Pubdate: Mon, 08 Jan 2007
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Page: A16
Copyright: 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Mary Anastasia O'Grady
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/coca
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COCA DEMOCRACY

Evo Morales is an anti-American extremist who wants to turn Bolivia 
into another Venezuela. That naturally alarms Washington, but not 
enough to halt its war on drugs, which is aiding the president -- and 
leader of Bolivia's coca-growing peasant movement -- in his bid to 
become a dictator.

In a recent interview with the Bolivian Catholic radio station Fides, 
Mr. Morales explained that in 2003, when he was at a conference in 
Havana, Fidel Castro told him "not to stage an armed uprising" but to 
"make transformations, democratic revolutions, what [Venezuelan 
President Hugo] Chavez is doing."

The process Fidel advised requires the slow dismantling of 
institutions that act as checks on the executive while maintaining 
the guise of democracy. This calls for healthy poll numbers even 
while the rule of law is being trampled. Mr. Chavez had oil revenues 
to keep the masses happy while he put a noose around democracy. But 
Evo isn't so fortunate and he can't push through a constitutional 
coup without popular backing. So to generate support he has relied 
heavily on his defense of coca growers against a U.S. policy that 
presses countries in Latin America to destroy their crops.

Since his inauguration last January Mr. Morales has been dutifully 
complying with the Cuban dictator's instructions. He has purged the 
military leadership, broken contracts with energy investors to signal 
his control over the sector, and pushed through an election for a 
constituent assembly that is charged with rewriting the highest law 
of the land.

So far so good. But the assembly election didn't turn out the way he 
had hoped. In the event, Mr. Morales's Movement Toward Socialism 
(MAS) party won only 53% of the seats. Since the law requires a 
two-thirds majority to approve the new document, the president's 
party is looking at compromise with his political opponents in the 
drafting process.

Apparently this is the sort of thing Fidel did not counsel. So now 
the Morales government is insisting that ratification of the new 
constitution should require only a simple majority vote in the 
assembly or a simple majority in a national referendum.

To win on this point, Mr. Morales will have to run roughshod over the 
law and he has already begun. Over the Christmas holiday he 
unilaterally named four new justices to the Supreme Court's 12-seat 
bench. The president says these are legal recess appointments, but 
the opposition is crying foul because the MAS-controlled congress 
never initiated the nomination process that would have safeguarded 
the independence of the court. Bolivian democrats are worried that 
Mr. Morales will also try to alter the makeup of the constitutional 
court and the electoral council to favor his own objectives.

Things looks grim for democrats who believe that Mr. Morales is 
trying to remake the constitution in the image and likeness of Mr. 
Chavez's Venezuela, but they're not going down without a fight.

The center of the opposition movement is based in the energy-rich, 
agricultural lowlands of the eastern part of the country, where there 
is a long history of agitation in favor of more decentralized 
government. The Morales presidency, with its promise to expropriate 
and redistribute land, its heavy-handed intervention in the natural 
gas sector, and now its attempt at a constitutional coup, has 
heightened that sentiment and provoked a strong backlash against La 
Paz. In July, when Bolivians voted on the constitutional assembly, 
they also answered another ballot question regarding departmental 
(state) autonomy. In Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni and Tarija, autonomy won 
hands down.

More recently the east took to the streets. On Dec. 15 the opposition 
organized a "townhall meeting" in Bolivia's largest city, Santa Cruz, 
to rally against Mr. Morales's power grab. Pro-Morales supporters 
blockaded a highway outside of the city so that buses carrying 
protestors could not get through. As many as 60 people were injured 
and most of the buses had to turn back. But the rally was a success. 
An estimated 800,000 people congregated under the city's Christ the 
Redeemer statue to demand that a new constitution be ratified only 
with a two-thirds vote in the assembly, and that the call for 
autonomy be respected.

Mr. Morales, who badly needs to maintain the appearance of public 
support so that the international community tolerates his takeover, 
had to be embarrassed by this outpouring of democratic opposition. He 
is trying to spin the constitutional crisis as a confrontation 
between races and economic classes. But he has to worry about places 
like the poor and largely indigenous city of El Alto, just above La 
Paz, where there is evidence to suggest that many who voted for him 
are unhappy with his unlawful intervention in the constitutional 
process and growing impatient with his failure to deliver on economic promises.

This is where U.S. drug policy comes in. Railing against the Yankees 
who want to destroy peasant income has proven extremely effective in 
keeping the Morales base -- the country's indigenous coca growers who 
brought him to power -- energized and his numbers afloat.

He reaffirmed this last month. As his opposition swelled he suddenly 
announced that he would authorize a near doubling of the number of 
hectares that may legally produce coca. Then last week he inaugurated 
a coca industrialization plant in the province of Cochabamba, 
financed by his government along with Cuba and Venezuela. According 
to press reports, Mr. Morales told the Cochabamba crowd that coca 
"never killed anyone" and that the U.S. "should have a law to do away 
with drug addicts."

Mr. Morales shouldn't wish too hard for that. If Washington policy 
makers ever decide to tackle the demand for cocaine and stop blaming 
supply, Mr. Morales's political career would be in jeopardy. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake