Ex-Dictator Carries Bolivia’s Democracy Banner : Banzer Expected to Win Plurality in Today’s Vote in Inflation-Plagued Nation

The central figure in Bolivia’s national election today is Hugo Banzer, a former military dictator here, who is now running for president wearing the white hat of democracy.

If Banzer wins the election--and polls indicate he will emerge with a plurality--Bolivia’s 2 million eligible voters will be making a free, democratic choice for more authority after a weak, populist government, buffeted by inflation and labor turmoil.

Banzer campaigned all over this rugged Andean country, telling crowds that Bolivia needs law and order, so people can get back to work, and “painful surgery without anesthesia” to halt runaway inflation.

From many indications, this tough talk is what people want to hear. Inflation and corruption have run wild under the leftist government of President Hernan Siles Zuazo. Factory workers, miners and peasants cheered Banzer’s recovery message.

This is not an election rigged in favor of a candidate favored by the Bolivian military. But the left-wing parties that hold power in a coalition led by Siles, including the Moscow-line Communists, are alarmed at the prospect of a Banzer victory.

The government-owned national television network devoted its final program of the political campaign to an hourlong account by surviving victims of military violence against miners, peasants and students during the Banzer regime.

This extended from 1971 to 1978, during which at least 250 people were killed in political violence and thousands of political prisoners were held without court order. Hundreds of civilian political leaders were exiled, including Siles.

Troops occupied the state tin mines and arrested union leaders when workers went on strike in 1976. The sole labor confederation, the Bolivian Workers’ Central, was outlawed. Student resistance in universities was severely repressed.

Banzer, as an army colonel, had organized a military uprising in 1970 that overthrew a leftist military regime headed by Gen. Juan Jose Torres, who went into exile in Argentina. In 1976, after a military junta took power in Argentina, Torres was assassinated.

After 1976, Bolivia came under heavy pressure from the international human rights campaign of President Jimmy Carter. Banzer’s grip on the army was slipping because of charges of “personalism” and corruption. In 1978, he agreed to hold an election, restoring political parties to activity.

Banzer chose not to run, instead picking Air Force Gen. Juan Pereda, his minister of government, as the military-backed candidate. The election was such a crude fraud that Pereda resigned, leading to a military coup in which Banzer was deposed by a junta.

Against this background, Banzer is pictured nowadays as a dangerous “fascist” by Marxist and pro-Cuban politicians and intellectuals who have tried to lead Bolivia toward a socialist state under Siles.

Banzer answers with a joke.

“I don’t have the physique to be a dictator,” said Banzer, at 58 a spry 5 feet 4 inches tall.

“He has mellowed since his days as a colonel. He is more sure of himself now, and he is a doting grandfather,” said Ronald MacLean Abaroa, who is the candidate of Banzer’s party for mayor of this capital.

Banzer said that he would not be a vote-getting candidate if “the Bolivian people believed I was a violator of human rights, as my opponents claim.”

As a civilian politician, Banzer is the founder and chief of the Nationalist Democratic Action party, which occupies the right end of Bolivia’s political spectrum.

He first ran for president in 1979, finishing third. A new election was held in 1980, and Banzer again finished third behind Siles, but his share of the vote increased and his party elected a solid delegation to Congress.

An outspoken anti-communist, who describes himself as a modernizing nationalist, he has proposed a new model for Bolivian economic development: private enterprise, instead of large state enterprises, and greater emphasis on agriculture in place of nearly exclusive dependence on mining.

This would be an economic revolution in Bolivia, a poor country of 6 million people, half of whom are peasants. Since the populist revolution of 1952, which nationalized the big tin mines and divided large estates among peasant cooperatives, government ownership and intervention in the economy has extended to petroleum, metal refining, sugar mills, hotels, airlines and banks in a system of state capitalism.

Banzer contributed to the extension of this system during his first presidency with big public projects that swelled Bolivia’s foreign debt. He said he has now concluded that this system is bankrupt and that future economic growth requires “more space for private initiative.”

Banzer, who has an efficient cattle ranch in the eastern lowland department of Santa Cruz, where he was born, said that Bolivia’s agriculture and livestock potential is the future of this country.

“Our mining resources are depleting, but our fertile lowlands are waiting to be developed with roads, credit and technology,” he said. Bolivia imports wheat, vegetable oil and sugar, all of which could be produced here.

Before any long-term changes in the economy can be made, the next president of Bolivia will have to take emergency measures to halt runaway inflation and restore Bolivia’s foreign credit.

If he is elected, Banzer said he will apply “shock treatment” to fight inflation. He said he would halt printing of new money, free the exchange rate and cut public deficits. These are the orthodox remedies for inflation and trade deficits recommended by the international bankers who hold Bolivia’s $3.3-billion debt.

Siles has refused to take effective measures because his left-wing government has been intimidated by union leaders who reject “unpopular” measures.

As a result, Bolivia’s inflation is running at an annual rate of 10,000%, the highest in the world. Price controls don’t work and workers have lost purchasing power. The government’s revenue base from taxes has been destroyed. The printing of money to pay half of government bills drives up prices.

“I am not interested in popularity. I want to save the country from self destruction,” Banzer said.

The drastic austerity plan promised by Banzer would almost certainly produce a major confrontation with the labor leaders at the start of the new government.

Banzer said that if he is elected, he will ask Congress for emergency powers to suspend the right to stage what he called “political strikes” and impose other controls on wages and supplies for an initial period.

To win the election, one of the 17 presidential candidates on the ballot must gain 50% of the popular vote. If none does, the new Congress, which is also being elected today, will name the president from among the three candidates receiving the highest vote. The new Congress is to convene Aug. 4, and the new president will take office Aug. 6.

Banzer’s private election polls show him winning in seven of Bolivia’s nine departments over the other two principal contenders, Victor Paz Estenssoro, a former president who is candidate of the centrist National Revolutionary Movement, and Jaime Paz Zamora, candidate of the moderately leftist Revolutionary Left Movement.

No poll gives Banzer 50% of the vote, though, so the contest will probably go to Congress.

Paz Zamora, representing the largest party of the left, said that his party will decide how to vote in Congress only after the results are in, but he did not rule out voting for Banzer if the latter has a clear lead.

“We are not going to allow the vote in Congress for president to become deadlocked. That could lead to a military coup. We will vote in a way that provides a strong government, even if we then lead the opposition to that government,” Paz Zamora said.

Paz Estenssoro, president in 1952-56 and again in 1960-64 under the populist revolutionary regime installed in 1952, was overthrown by the military when he sought to prolong his second term. At 78, he is hoping to make a comeback, but his party, which originally was also that of the incumbent Siles, 70, is sharply divided between the two elderly leaders. Once allies, Paz Estenssoro and Siles are now bitter enemies.

There is some opposition to Banzer in the army from officers who contributed to his ouster in 1978, but the majority of the nine army division commanders have taken a clear stand to accept whomever Congress chooses as president.