Ex-Dictator Backs Leftist for Bolivia President

Democratic socialist Jaime Paz Zamora and former military dictator Hugo Banzer on Wednesday announced a surprising agreement of the left and the right that is expected to give Paz Zamora the Bolivian presidency this weekend.

The agreement appeared to end protracted negotiations by political parties in preparation for a presidential run-off vote in Congress on Friday or Saturday.

Banzer told reporters he was giving up his presidential bid and throwing his Nationalist Democratic Action party’s decisive support to Paz Zamora “so that the people will not continue to be punished by uncertainty and instability.” Many analysts had feared a stalemate in the electoral process that would leave this nation of seven million people without a president ready for Sunday’s scheduled inauguration.

Under the agreement, Banzer’s and Paz Zamora’s parties will form a coalition government, and Banzer will share power as chairman of a new Political Council of National Convergence and Unity.

Banzer spurned an agreement with presidential candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a member of the centrist party currently in power. Sanchez de Lozada had crossed Banzer before this year’s presidential campaign by breaking a 1985 coalition agreement between their two parties.

Sanchez de Lozada was the front-runner in a May 7 popular election with 23% of the vote. Banzer finished second with 22.7% and Paz Zamora had 19.6%.

About 10% of the votes were blank or invalid, and six other candidates shared the rest.

The new Congress--elected at the same time--is to choose a president from the three top finishers. Because of the make-up of the Congress, none of the three finalists can win without support from one of the others.

Negotiations made little progress until this week because each party wanted its own candidate as president. Paz Zamora, 50, told reporters Wednesday that Banzer, 63, “spontaneously” offered to withdraw his candidacy in a late negotiating session the night before.

From 1971 to 1978, when Banzer was a conservative military president and Paz Zamora’s Leftist Revolutionary Movement was a radical underground group, the two were bitter enemies. Since then, Paz Zamora’s movement has become a moderate leftist party affiliated with European and Latin American social democrats. He was vice president in the center-left administration of then-President Hernan Siles Zuazo from 1982-1985.

That administration ended in economic chaos, with inflation raging at an annual rate of more than 20,000%.

President Victor Paz Estenssoro, who took office in 1985, imposed a tough austerity policy that has brought inflation down to 2.4% in the first seven months of this year.