BOLIVIA

Politic Trust Should Not Be Given to Morales’ Bourgeois Government,
a Popular Front in Service of the Imperialist Re-Colonization!

Article retrieved from the Luta Operária newspaper # 118, 2^nd half of December/05

In January, Morales, the leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), will take charge as Bolivian president. Morales conquered 50,9% of popular votes beating Banzer’s ex-vice-president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, who got 31,9% of votes in the elections that took place on December 16. Since the MAS candidate got more than half of the totality of votes, his name did not have to be conformed by the national congress as requested by the Bolivian draconian legislation.

Morales’s victory occurred five months after the heroic combats performed by the exploited Bolivians who had dropped Mesa. It proves that the leftist scheme orchestrated by the weak Bolivian congress, the covering president Rodriguez, the bourgeoisie, the imperialism and the MAS, in connection with the Bolivian Labor Confederation (COB), is achieving its objectives.

In order to keep the farce of “democratic polls”, they imposed that the rebels to move backwards with the popular rebellion and with the cabildos’ idea of direct democracy. It is evident that the political scenery has changed in Bolivia. If the deliver proposed on the manifestations and blockades of May and June were the open fight towards the nationalization of the transnational companies and against any type of reimbursement to them, now, however, things are different. The celebration of Morales’ victory occurs under the chains of illusion that the pro-imperialist “popular government” regime will attain all of the masses’ claims.

A BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY ACTIVATED AGAINST THE POPULAR REBELLION

Electoral results are a deformed expression of classes’ struggle itself and, in Bolivia, it wasn’t different. The masses’ movement was deviated towards an electoral plan, plot that was controlled by the bourgeoisie. The MAS conquered a booming victory because all of the exploited people clearly voted believing that they were voting against the imperialism and against the bourgeoisie. However, Morales’ candidacy program did not have this shape. It will serve to help the actual regime to breath.

The electoral performance was planned as a strategic step with the objective to close a period of popular rebellion started in October of 2003 and restarted with a waking up resurgence in May/ June of 2005. The MAS, for that reason, did not get to the government through a stable transaction inside the process of political presidential succession. It happened in a period in which the old political regime was coming apart because of profound crises in the bourgeois state and its institutions. Since it has dropped two presidents, the masses’ movement is getting stronger and stronger. However, it did not conquer the power yet because it doesn’t have a communist direction with strategic objectives to liquidate the bourgeois state, to expropriate the capitalists and to implement the proletarian dictatorship.

A POPULAR FRONT TO DEFEND THE INTERESTS OF THE
TRANSNATIONAL OIL COMPANIES

Morales wasn’t the imperialism preferential candidate, but the only possible one during this period of masses’ popular rising. Since the bourgeoisie could not impose a president who “belonged” directly to them in order to confront the movement, they accepted Morales by firming a series of compromises partially already announced by Morales during his political campaign. Compromises such as respect for the contracts firmed with the multinationals and for the existing laws established by previous governments. “If elected as president, it will disgracefully be my duty to respect the neoliberal laws. We can make some changes by pronouncements and by the legislative body. However, at the beginning, there will not be many alterations because twenty years of neoliberal laws cannot be eradicated at once (La Gaceta, 12/15/05).”

The MAS conquered the majority of the House of Representatives. Since it follows the logic of the bourgeois democracy, they will have to negotiate the 2/3 of votes necessary in order to approve important dealings in the House with other bourgeois parties. It is important to take into account that they are the minority in the Senate. The Bourgeoisie’s right wing attained the majority of the key political positions, imposing a fundamental opposition to the national government.

A popular front type of government based on the conciliation of classes will assume the presidency in January. As the Bolivian bourgeoisie businesses’ manager, Morales’ central job will be to contest the masses’ revolutionary fight as an intention to safeguard the capitalist order. Consequently, the MAS will follow the same trajectory it has being taking since the popular rebellion occurred in October of 2003 and advanced in the popular journeys in May/June of 2005. Back then, the MAS opposed the popular demand for the nationalization without reimbursement. It also defended, in contra-position to the exploited necessities and aspirations, the payment of 50% of the total of incomes produced by the transnational companies to the state in form of royalties.

