Morales to face difficulties at home and abroad

By Jan-Uwe Ronneburger Dec 19, 2005, 19:09 GMT

La Paz, Bolivia - Exit polls showing a victory for Evo Morales in Bolivia's presidential elections also confirmed a Latin American trend: leftist-nationalist governments.

Feeding the trend has been the experiment with neoliberalism, which brought economic reforms such as privatizations and opened markets and has proven unpopular in Latin America. Criticism of it was a backbone of Morales' campaign.

'The people have defeated the neoliberals,' Morales said Sunday night in a victory speech. '... We want to change the neoliberal model. Starting next year, we're going to change the history of Bolivia, with peace and social justice.'

Morales' target was not only conservative politicians at home but also what he calls U.S. imperialism abroad.

The latest election win for a leftist-nationalist in the region was likely to bring headaches for Washington and cheers from the underclass in South America's poorest country. But Morales was unlikely to have it easy on either the foreign or domestic front as president.

The 46-year-old coca farmer and union leader has developed strong relationships with the United States' chief ideological rivals in Latin America, Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and garnered further U.S. ire after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when he said the suicide hijackings were the bill coming due for U.S. arrogance.

Morales is also against U.S.-backed coca-eradication programmes. For the United States, the action is part of its war on drugs because the plant can be used to produce cocaine, but Morales aims to legalize all cultivation of the traditional crop, which could also prove a pitfall in future U.S.-Bolivian relations.

Exit polls conducted during Sunday's election showed Morales winning 51.3 per cent of the vote, but even if official results eventually would show him failing to win an absolute majority, he was expected to win a January runoff vote in Congress against his closest competitor, centre-right former president Jorge Quiroga.

Quiroga himself conceded defeat and congratulated Morales on his victory.

While Morales' anti-Americanism was in the foreign-policy spotlight, the Aymara Indian's apparent victory would take on an entirely different meaning on the domestic front, and one that is hard to overestimate.

Since the Spanish conquest of 1538, the indigenous people of Bolivia have lived with poverty and discrimination. Today, more than 60 per cent of the country's 9 million inhabitants identify themselves as indigenous people, largely Aymara and Quechua. That percentage is congruent with the 64 per cent of Bolivians who live in poverty, making less than 2 dollars per day.

Until now, the white upperclass had the say in Bolivia and saw little reason for change.

'Why should I learn an Indian language? There is not a single book written in these languages,' said an intellectual in La Paz who, besides Spanish, speaks German, English and French fluently.

Soon, however, Aymara would serve him well in speaking with his president.

The persistent disdain for the indigenous majority of the population by the upperclass has led to an increasing radicalization in the landlocked country in the past several years.

Since 2003, two presidents have resigned as mass protests racked Bolivia. Morales himself came to international prominence as the leader of the demonstrations in 2003, which ended with president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fleeing the country. <!--page-->

The protests have resulted in Bolivia being caught in a vicious circle of hasty and lofty government promises made to prevent new unrest and protests breaking out because the promises were not fulfilled, leading to more government promises.

Even conservative politicians and business leaders acknowledge that Morales might be able to find a way out of this dilemma.

At the same time, however, Morales will not be able to achieve any miracles. He campaigned on the renationalization of Bolivia's rich natural-gas reserves, but the government lacks the money to carry out his plan.

And as a country for which foreign aid makes up 10 per cent of its gross domestic product, 50 per cent of the state budget and 70 per cent of its social spending, it also cannot afford to rid itself of the multinational companies mining its natural resources or alienate donor governments.

As for the fight against poverty, only small steps are likely to be possible.

Perhaps a president Morales can only hope for the people's faith that that he will push ahead with his agenda to keep himself from being pushed from office, said political scientist Tangmar Marmon at Hamburg's Institute for Ibero-American Studies.