MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia's Morales victory has “its positive side”

Though he describes himself as Washington's “nightmare,” Evo Morales's victory in Bolivia's presidential election December 18 has its positive side.

Turnout was high and the election free and fair. Mr. Morales's apparent capture of more than half the vote erased pre-election concerns of another political impasse. The result represents a breakthrough for Bolivia's indigenous population, which has suffered discrimination for centuries; Mr. Morales is a native Aymara Indian, says The Washington Post in its Tuesday editorial.

Perhaps best of all, having disrupted Bolivian government for more than three years, often through the use of force, Mr. Morales will have the opportunity to govern by his populist slogans and be judged on the results. As long as he continues to abide by democratic norms that could work to Bolivia's benefit in the long run.

However the Washington based daily is not optimistic in the short run arguing that as a follower of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro, Mr. Morales, a former llama herder and coca farmer, is good at organizing paralyzing road blockades but short on workable policies for one of the hemisphere's poorest countries. The president-elect promises to nationalize Bolivia's gas resources, a step that would at least dry up foreign investment and could lead to serious conflict with the European and Brazilian companies now pumping the fields. He says he will fight cocaine trafficking but legalize the cultivation of coca, the precursor crop; this could quickly provoke a suspension of U.S. and multilateral aid. In place of the market capitalism that provided Bolivians with rising incomes for most of the 1990s, Mr. Morales appears likely to return to the protectionism and statist pump-priming that once made Bolivia notorious for quintuple-digit inflation and economic misery.

Such an outcome could separate Mr. Morales from those who support him simply for his indigenous identity and prompt other Bolivian Indian leaders to move away from populism and xenophobia. But there's no guarantee that the new president won't first bring about the deconstruction or collapse of the political system. Mimicking Mr. Chavez, Mr. Morales has promised a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution next year. Mr. Chavez has used such methods to eliminate democratic checks and balances in Venezuela. Whatever Mr. Morales's intentions, he will have to contend with newly elected opposition governors in Bolivia's energy-rich eastern provinces who strongly oppose his policies and may embrace separatism.

As in Venezuela, the Bush administration has repeatedly stumbled in Bolivia between clumsy interventionism and head-in-the-sand detachment. For too long U.S. policy was dominated by programs to counter narcotics and the money that came with them; Mr. Morales has effectively nursed a backlash against that narrow approach. Now the United States has few alternatives but to avoid playing into Mr. Morales's anti-American grandstanding while hoping Bolivia's neighbors will see an interest in preserving its democracy. If democracy endures, Mr. Morales probably won't, concludes the editorial.