The Background

Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous leader since Tupac Katari, was seeking his fourth consecutive term in power. The man who began his political life as a trade union activist and the leader of the coca growers’ union has so far proven to be one of the most successful in the country’s history.

Since taking power in 2006, Evo’s Movement For Socialism (MAS) government initiated a number of reforms, such as the nationalisation of a significant part of the country’s hydrocarbon industry, the rewriting of the constitution and the recognition of the country’s unique plurinational indigenous identity, the recognition of the rights of Pachamama (mother nature), a programme of redistribution of the country’s natural wealth through mass social investment in infrastructure (such as the teleferico cable car system in La Paz), health and education and the creation of a number of social programs (such as Bono Juancito Pinto and Renta Dignidad).

All of this has resulted in the reduction in the level of poverty from 60.6% in 2005 to 34.6% 2018, with the extreme rate falling from 38.2% to 15.2% in the same period, while the Gini coefficient was reduced from 0.6 to 0.45, along with the highest-consecutive level of economic growth in the entire region in the recent years.

Despite Evo Morales’ political and economic success, his victory in this month’s elections was far from assured. The loss in the 2016 presidential referendum has fuelled the energy of the opposition, particularly in the province of Santa Cruz, while a pseudo-environmentalist campaign in August this year attempted to blame his previous actions for the current fires in the province of Chiquitania. 

On October 20^th, he found himself facing off against several right-wing candidates. As well as Carlos Mesa, there was Oscar Ortiz, the leader of the “Bolivia says NO” political movement, and the evangelical-backed far-right newcomer Chi Hyun Chung, each of whom represented different strands of the Bolivian opposition.

The Opposition

At first glance, the rise of Carlos Mesa to occupy a second place and more than a third of the popular vote seems almost unthinkable. 

Morales’ chief right-wing opponent came into the presidential race carrying heavy political baggage from his time as the vice-president of Gonzalo Sanchez ‘Goni’ de Lozada from 2002 to 2003. During this time, the government was engaged in a ‘Gas War’ with country’s powerful social and trade union movements, particularly the coca growers, miners and the urban workers.

Implementing a programme of austerity mandated by the IMF and ignoring the movements’ demands to nationalise the hydrocarbon industry, the government also drew up plans to export gas to the neighbouring Chile – an anathema due to Chile’s historic refusal to grant Bolivia access to the Pacific Ocean. 

Upon Goni’s resignation in October 2003 and subsequent flight to United States following the events of the Gas War and ‘Black October,’ Mesa became Bolivia’s President. His policies effectively mirrored those of his predecessor, with the only notable exception being his attempt to organise a gas referendum on the nationalisation of the country’s hydrocarbon industry.

After the referendum, however, Mesa disregarded its results in favour of continuing to implement the IMF and World Bank-approved austerity measures, thus earning himself the nickname “limosnero,” the beggar. His attempts at fulfilling Bolivia’s historic ambition of access to the Pacific Ocean through Chile (lost following the War in the Pacific in 1879) also failed to gain him the popular support he needed to continue the presidency, leading to his eventual resignation.

In the years following the Morales’ victory in 2005, Mesa attempted to redefine his image as an academic, writer and the Bolivian spokesperson before the International Court of Justice in defence of Bolivia’s right to access to the Pacific from 2014 to 2018.

Forming his electoral list Citizens’ Community (Comunidad Ciudadana) in late November 2018, he eventually obtained the support of some of the more well-established opposition figures in Bolivia – La Paz mayor Luis Revilla, the former presidential candidate Samuel Doria Medina and the long-standing governor of Santa Cruz, Ruben Costas, cementing his position as the main rival to challenge Evo. However, his campaign was plagued by a number of controversies. 

In a style almost identical to Mauricio Macri’s campaign in Argentina in 2015, Mesa made several promises to continue with some of Evo’s most popular policies – maintaining the state-owned hydrocarbon company YPFB, the social programmes and infrastructure projects, as well as the newly-established Unified Health System (SUS).

This didn’t exactly fit with the main message of Mesa’s campaign – “it’s already enough” (Ya es demasiado). His campaign was also haunted by the ghosts of his actions, particularly the Black October massacre in El Alto and his perceived cowardice in his role as President, as well as the allegations that he received over $10 million of private funding from unknown sources during his trip in the United States in June 2019. 

His campaign was further handicapped by the two other major candidates, Oscar Ortiz, a member of the right-wing regionalist Social Democratic Movement (MDS) and Chi Hyun Chung of the Democratic Christian Party (PDC), a surprise new-comer who has been dubbed the “Bolivian Bolsonaro.”

Chi received increased private and social media attention in the last weeks of the campaign due to his controversial statements that evoke far-right and radical religious sentiment that prevailed in the campaign of Bolsonaro in Brazil – misogyny, classifying homophobia as a “mental illness”, strongly supporting the actions of the police and drawing support from the country’s small but vocal evangelical population. Although his final result was lower than PDC’s vote tally in the general election 2014, both his ideas and image is likely to endure among the most right-wing sections of the population. 

The Uneasy Road

In the week following the election, Bolivia has witnessed a series of protests by the opposition throughout many of its biggest cities. Carlos Mesa, now also backed by Ortiz, has refused to recognise the final results published by the TSE, continuing to  demand a run-off with Evo Morales. 

In La Paz, opposition crowds gathered in front of Hotel Real, where the TSE was conducting and publishing the national vote count, facing off against both MAS supporters and the police. The clashes resulted in the police dispersing both sides as well as using tear gas. 

The city of Santa Cruz, nominally an opposition stronghold, saw the worst level of violence, with several separatist and far-right organisations like Crucenian Youth Union (UJC) as well as the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz (CCSC) stating that they would not recognise Evo Morales as President. 

In the cities of Potosi, Sucre and Tarija, opposition supporters burned down the offices of TSE, while in town of Riberalta, a statue of Hugo Chávez was torn down. The MAS campaign quarters in the province of Chuquisaca were also burned by opposition protestors.

The protests have also been marred by the building of blockades and barricades throughout the cities, as well as high level of racism towards the country’s indigenous communities. But they have been met by mass rallies in support of Evo Morales, particularly in the capital of La Paz, with the supporters of MAS, the social movements and miners’ unions gathering throughout the week near Plaza San Francisco in the city centre. 

The US-friendly Organisation of American States (OAS) has so far not recognised Evo’s victory, citing unnamed “irregularities” and “worries” regarding the electoral processes, even going as far as “recommending” that a second round is held even in the case of a first-round victory by Evo. Their final verdict, following a full audit requested by Morales, has yet to be released. 

Although the electoral battle has been won, the violence and uncertainty created by the opposition is likely to continue in the coming months. But as Evo Morales’ commanding voting total in the elections indicates, the support he retains among the country’s social movements, trade unions, workers and indigenous communities, will keep his socialist project in place for some time yet.