MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Morales will have to prove his pragmatism

In spite of what seems a landslide victory in last Sunday's presidential race (51% of the vote), Bolivian Indian leader Evo Morales won't have a majority in Congress and will need to build alliances both in the Lower House and the Senate.

Although the Bolivian Electoral Board is working at an excruciating slow pace since it still has half the 3.6 million votes to count, election returns projections indicate that Mr. Morales party, Movement Towards Socialism, MAS, will have 53 seats (out of 130) in the Lower House and 12 (out of 27) in the Senate; runner up former president Jorge Quiroga 48 deputies and 13 senators; Samuel Doria Medina 15 deputies and one senator and the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario of ousted president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada 11 and one senator.

If this is finally confirmed next December 29 which is the deadline for the Electoral Board final count announcement, Mr. Morales will have to mount a working alliance most probably with the National Unity party of Doria Medina, (a cement tycoon) which has anticipated a "constructive but watchful" opposition.

An additional challenge is that in the governor elections, his party only managed control of two of the nine provinces, with seven going to conservative candidates, some with an even greater support than the elected president. Particularly Santa Cruz, Bolivia's richest and with the largest autonomous movement which would like to cut loose from the rest of the country.

Mr. Morales is scheduled to take office next January 22, and by then should have agreed the terms of the coalition, based on the pragmatic approach which helped him become the first indigenous Bolivian president and the first in decades with a clear undisputed personal majority avoiding the congressional run off.

However this will mean leaving behind the radical speech that in the past few years turned him into the leader of the opposition, ousting two presidents and creating an atmosphere of permanent active street militancy in such controversial issues as gas and oil resources, coca planting and an open market economy.

Mr. Morales in his first statements said he would respect private property including oil and gas investments by multinational companies, but will demand a larger revenue share becoming the majority partner in the hydrocarbons exploitation process.

But many of his campaign allies promised outright nationalization of all resources and the industry.

United States has invested hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convince Bolivian peasants to plant alternative crops to coca planting which is closely ingrained to the highlands Indian culture, tradition and life style, but is also the basic ingredient for cocaine and the illegal drug industry.

And Mr. Morales became politically notorious as the leader of the coca planting peasants contrary to US sponsored alternative crops.

The poorest provinces of Bolivia, with an overwhelming majority of Indigenous population, contrary to the rich provinces controlled by the white Spanish minority, advocate a centralized, Socialist government run economy and reject foreign companies, foreign investment and the mother of all evils, United States: a strange blend of centuries of colonial exploitation hatred with "anti imperialist" high school Marxist slogans, which have an easy mirror in the distant Fidel's revolution and Chavez Bolivarian experiment.

Besides, once silver and tin rich Bolivia has a long history of miners' unionism and now urban unions, mainly concentrated in the bureaucracy capital of La Paz which also preaches "workers of the world unite".

However in the rich provinces with most of the gas resources and agriculture, foreign investment and open market policies are welcome.

Mr. Morales until not so many months ago declared himself an admirer of both Mr. Castro and Mr Chavez, to such an extent that not only Washington felt the creeps but also Argentina and Brazil, traditionally influential brokers in Bolivian politics.

But that is no longer the case, so it seems.

Mr. Morales calls Lula da Silva his "eldest" brother; Mr. Kirchner apparently helped with the programming of the successful campaign; Mr. Chavez says everybody knows who his candidate was, but "I can't meddle in the internal affairs of a friendly people", and Washington (which anticipated the victory but not by such a difference) sent a cool and distant congratulation message, in a "wait and see" attitude promising to closely monitor that democratic institutions, the rule of the law and international agreements are fully respected.

Next January 22, Mr. Morales will receive the full support from his South American colleagues, including conflicting neighbours such as Chile, the European Union and well wishes from the rest of the world.

But as of that day the self educated dirt poor origin Aymara Indian will have to perform a delicate balancing act contemporizing a radical hard core past with a pragmatic, rational attitude, if he is to survive and avoid the fate of his immediate predecessors.