Rivals in Bolivia Forge Alliance

After weeks of political uncertainty and back-room negotiating, former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada has forged an odd-couple alliance that will enable him to once again lead this troubled Andean nation.

Sanchez de Lozada, the conservative leader known locally as Goni, and Jaime Paz Zamora, the leftist fourth-place finisher in June’s inconclusive elections, put aside their long-running animosity to unite in what almost certainly will become Bolivia’s next government.

But the maneuvering between the two former leaders to make a deal and the popular protest that many expect will greet the new president’s inauguration suggest that Bolivia will be further plagued by a weak and divided government.

The combined forces of Sanchez de Lozada’s Nationalist Revolutionary Movement and Paz Zamora’s Movement of the Revolutionary Left now face the challenge of implementing a program capable of ending a four-year economic crisis, which has seen poverty, unemployment and social conflict soar.

Sanchez de Lozada won just 22.5% of the vote in the June 30 election. Because no candidate won a majority, Congress will meet next week to pick the president from the top two vote-getters, Sanchez de Lozada and Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and former coca farmer who garnered 20.94%.

Most of the electorate had sided with new parties proposing radical change. Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism and the New Republican Force of former army Capt. Manfred Reyes Villa both came within 2 percentage points of winning the election.

“This political class has never offered solutions to Bolivia’s economic problems,” said Morales, who described the leadership accord as the union of “two ex-presidents to fight the indigenous majority.”

Sanchez de Lozada served as president from 1993 to 1997 and Paz Zamora from 1989 to 1993.

At one point last week, Paz Zamora paid a late-night visit to Reyes Villa, the third-place finisher, to persuade him not to join the government and leave Sanchez de Lozada as a weak and isolated president. Hours later, Paz Zamora was negotiating a share of power with Sanchez de Lozada.

“I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been,” said Fernando Garcia Algaranaz, a member of Reyes Villa’s party. “That party has changed its position over and over again for the sake of securing government positions.”

The changing face of Paz Zamora’s Movement of the Revolutionary Left has been a feature of Bolivian politics since democracy was restored in 1982.

Founded as a radical movement against the dictatorships of the 1970s and early ‘80s, the party has twice formed governing coalitions with Bolivia’s most famous authoritarian leader, Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez, who died this year.

The party ran a nationalist campaign this year that saw Paz Zamora promising a “Bolivia for the Bolivians” and calling Sanchez de Lozada a traitor for his role in the country’s privatization program. But Paz Zamora has put aside those concerns in exchange for control of a number of government ministries.

Algaranaz said he doubts the coalition will lead to an effective government for a population hungry for change.

“The citizenry no longer believes in the political system,” he said. “Politics here is moving from the parliament to the streets.”

The first mobilizations against the new government will already be underway when parliament reconvenes Tuesday. Thousands of indigenous Bolivians are expected to launch protests next week against the shelving of plans for a “popular assembly” that was to act as a sort of parallel, watchdog legislature.

Those are expected to be followed by protests by miners demanding the re-nationalization of Bolivia’s mines, coca farmers calling for an end to U.S.-backed eradication efforts and landless peasants campaigning for land reforms.