The coca-plantation peasants’ ex-leader is, therefore, an indirect agent of the dominant class. The class that will try to control the new government mediate the congress and the conjunction of bourgeois institutions, since the power is still in the capitalist’s hands. They control not only the National Congress, but also the municipalities and the judiciary power. In addition, they run, with rigid hands, all of the means of production through the army forces.

Morales’ administration will be marked by a government fragility that was created by the present political instability that took over the country in the last three years. Its instability could be seen throughout the popular rebellions. They just did not conquer the power because of the absence of a revolutionary direction, masses’ nucleus of power and popular armament.

The most lucid sectors of the international dominant class have conscience that Morales will be their last chance to control Bolivia before they have to impose a military dictatorship in the country. In the currently conditions, it could take the country to a civil war as informed to Bush by the Financial Times: “The American aid programs represent, today, US’s best opportunity to permanently influence Bolivia. By isolating the country, the United States will be pushing Morales towards the left. It can accelerate the political polarization in the region (12/10/05).” However, if the new government does not answer the masses’ requests, they will again go to the streets trying to conquer their objectives by direct action. The MAS’s control over the workers and over popular organizations, such as the Bolivian Labor Confederation (COB), is extremely limited. Even though the popular movement did not advance towards the power, considering that they have the objective conditions to do so, they come from partial victories such as the collapse of Cachabamba’s water supply privatization.

BUSH AND LULA UNITED TO DISCIPLINE EVO MORALES

Inside the conjuncture above presented, it is evident that Morales will confront central matters.  He’ll face troubles such as the popular need for the hydrocarbonates’ nationalization and the Santa Cruz’s oligarchy exigencies for the autonomy of its province to be decided in July on a referendum. It is important to mention that this region concentrates most of the country’s oil and gas refineries and soybean plantations.

Speaking, right after the elections, Morales affirmed that “the government will exercise its right to the Bolivian state hydrocarbonates’ propriety. However, it does not mean that the capital of the multinationals will be confiscated or expropriated (La Gaceta, 12/19/05).”  This program is directed towards the establishment of a “cooperative relation” with the United States.

Bush has Lula as its loyal spokesperson in Latin America. It is not coincidence that as part of the deal to politically control the region, the Petrobras, a Brazilian oil company, is the principal multinational that explores the oil and gas in Bolivia. It represents 20% of the national income and 40% of the industrial production. The Petrobras controls about 1/3 of the Bolivian gas.

With the MAS’s victory, the Petrobras announced that it will keep the company normally functioning, but will not make new investments until the economic situation gets clear. It is an indication that the negotiations between Bush, Lula and Morales are moving forwards. In response to US’s pressure, even before its victory, Morales traveled to Brazil in order to make a compromise with Lula that the Petrobras and his Yankee landlord’s interests will not be affected if he won the elections.

The whole picture points to a rich political conjuncture which will polarize Bolivia and the entire continent in the next period. Side by side with Venezuela, the outpost will concentrate the expectations of the world-wide vanguard towards the anti-imperialist motion in Latin America.

The revolutionary Marxists are calling the Bolivian proletarian class vanguard to learn the lessons about the MAS’s conduct in opened betray to the historical and immediate interests of the exploited, before it assumes the power. We should not nurture any type of political trust in this popular front bourgeois government. It sustains itself by playing with the masses with the objective to paralyze the fight and move forwards in defense of the imperialism and the bourgeoisie. It is necessary, now more then ever, to be prepared to confront Morales’ bourgeois government by raising the central needs of the October fights. It includes the nationalization of the hydrocarbonates and transnational companies, without any type of reimbursement, and by keeping these companies under the workers’ control, starting, for instance, with the Petrobras. There is also a call for the agrarian reform with the expropriation of large landowners because, even with the MAS’s entire populist front demagogy, its government is the guardian of all of the private proprieties and the imperialist pillage.