victory with over 60% of the vote, and is now in his tenth year in power. Over this decade, he has presided over a host of historic policies and measures, including rewriting the constitution in a constituent assembly, extending government control over the country’s lucrative natural gas reserves, and expanding access to education, healthcare, and the political process to previously marginalized sectors of society. Economic growth has remained solid through much of his time in power, thanks to his government’s economic policies and the boom in oil and gas prices. As a result, under Morales, poverty rates have dropped dramatically for citizens in South America’s poorest country.
But this period hasn’t been without its pitfalls, and critics on the left and the right have pointed out a variety of problems surrounding the MAS government. Critics claimed the 2009 constitution, presided over by the MAS government, failed bring forward necessary land reform. Morales touts the rights of nature and Mother Earth, but leads an extractive-based economy that has wreaked havoc in the countryside, extended extractive industries into national parks, and displaced some of the same rural communities his policies aim to support. Denouncements of corruption scandals, co-optation and repression of various social and indigenous movements, authoritarian tendencies against political opponents and critical media have followed his presidency for years. At the same time, the opposition has been fragmented, lacking unity while Morales and the MAS consistently win major elections and reforms supported at the ballot box.
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http://www.towardfreedom.com/31-archives/americas/4181-the-horizon-of-evo-morales-long-decade-in-power-implications-of-bolivia-s-referendum-results
