Bolivia: Can The Majority of People Vote for Change and Actually Get It?

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia: Can The Majority of People Vote for Change and Actually Get It?
August 16, 2008 By Mark Weisbrot
Source: The Nation

Evo Morales changed the history of Bolivia when he was elected in December 2005 as the country's first indigenous president, and the first to get a majority of 54 percent. On Sunday he expanded his mandate considerably in a referendum, with 68 percent of voters opting to keep him in office.

~snip~
Bolivia's indigenous majority had previously been excluded from the corridors of power, and the results can be seen in their lower living standards: indigenous Bolivians have less than half the labor income and forty percent less schooling than non-indigenous.

~snip~
These provinces produce about 82 percent of Bolivia's natural gas, and get nearly three times the gas revenue per person as do the other five provinces. The Media Luna states have a per capita income that is about 40 percent higher than the other five states. Their population is also much less indigenous: ranging from 16 percent (Pando) to 38 percent in Santa Cruz, as compared to 66-84 percent in the other states.

The Media Luna states also have the big landholdings that give Bolivia one of the most concentrated land distributions in the entire world. Well under one percent of landowners have two-thirds of the country's farm land. These include the big soybean producers of Santa Cruz, Bolivia's largest province and bulwark of the Media Luna alliance. Some of the big landowners are leaders of the political opposition.

Land reform is understandably a central political and economic issue. With forty percent of the labor force in agriculture and more than three-quarters of rural Bolivians in poverty, a redistribution of arable land is not only a central demand of the voters, but an important part of an economic development strategy that can boost employment and income in the countryside.

The referendum this past Sunday shows that the Morales government has increased its mandate to a landslide margin, by delivering on some of the changes that the electorate had voted for, and offering the majority of Bolivians a realistic hope for a better future. It casts doubt on the claim that this government has simply pursued its own, polarizing, leftist agenda, without regard to the concerns of the broad electorate. Its victory is all the more impressive in that it has been handicapped by an overwhelmingly hostile Bolivian media.

Bolivia is South America's poorest country, with 60 percent of the population living below the poverty line, and 38 percent in extreme poverty. The voters have overwhelmingly decided that they want their government to do something about that. This should be possible, even if it means redistributing some of the country's most important natural resources.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18461

[TomClash]

1. With pretty nice growth rates

4.7% GDP growth in 2008 and 5% projcted iin 2009.

[Peace Patriot]

2. A smashing victory for Morales and social justice--SIXTY-EIGHT PERCENT of the vote!

Why is there any doubt that Morales' political platform can be implemented? Because three of the most retrograde, fascist, elitist forces in the world want more money and power for the rich, at the expense of the dirt poor:

1. The U.S. government (Bushites pouring our tax money into the 32 percenters--the rightwing opposition--giving them more political power than their numbers merit).

2. The corporate 'news' monopolies (constantly pushing the fascist/corporate cause and, as here, giving it far more media presence--hogging the whole TV/radio spectrum--than its numbers merit).

3. Global corporate predators and the U.S. military--the lurking powers of economic punishment and violent intervention. The only reason that the rabid racist and fascist leaders of Bolivia's rich minority can oppose Morales's overwhelming mandate--with one of them, for instance, saying he will ignore the vote and not leave office--is that they have read--even if most of us haven't--Donald Rumsfeld's Washington Post op-ed of Dec 07 ("The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chavez"*), in which he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. The U.S. doesn't have any friends and allies in South America, except for the fascist thugs running Colombia, the corrupt "free tradists" in Peru, and these fascist cells within democratic countries plotting separatist coups in the oil-rich provinces because they can't win national elections. Rumsfeld's intent is to regain global corporate predator control of the oil. This is how he's doing it: by funding, organizing, training--and no doubt arming--fascist separatists, and fomenting civil war in Bolivia, and also in Venezuela and Ecuador (members of OPEC with social justice governments in alliance with Bolivia).

As to point #3, the Bushites had their staging area for U.S. military support of the Bolivian separatists cut off with the election this year of a leftist (the beloved "bishop of the poor," Fernando Lugo) in neighboring Paraguay. (Lugo wants the U.S. military out of his country.) But they have reconstituted the 4th Fleet to harry the coast of Venezuela, specifically the oil rich province of Zulia, where a fascist separatist elite wants to split off from the Chavez government. The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, recently said that this is a three-country Bushite civil war strategy including Ecuador.

