It may be tempting to decry >Bolivia’s referendum vote on February 21 as being illustrative of a drift towards autocracy by popularly elected leaders. The charismatic Evo Morales sought a mandate to run for a fourth presidential term in 2019, but it was denied in a close vote. Whatever the moral merit underlying such a judgment, the truth is that in the absence of a constitutionally stipulated limit on the President’s term in office, unlike in France or in the United States, strong and popular figures tend to seek successive re-election. As regards the countries of Latin America, attempts to get around the constitutional process in this respect cut across the ideological divide. There is a common thread that runs through the contemporary experience of countries as diverse as Venezuela and Colombia. This is the memory of political volatility, U.S.-backed military dictatorships and armed insurgency, and the consequent shadow of institutional instability that often remains well after the installation of directly elected governments. In fact, Mr. Morales’s bid for his current third term was similarly secured through a constitutional sanction, one that eventually culminated in his record second-best electoral performance.
That said, judging from the public mood of rejection of another electoral contest for the once near-invincible, and first indigenous, President, the outcome must seem not inconsiderable a victory for democracy, especially since the persona of Mr. Morales has been almost indistinguishable from his political rhetoric and policy initiatives. The nationalisation of natural resources and utilities matched his anti-imperialist stance. His cash-transfer schemes transformed one of Latin America’s poorest countries into one of the region’s fast-growing economies and in the process halved levels of extreme poverty. Cumulatively, the political stability and macroeconomic performance of the recent years are a comparison in contrast with the marginalisation of the majority indigenous population during the 1964-1982 military rule and the crippling impact of structural adjustment in the years immediately thereafter. But the result in the referendum may have put Bolivia’s evolving democratic ethos at a crossroads in so far as it reflects a shift away from the large peasantry that once constituted the support base of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). A bulk of this segment is today an assertive, ambitious and perhaps anxious middle class that has seen much of the optimism of the boom in commodity prices and consumer spending evaporate following the slump in the global demand for oil. While there were as many incumbents in office in the five years preceding President Morales’s ascent to power in 2006, MAS has apparently not thrown up the next line of leadership in the period it has been in office. Moreover, Opposition parties in Bolivia today seem to have coalesced solely on the issue of denying another term for the incumbent President. From now until the end of the Morales era, is a time for introspection.
