A late night vote in Bolivia’s Senate, which finally had a quorum after the police stopped blocking the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) party from the chamber, has agreed that all parties will work together toward having new elections as soon as possible.
New elections were promised by former President Evo Morales, and are still the goal despite his ouster and exile to Mexico. A lot of details are disputed between Morales’ MAS and self-proclaimed interim president Jeanine Anez, who was endorsed by the US and Bolivia’s military.
Early, free elections are likely to be a matter of dispute, as Anez insisted that, while she will allow the MAS to run a candidate in the vote, they’d better come up with one soon, and that she would absolutely forbid Morales from running again.
It’s not clear if legally she can bar Morales from the campaign, and the MAS has majority in both houses of Congress. Anez is, however, scrambling to shuffle military leadership and install a new cabinet that will secure her power.
That too is a matter of polarization, as Anez’s new cabinet conspicuously excluded all indigenous people, despite indigenous Bolivians making up 40% of the population. Anez was criticized in the past for racist comments about indigenous people, suggesting the “city is not for Indians” and that she dreams of a Bolivia “free of satanic indigenous rites.”
I don’t understand why Morales gave in to the demand for new elections.The elections went perfectly fine.
Also I don’t like it that ‘our’ elites always seem to think that ‘our’ side in conflicts in other countries is always extreme right and nazi-like. Is there something our elites might want to tell us?
The thing is, it’s a two stage election (second stage only happens if first stage is undecisive, the difference not large enough) and each stage has a two stage count: the fast count and the official count. The first stage was declared illegitimate based on speculations during the fast count. I don’t know if there are any legal requirements on the fast count. I suppose it can be used for further actions if it is not contested, but it can be ignored and cancelled halfway if contested.
My question is , did Morales agree to a second stage of the elections , or to new elections altogether? I can imagine that Morales agreed to a second stage , saying ok we’ll treat first stage as undecisive , even if it is actually decisive but contested.
But new elections are a completely different thing.
“The elections went perfectly fine.”
Well, except that the Constitution of Bolivia forbade him to run, and that the voters of Bolivia refused to amend that Constitution to allow him to run, and that his pet Supreme Court nullified both the Constitution and the voters’ decision not to change it so that he could run …
… but yeah, other than him being a completely illegitimate candidate in the first place, the elections went just fine.
I was not thinking about that indeed but yeah, te fact that the supreme court concluded ‘the first term didn’t count because it came before the new constitution’ looks like a very partisan interpretation.
The first term not counting made at least some sense, because it was before the new constitution. But after that:
Morales called for a referendum on whether his government should propose a new constitution. That referendum passed with more than 90%.
Then there was a referendum on whether to adopt the constitution Morales proposed, and that passed with more than 60%.
That constitution — the one he asked for, and then proposed — said he could only run for two more terms.
Then he came back and asked the voters to change that and let him run for a third term (fourth altogether, third after the constitution came into effect), and they said no with 51.3%.
Then he went to the Supreme Court and said “hey, overrule the constitution I proposed, the constitution I urged adoption of, the constitution the people voted to not change, because I don’t want to move out of that nice crib.”
Erm, is appointing a supreme court for political gain cause for a military junta ?
Since I didn’t claim any such thing, I don’t know why you’re asking me.
You seem to state the decision of his “pet supreme court” would make him an “illegitimate candidate”, hence, excuse for the coup.
A statement of Condition X is not an endorsement of Response Y.
I don’t endorse the coup, and I oppose US involvement in coups in other countries on principle. That doesn’t mean I have to buy a load of BS about the people overthrown in the coups. They don’t have to be “good” to justify my opposition to US intervention.
You’re reducing the motivation of Morales to ‘I just want to stay in this nice crib’. I can see he is being given a pass for violating the constitution. Why is that? Because of the threat of a rightwing dictatorship aligned with the economic power centers in Bolivia and aligned with the US. I would acknowledge that this fear is valid, that the power distribution in the country is still in favor of the ‘whitish’ minority and that this is very likely part of the motivation of Morales.,
Morales was in power for more than a decade and rebuilt the country’s political institutions from the ground up, including a new constitution, with popular support.
Are you seriously suggesting that out of the entire Bolivian population, he couldn’t find a single potential successor to support and endorse, instead of giving the finger to the people who had elected him three times but who then told him no, they weren’t going to change the constitution HE wrote and HE promoted to let him have a fourth term?
It requires a lot of skill and power to change the system so it can sustain a healthy democracy. Morsi in Egypt had neither, all the old power was still in place and he was removed on the first opportunity. It South/Middle america there have been in Obama’s years several attempts, successful or not to roll back democratic trends. As moonofA points out , Chavez successfully changed the military and police so they wouldn’t overthrow him. Morales did not. Why not, because he couldn’t be arsed? Or because he wasn’t powerful enough? If Morales had been highly ethical, very powerful and very effective he might have succeeded,
I don’t expect either. I am mostly looking for improvement and I think Morales brought that.
It’s also looking like a democracy of the poor majority, which means it is hard to avoid upsetting the rest and it is hard to avoid things getting out of hand. In that respect .
The Bolivian people shouldn’t cooperate with this puppet theater. A revolution is needed to squash this coup and the racist junta who arranged it.