Bushites bring war where there is peace. They bring fascism where there is democracy. They bring murder, torture and other horrors to people who have triumphed over those evils and created good governments. And, frankly, I don't expect much different from our own benighted Democratic Party leaders, who inflicted ruinous U.S.-dominated "free trade" on South America under Clinton, and who armed the fascist government of Colombia (with its horrible death squads), via "Plan Colombia" (the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs"), and--as they have with the Iraq War--may sit back (maybe with wringing hands and Pharisee-troubled faces?) while Rumsfeld and his goons instigate a "Gulf of Tonkin" against Venezuela, and then we may find our sons and daughters in the military getting shot at and blown up in Amazon jungle and the Andes mountains, with Obama as president. (He is ideologically aligned with the Bushites on South America, and may haplessly go along, when they make their move, using fascist cells within Venezuela, and Colombia military and rightwing paramilitary deaths squads, from right next door to the oil rich province of Zulia. And the corporate media will bushwhack him by calling this Exxon Mobile plot an "independence" movement.)

All of this is why the fascists in Bolivia may feel confident in defying the national mandate that nearly 70% of the voters have given to Morales. I don't think the Bushites will succeed. South America has become too unified in opposition to fascist/corporate rule, and in pursuit of economic and political integration in a South American Common Market. But that doesn't mean that the Bushites can't still cause a lot of grief and further alienate the northern and southern halves of the western hemisphere, so that the rift can never be repaired. We are seeing a vicious, merciless war of the rich for dwindling resources on a dying plant. It is appalling that this is what the United States of America has become--the leader of the bad guys, the chief bully of the international gang of corporate looters and plunderers who are oppressing the poor and destroying the planet.

---

*"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

[annabanana]

3. This should be instructive.

If the US also manages to buck the corporate media and elect Obama and big majorities in Congress, will a new agenda get traction? Or will it be shouted down and hollered into submission by the 24/7 RW wurlitzer?

[Peace Patriot]

4. The RW wurlitzer will certainly try. It is already forcing Obama to dance on its

tightrope: 'Appeal to the awesome hunger for change in the American people, but don't go too far and propose anything even remotely adequate to addressing the humongous, multi-front crisis that the Bush junta and corporate looters have created, or we will destroy you.'

I am not at all happy about Obama's Latin American policy. It is little better than the old "Manifest Destiny." The arrogance of his statement in Miami that Latin America needs "U.S. leadership" and his parroting of the Bushite/corporate line that Hugo Chavez is an "autocrat," lacked his more usual well-tuned ear, and diplomatic/political finesse. He was pandering to the right, to the "war on drugs" military/police state profiteers, and Exxon Mobile & co., and the fascist anti-Castro mafia in Miami. And these forces will destroy or kill him, if he doesn't. So it's hard to assess his statements and policies, and what he really intends.

I think that IS the situation, generally: If the Corporate Rulers feel threatened, they will destroy him. And they have many weapons with which to do so--starting with our totally non-transparent and rightwing corporate owned 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY vote counting system. (Thank you, Sens. Daschle and Dodd!) If they just outright steal it, what can we do? Nothing! (And one sign that they might be intending to is the corporate-run opinion polls--showing a "close race"--which I am more and more convinced are being fiddled, as the preliminary.) If they're smarter, and permit Obama to win (thus putting the kabosh on the election reform movement, among other things), they will then proceed to curtail him, as they did Clinton (insofar as Clinton had any populist tendencies), with non-stop attacks, lies, disinformation, focus on the trivial, and fascist propaganda. Another way they can curtail him (if he intends reform that might cut into their highway robbery of the American people) is by (s)electing a 'Blue Dog' Congress (so-called Democrats--now dominant in Congress--who want to cut everything but the war budget). And I'm sure they intend to blame every Bush-caused, potential upcoming disaster on him. That's what I mean by "smart." As the economic, environmental, diplomatic and social (food riots? grannies in wheelchairs protesting loss of Medicare/Social Security? military Draft riots?) shit hits the fan--from eight years of out-of-control looting of the treasury, corporate destruction of the middle class and looting of the poor, financial speculation, and every kind of government/corporate crime--it will be convenient to have a "liberal" in the White House to blame it all on.

