Bolivia banks on Morales

The landslide reelection of Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales this week comes as no surprise. He is the first Aymara Indian and native Quechua-speaker to lead the country, whose indigenous majority was underrepresented and widely exploited for centuries by a minority of European descent. A new Constitution, drafted under his stewardship, codifies Bolivia’s “plurinational” character and cultural diversity. He nationalized the energy and telecommunications industries, raised taxes on foreign firms and delivered on promises to use income from natural resources to fund programs for the poor. Meanwhile, thanks in part to a rise in commodities prices, Bolivia’s economy is expected to grow 2.8% this year, more than any other in the Western Hemisphere, according to International Monetary Fund forecasts. Rather than the chronic deficits it used to shoulder, Bolivia has enjoyed a budget surplus for the last three years.

As a result of this, Morales won 63% of the vote, and his Movement Toward Socialism party apparently secured two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress in Sunday’s election, which the Atlanta-based Carter Center found to be free and fair. He has taken the vote as a call for more reform. “I am obligated to accelerate the pace of change,” Morales said -- a statement that is sure to worry conservatives and foreign investors. During his first term, Morales clashed with the economic elite, concentrated in resource-rich eastern Bolivia, over regional autonomy. He has argued that the provincial departments should elect their own leaders but that resources such as gas and oil and government-owned land should remain under national control. The eastern elites disagree and fear that Morales will use his new muscle to emulate his friend, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in centralizing power and possibly trying to extend his term in office beyond the legal limits.

Although Morales’ populism has sometimes led to political clashes with the U.S. government, and we’d like to see more cooperation with the U.S. in fighting drug production, we congratulate Morales on his election to a second five-year term. He clearly has the support of his people. We hope he will see his mandate as an opportunity to pursue both a social and a democratic agenda, and that rather than simply emulate Chavez or the Castro brothers in Cuba, he will continue setting an example as he did with this clean election. While rightly addressing the needs of Bolivia’s Indian poor, we hope that he also will respect minority rights (in this case of the white elites), establish a Supreme Court and legal system that give investors confidence in the rule of law, and honor his word not to seek a third term. If he does all of that, it will be a true victory for Bolivia.