Elections

Before I arrived in Bolivia, I knew little about the country, and even less about it´s politics. I´d heard that the president, Evo Morales had refused to sell the lithium under the salt flats to a multinational in America, saying that if Bolivia was going to sell it, they would do it in a way that would benefit Bolivian people. I thought he sounded like a pretty decent bloke from this small nugget of information, plus he has a chubby likeable face and looks a little bit like a teddy bear. However, after spending almost 4 months here, and with the elections coming up at the end of this week I´ve begun to understand there´s a lot more to Evo than his cuddly exterior. And it´s not pretty.

First of all, lets assess his credentials, he did not graduate from high schoool. Now I don´t want to be one to judge too quickly, perhaps what he lacks in education he makes up for in life experience. I have heard various things about what he has done since becoming president. A couple of them have been good.

Evo is big on indigenous rights, and there are a lot of indigenous people here. I hear that Evo has greatly improved literacy rates in Bolivia, mostly for this indigenous population.  I can´t knock that. He also wants everyone to speak their languages, Quechua and Aymara. In fact, he has made it law that all companies have to teach their employees Quechua and Aymara, and if not they may be shut down. Incidentally, Evo himself does not speak either.

Not only is he tough on getting people to learn languages, he´s tough on getting votes. Quite literally. He does things like moving groups of his supporters to places with temperatures of 80 degrees C in the middle of nowhere so he can receive votes in that area. Apparantly it´s not quite so important that the children then die of dehydration or  diarrhoea and contract diseases from the unfamiliar territory. In fact he is so keen on getting people to vote that he does not stop there. He once sent a group of his fans from the mountains to an indigenous community to spread the Evo love. Unfortunately what happened was not so much love but war, the two communities did not get on and one day there was a push, which turned into a shove, which turned into a scuffle, which turned into  Evo´s men taking out guns and shooting dead 20 people. He doesn´t write that on his election leaflets. Now I understand why a lot of the graffiti says ¨Evo asesino¨.  Asesino meaning assasin. ´

It´s not just this graffiti that I´ve noticed in the past few weeks, every weekend thousands of people take to the streets to campaign for the election. There are marches, banners and plenty of shouting. All the public transport is adorned by support for whichever political party (mostly Evo) and is all completely full as there are so many people around.

I originally thought that this must mean that people are really into politics here, on remarking on this to my housemate, she told me that if those who work in the public sector don´t go to the streets and support Evo, they lose a weeks salary. I couldn´t believe it, and her story got worse, her son is a lawyer who used to work for a private firm. His boss supported the head of the court, a man called Fernando who Evo didn´t like, therefore he closed the whole firm and everyone lost their jobs. Hence her son´s now obligitory  Saturday street shouting.

As you can probably imagine, all this does not help Evo´s popularity, at least unofficially and nor has he made himself popular with other countries. He nationalised the energy companies here when he promised Spain he wouldn´t. Spain had promised him that they would wipe Bolivia´s debt. Needless to say I´m pretty sure the debt was back pretty quickly once they realised what he´d done. He also refused to sell gas to Brazil and Chile, who now buy and sell successfully elsewhere, this seems like a massive missed opportunity for Bolivia´s economy.

Evo´s biggest hate however, is the US, he  does not want them in his country, and has tripled the cost of Americans getting work visas here. But his hatred towards the States stretches further than to just the Americans, if a Bolivian chooses to work for the US, they can never again work for the pubic sector here (I´m sure they´ll be devastated to miss out on all that shouting). He also shut down USAid who do a lot of work here because he believed that they were funding the opposition, when they were doing nothing but encouraging political involvement.  Enemies, he has plenty, and to his friends he owes money. So much in fact that if Venezuela goes to war then Bolivia will probably go too, as they owe Chaves so much money.

However, all signs predict that he will win this week. By all signs I mean that he has fixed the voting machines that way.

This appears to be common knowledge, several people have told me this. Yet they do nothing, and feel like there is little they can do. When all the evidence is gathered it does seem like me and the people here are living in some sort of dictatorship. I wonder how much further he can take it, and how much longer the people will put up with it.

Saying that I don´t  think that everyone hates him, a friend said he was necessary for the current time in Bolivia but that he didn´t like him. Plus, I´ve done few interviews with the indigenous population, I don´t tend to talk politics whilst buying my juice in a bag from a cholita. Most of the people I´ve spoken to are fairly well educated people. Perhaps there is another side to the story, one I am unaware of. Fingers crossed it´s a good one.

One more thing I forgot to mention, Evo put the oppositions vice president in prison for slander. And there I was thinking I was living in the 21st century.

At least there is one ray of hope for Bolivia, the law is that after 2 terms of presidency, you´re out. At least at the moment this is the law, I´ve heard that if elected again Evo has plans to change this, and who knows what else he is hatching.

I´ll keep you posted.