If we can get Obama elected, by an overwhelming turnout (my guestimate: they are putting a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" against real representatives of the people, and can go even further than that--with complete impunity--if the stakes are high; so we need to produce at least 5% to 10% more votes than a transparently counted contest would require to defeat McBush)--if we can do this, then our other problems will be their having shaved Obama's mandate (they could make it a squeaker, to hamper him on any reform) and a "Blue Dog" Congress, which will be an obstacle to reform. (I don't think there's any chance of a--horror of horrors!--Puke Congress, but we need to know that Diebold & brethren CAN do this--can EASILY do it. They can steal it from Obama. They can (s)elect a Puke Congress. EASILY!)

So that will be our next task: Helping Obama to get something done, in these circumstances, if he intends to. (I really don't know if he does.) Primarily--priority no. 1--we have got to get our vote counting system back into PUBLIC control. Without transparent vote counting--and considering also the private entities who now control it and their rightwing ties--our leaders are no longer beholden to us; they are beholden to the ones who can fiddle the votes. This so-called Democratic Congress, with an approval rating worse than Bush's, is evidence enough that our leaders don't give a fuck what we think and don't need to. And there is hardly a member of Congress who can prove that he or she was actually elected--even the better ones. It all goes through the "black boxes" now, where the public is not permitted to see the vote counting.

It's a possibility that the Corporate Rulers want Obama to win--either because they don't consider him a threat, or else to implement their "liberal in the White House" strategy (crash the economy, blame it on him, then 'Diebold' Hitler II into the White House in 2012).

I'm inclined these days to think that Obama is a threat to the Corporate Rulers. They are so lawless and out of control that mere honest government is a threat to them--and certainly even the slightest assertion of national sovereignty, and the will of the people, re their power. So we will need that 5% to 10%-plus edge to elect him--just to achieve basic, law-abiding, decent government, even if it is no great shakes as to desperately needed, thorough reform.

Then we will have to find ways to support him, and to defend decent government. And we know that, once he has started taking the deficit out of the hides of the poor, and has restored "fiscal responsibility" ("Blue Dog" policy), they will be back, to loot us again. That is my problem with Obama. Possibly because of our fascist 'news' media, he doesn't address the utter lawlessness of the Bushites and their corporate sponsors, at the fundamental, structural level that needs a "Big Stick" radical democratic reform agenda. (My favorite planks for such an agenda: Cut the war budget by 90%, down to a true defensive posture (no more wars of choice!), and go after the worst malefactors of the Corporate monarchy--pull their corporate charters, dismantle them, seize their assets for the common good, as a lesson to the others, and an assertion of our sovereignty.)

It is simply mind-boggling that the following things have occurred, with NO presidential defense of the American people (--in fact, the opposite--Bush/Cheney are all for these things):

Gas-gouging.
War profiteering.
Credit card gouging.
The mortgage meltdown.
Wild speculation (on gas, mortgages, food and other vitals.)
Massive job outsourcing.
Loss of our manufacturing capability.
A ten trillion dollar deficit.
Huge indebtedness to Saudi Arabia and China.

Some of these things are TREASON, and some border on treason. They are a failure to attend to our fundamental viability as a nation. Add the Forever War, and we have a situation of treason and lawlessness that is UNBELIEVABLE. Shocking. Unprecedented. And that's without even mentioning the torture of prisoners, Executive "signing statements," domestic spying, outright thievery and other great crimes. Our government has flipped out. It has become our chief and most dangerous enemy. And Obama talks "win/win" ("Blue Dog" talk). Well, things are that bad. If he was inclined to speak the truth, and did so, he would be dead. His getting his initial push from the caucus states (not counted by Diebold & brethren) makes me think that he is genuine leader, and would like to address these problems. He is a very intelligent guy, and his heart is in the right place, it seems to me. But our situation is very dangerous and very volatile. These are not normal times. Who knows what will happen? I don't. We are all reduced to guessing and reading entrails. We are not citizens of a democracy any more. We are subjects. This is how subjects talk. Who will be king? And will it be good for the barons or good for people? The people have their choice, but there is no guarantee that the people's will will be done. None. It will be surprising if it is--and we will be on shaky ground for decades to come, ever in peril from another fascist/corporate coup, if we do not address our structural problems, such as privatization of our vote counting system. The Corporates have that much power--they've taken over the vote counting with 'TRADE SECRET' code. That is too much power. They are like Medieval Church, I'm afraid. (And that transnational monarchy took more than a thousand years to overturn.)