It takes some real chutzpah to say some of the things that President Mesa said on Sunday. Let’s take a look at one passage from his television address:

You have been able to follow me the entire time that I have been president, particularly since July 18 when we had the referendum, and there is something that is obvious and clear: they won’t let me govern; they won’t let me govern.

What does this mean? It means that in those things that transform the country, those things that we have constructed, you and I, you who believe in my word, who have told me “yes” in the referendum, who have said yes to a new country in the municipal elections... because you have a clear idea of the horizon and of the country, you know that I have not been able to move forward since July 18, with the “yes” of more than 90 percent of the Bolivian people who, with hope and with faith, went out to vote...

The suggestion here is clearly that 90 percent of the people of Bolivia are on board with Mesa’s program, and a very very tiny minority just won’t leave well enough alone. There’s Mesa’s background as a commercial journalist coming through – he knows how to use selected statistics to promote a very narrow telling of the truth, and how to use the media to play on peoples’ sympathies to portray the rulers as victims. Some points:

• Voting in the referendum was legally required. Despite this, nearly half the population either did not vote at all, or cast null ballots.
• Opinion polls before the referendum showed that at least 80 percent of the Bolivian population favored “nationalization” of the gas. That word never appeared on the referendum, and it was not clear to most voters what they were voting FOR, only that voting “no” was clearly a vote AGAINST any larger state role in the gas industry. So, rather than a referendum on confidence in the president, which is how Mesa wants to portray it now, it was, if anything, a referendum on sellout gas policies of past administrations.
• Just after New Years, the pollster Apoyo released a new survey that showed Mesa’s aproval rating at 56 percent. An approval rating above 50, though a long way from 90, is always good news for a sitting president, especially in Latin America. But the poll was taken before Mesa announced the hike in fuel prices, provoking the greatest civil unrest in months, perhaps since the “gas war” of last October. Mesa’s popularity has certainly dropped significantly since then, the question is how much.
• The poll was also taken, according to Angus Reid, in the cities of La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz... and nowhere else. These are the four largest cities in Bolivia, but make up less than half the population, and not economically representative of the rest of the country.  

Mesa also says “If they demand changes of that magnitude, they should win a general election first, to demonstrate that they have the support of the majority of the population,” and vaguely alludes to the great democratic achievement of the December municipal elections. Well, in the first quote, he tied the opposition’s legitimacy to a “general” election for a reason: the big winner in the municipal elections was Evo Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which garnered more support than all the traditional parties – including Mesa’s Revolutionary Nationalist  Movement (MNR) – together, emerging as the most powerful single party in the country. In that same poll mentioned above, Evo Morales received a 40 percent approval rating. Just as Mesa’s support is likely to have waned since the poll was taken due to the current crisis, Evo may rise even more as he continues to criticize the president.  

So, Mesa can whine all he wants, but the facts suggest that this discontent is much broader than “a few very small radical groups.” He can complain that those who oppose him have never won a “general election...” but then, neither has he.