Referendum gives dubious mandate to Bolivian regime

by Gerry Foley

Bolivia’s replacement president Carlos Mesa claimed victory in the July 18 referendum on sales and control of the country’s oil and natural gas resources. Having stepped into the shoes of a chief executive forced to flee by a mass uprising in October against his attempts to sell off Bolivia’s natural gas to imperialist corporations, Mesa rigged the referendum to give him an appearance of support for continuing the policies of his predecessor.

In a July 22 article, the British business weekly, The Economist, commented:

“… more Bolivian voters answered yes than no to five convoluted questions which, taken together, empower the government to exert greater control over the export and sale of the country’s vast oil and gas wealth. Since this falls short of returning the industry to state ownership, the vote is being seen as something of a victory for foreign investors and a defeat for those who want to reverse the privatisation of the oil and gas industry, which took place in the 1990s.”

In fact, what the insurgent masses wanted and what polls show today that 80 percent of the Bolivian people want is precisely re-nationalization of their natural resources. Mesa’s referendum questions were designed to deflect that demand.

The Economist acknowledged that the questions were so vague that it was hard to tell exactly what they called for. But it claimed that Mesa had won a victory by getting the majority of the voters to participate. However, in Bolivia voting is compulsory.

In a July 19 article, the Bolivian independent news website Econoticias listed the penalties for not registering and not voting: “Citizens who do not register will be punished by a fine of 150 bolivianos (almost a third of the minimum wage). In the present circumstances, 640,000, or 12 percent of citizens entitled to vote, have not registered.

“The laws also stipulate that citizens who have registered but who do not go to the polls and do not have confirmation of voting cannot hold public office, [or] receive wages or salaries from public jobs, cannot do bank transactions, or get passports for 90 days following the election.” In fact, the total abstention amounted to almost half of those entitled to vote, practically double the abstention rate in the previous elections. About 10 percent of those voting cast blank ballots.

The Bolivian trade-union federation, the COB, called for a boycott of the referendum, as did the radical peasant organizations. The only major organization opposing the neoliberal regime that called for participating in the vote was the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) of Evo Morales. Despite its invocation of the word “socialist,” this organization is a classical populist formation dominated by its demagogic chief.

As the political crisis in Bolivia has deepened, Morales has been moving rapidly to the right. He even hailed the referendum as a “victory for democracy.” When Mesa assumed the presidency, Morales gave him credit for being something different from the ousted neoliberal chief, while the more radical sections of the opposition movement only accorded him a truce.

When the truce ended with a short-term general strike called by the COB in February, Morales called for boycotting the strike and accused the union federation leader, Jaime Solares, of being an agent of the U.S. embassy.

In its July 22 issue, the Brazilian Trotskyist weekly newspaper Opiniao Socialista noted: “Evo does not even advocate nationalization of the gas. In an interview with an Argentine newspaper, he said, ‘the socialism I propose includes respect for private property.’”

Opiniao Socialista considered that Morales’ eyes are fixed on the 2007 elections. Obviously he hopes to gain from the present crisis to score an end-run in parliamentary politics, since the working people have no party of their own that can unite them and lead them to power. However, Morales’ betrayal of the mass movement is earning him more and more unpopularity in the mass movement.

Opiniao Socialista wrote that “Morales is clearly becoming discredited. In all the demonstrations, he is being called a traitor. His members of parliament from the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra attacked the anti-referendum movement by calling for the jailing of COB leaders because they opposed holding the referendum: ‘Those who want to burn the polling boxes will be burned,’ said Benigno Vargas of the MAS.”

Mesa is also rapidly becoming discredited in the eyes of the masses. Out of relief over the defeat of the former president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and the ending of the fighting, the Bolivian people largely gave his successor the benefit of the doubt. But polls show that his popularity is falling rapidly and that he now has credibility only from about a third of the population.

The dubious outcome of the referendum is unlikely to shore up Mesa’s crumbling credibility. In fact, it looks like a Pyrrhic victory. All signs point to the deepening of the radicalization in Bolivia.

The big question is whether the Bolivian people and their fighters can build a political instrument to achieve their aspirations. In fact, in its first plenum after the October uprising, the COB, in which the historic influence of Trotskyism remains perceptible, came to the conclusion that the uprising failed to lead to socialism because of the absence of a revolutionary party.

Hopefully, the Bolivian social vanguard will undertake the task of building one. The material for it is there and the need is urgent.

Moreover, it is not only in Bolivia that fighters are looking forward to the emergence of an effective political expression of the struggle. The movement in Bolivia is an inspiration for socialists and social activists throughout the region.

The article above first appeared in the August 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.