The Bolivian Coup Overturned

The problem with coups, if you are on the side of hating democracy, is that you have to be willing to kill your opponents in order to obtain power. Coups usually happen when the wealthy and armed don’t like the results of democracy. In Bolivia, the coup that overthrew Evo Morales was one of the most unfortunate events on the international scene in the last decade. Even though Morales absolutely made a lot of mistakes, the real issue is that the Bolivian right can’t win because they openly despise the indigenous majority. And now that they have held elections, Morales’ party won a clear victory.

If confirmed, the victory would represent a sensational political fightback for Mas, which was left reeling last year when its leader was forced to flee the country after trying to secure an unprecedented fourth term as president.

“It’s a return to the kind of mandate they had when Evo was first elected in 2005,” said Jim Shultz, the founder of the Bolivia-focused Democracy Centre.

For Áñez’s outgoing conservative interim government, which took power after Morales’s banishment, it was a stinging rebuke. “It tells us that the rightwing in Bolivia has no broad political support – not even close,” Shultz said.

“The rightwing was given a chance to govern and proved that it is only interested in its own power and in itself and has contempt for the indigenous and poor of the country. They demonstrated that by pretending they had legitimacy that they didn’t, by overseeing real human rights abuses and impunity, and by being incompetent and corrupt in their governance. And people weren’t going to have it.”

One exit poll suggested Arce had achieved a thumping victory, winning a majority in five of Bolivia’s nine departments. The poll said Arce had secured more than 65% of the vote in La Paz, 63% in Cochabamba, 62% in Oruro and 51% in Potosí.

I dunno, maybe don’t despise the majority of your nation. Not that the Republican Party has learned this in the U.S.