Federico Fuentes, La Paz
After travelling 18 hours from La Paz on a number of different buses and a trek through mud and rain to cross flooded roads, I arrived in Chimore, a town of 2000 residents in Bolivia's remote Chapare jungle, located 580 kilometres south-east of the capital city, La Paz.
Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the front-running candidate in Bolivia's presidential election, originally scheduled for December 4, had chosen this town in the heart of his key mass base, the coca growers (cocaleros) of the Chapare region, to speak directly to his supporters.
At a rally of 20,000 in Chimore on October 29, Morales spoke about the rise of the MAS, which emerged from a proposal by cocaleros to establish a "political instrument of the peoples".
The cocalero movement rose to prominence in the 1990s in the heat of the fierce struggles they waged against the US, the pro-US governments of Bolivia and the Bolivian military to stop their drive to eradicate the growing of coca, a plant which has great significance in the indigenous culture and tradition of Bolivia.
Morales outlined how, scared of the growing strength of the MAS, the country's economic and political elite had tried to deal the party a big blow in early 2002 by expelling him from the parliament, but were forced to back down months later.
This event, rather than weakening the MAS, helped propel it to the national arena and to achieve strong vote in the presidential and legislative elections that year, with Morales missing out by 1% of the vote from being elected president.
With presidential and parliamentary elections to be held next month, the MAS is registering first place in the opinion polls, with some polls indicating the party will receive 34% of the popular vote.
However, Morales pointed out in his speech that the opinion polls in 2002 had indicated he would only receive 6% of the popular vote, but he actually received 21% of the votes on election day. For Morales this meant that "if we triple what the polls are saying our vote will be over 100%. I will be happy if we just double it to secure a decisive victory."
At the time of his speech, the date of the elections was uncertain because the parliament had not been able to resolve the issue of the redistribution of seats after a debate that had lasted nearly a month and half.
Morales told the rally that if Jorge Quiroga, the right-wing presidential candidate for the Podemos party, who is currently coming second in the opinion polls, "was first in the polls, there would not be this problem with the redistribution of seats. They want to rob us of our victory comrades, but the traditional parties are only prolonging their agony for one or two weeks."
Morales explained that the MAS was looking to gain power through the ballot box, but he warned that "if they can't guarantee the national elections there will be an armed insurrection, an uprising to liberate the people. We are not far from this. I want to tell the parliament to guarantee the national elections and if they don't do it, there will be a summit of the social movements in a week's time to defeat the neoliberals and the corrupt ones."
On November 1, after numerous attempts to resolve the dispute over the seat redistribution, current interim President Eduardo Rodriguez issued a presidential decree that would result in the elections being held on December 18. If ratified by parliament, this would see the provinces of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba receive three and one extra more seat in parliament respectively, while La Paz would lose two seats and Oruro and Potosi would loose one each.
The issue of the seat redistribution had come about due to protests by the right-wing civic committee of Santa Cruz, which argued that according to the 2001 census it deserved four more seats in parliament. Santa Cruz is the home of most of Bolivia's capitalist elite, who have been threatening to break away from the country in order to maintain their control over the natural gas fields, Bolivia's major natural resource, and the destination of most of the internal migration in search of jobs.
Bolivia has the second-largest natural gas reserves in South America, but they have historically been extracted by foreign corporations under government contracts that Morales has attacked as undermining Bolivia's national sovereignty and not benefiting its impoverished population — 64% of Bolivia's population of 8 million live below the official poverty line, with one-third of them surviving on less than US$2 a day.
However, many political commentators have said that the demands from Santa Cruz are aimed at delaying the elections, or at least making sure the Santa Cruz elite has greater control over any new national government.
During the tussle over the seat redistribution, the tensions caused by the separatist threats from the Santa Cruz elite were heightened with petitions being circulated in Santa Cruz asking, "Do you want Santa Cruz to be an independent republic? Yes or no?"
Rodriguez's decree was welcomed by all the main presidential candidates as a way of moving forward towards the elections. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee stated that it still believes it is owed four more seats, but said it will analyse the decree before giving a definite answer.
In his speech, Morales called on his supporters to mobilise the indigenous vote in the eastern regions of Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando. He also announced that one of his first missions in government would be to initiate an international campaign to have coca taken off the UN's prohibited drugs list.
With regard to relations with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Morales told the rally that "if they want to support, they have to do it without conditions, without impositions. Let them firstly condemn the external debt because the poor have no reason to pay the debts of the corrupt ones."
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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