Former Dictator Tries for Comeback in Today’s Bolivian Election

Retired Gen. Hugo Banzer, a former Bolivian dictator who won’t go away, takes another shot at the presidency today in hotly contested national elections.

Most pundits give Banzer, 62, an advantage at the polls over his two main rivals. But the forecasting lacks a sense of certainty, and the other two front-runners are predicting victory.

They are Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, 58, a former planning minister who helped stifle Latin America’s worst case of hyperinflation, and Jaime Paz Zamora, 50, a one-time radical leftist who now advocates democratic socialist policies.

If none of the candidates wins a clear majority of popular votes, the Congress being elected today will choose the president from the top two finishers.

Last time around, in 1985, Banzer led the field with 29% of the votes, but the Congress chose Victor Paz Estenssoro to lead the nation. Paz, 81, is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection today.

Nine candidates are running for president, but only a surprise finish would put the others ahead of Banzer, Sanchez and Paz Zamora.

South America’s poorest country, Bolivia has a turbulent political history of uprisings, coups and rebellions. Banzer seized power in a 1971 military coup and governed until 1978, sometimes using harsh measures to crush opposition.

His campaign has reminded voters that Bolivia enjoyed a time of relative prosperity during his seven years in office, but critics have accused Banzer of running up a burdensome foreign debt and violating human rights.

Recent newspaper advertisements by a group called the Organization of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees blame security forces for the deaths of 72 people and the disappearances of 78 others during Banzer’s regime.

“Banzer, instead of making a democratic country of Bolivia, governed seven years and left us full of debts and of mothers without sons because of the repression,” candidate Sanchez said in a speech.

Nevertheless, a foreign diplomat observed privately that Banzer has shown strong commitment to democracy in the past decade. “He has essentially laundered himself,” the diplomat said.

During a period of political turbulence after Banzer left power, he formed the conservative Nationalist Democratic Action Party and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980 and 1982.

The 1982 winner was Hernan Siles Zuazo, an eccentric politician whose vice president was Paz Zamora. The Siles administration ended in 1985 with economic chaos and inflation of 20,000% a year.

Paz Zamora’s critics insist that he and his Revolutionary Leftist Movement, or MIR, share responsibility for economic mismanagement under Siles. Some critics also recall the MIR’s past as a Marxist-oriented party that once advocated violent revolution.

Paz Zamora helped form the MIR in 1971 and took part in clandestine efforts to unseat Banzer. Later, under Paz Zamora’s leadership, the party shifted to its current democratic socialist position.

After taking office in August, 1985, Paz Estenssoro drastically cut government spending and imposed other austerity measures to tame inflation. Last year’s rate was 21%, the envy of neighboring South American countries.

Sanchez, a millionaire businessman who was Paz Estenssoro’s planning minister until he entered the presidential campaign, has claimed credit for imposing discipline on the economy. But he is also blamed for soaring unemployment and shrunken real wages.

Neither Banzer nor Paz Zamora has challenged the basic premises of the economic stabilization program, but they have decried the “social cost” of the stability.

All three leading candidates have pledged to carry out programs to improve living standards.

Hundreds of thousands of Bolivia’s peasants are involved in the production of coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine. None of the three candidates has made a major issue of it, but all three have said they will continue efforts to eradicate illegal coca crops.