Bolivia: El presidente Mesa dice "No me dejan gobernar"

Here is a translation of Gissel's notebook entry:

In an address to the nation, President Carlos Mesa warned the Bolivian People that he would quit if they do not allow him to govern. Mesa said that he does not intend to use violence and act as did his predecessor, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, in response to the recent mobilizations against rising fuel prices and in favor of a new Hydrocarbons Law that reclaims the country’s hydrocarbons (natural gas and petroleum) as the property of the Bolivian people.

Mesa claimed that he has the support of the 90% of the population that answered “yes” to last summer’s gas referendum, while other political forces, which have between 5 and 7 percent popular support, are now trying to “lock up” his administration.

Things got complicated for the government when it decided to raise the price of gasoline and diesel, the main fuels consumed in Bolivia. Although the price of liquid petroleum gas, used for cooking and heating in Bolivian homes, has so far remained static, the social movements are criticizing the authorities for applying, without any reforms, the same neoliberal economic policies that have impoverished the people here for eighteen years.

Responding to Mesa’s announcement, Coordinating Committee for the Defense of Gas and Hydrocarbons spokesman Oscar Olivera pointed out that this was the same discourse the president used during the referendum, saying that if the people didn’t vote he would leave, and if they didn’t answer “yes” to the government’s economic and hydrocarbon policies, he would leave; essentially, a politics of blackmail.

“We will in no way accept another political solution based on constitutional succession, as happened last year” (when then-Vice President Mesa became president after the resignation of Sánchez de Lozada), Olivera told Narco News, “whether it be Hormando Vaca Diez (president of the Senate), Mario Cossio (president of the Chamber of Deputies, Bolivia’s lower house of Congress), or Rodrígo Belze (president of the Supreme Court). The solutions must be ones that address the root of the crisis, not simply early elections as some have proposed. That won’t change the situation; things will just stay the same. Such proposals are superficial. We will not tire in our efforts. There must be a hydrocarbons law that recovers our property, so that the country will have an economic base. We also need a Constituents’ Assembly with spaces for all Bolivians, so that we can build the country we want together, all the people, not just the few who have decided things until now.”

(MP3 Audio of Olivera's comments here.)

In his address, Mesa acknowledged three demands in the uprising of last october: the gas referendum, the new Hydrocarbons Law, and the Constituents’ Assembly. He discredited those who wish to change the neoliberal model.

“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,” said Mesa. Meanwhile, “why should I have to change my government’s line?”

The Bolivian social movements have risen up in protest against the economic measures that Mesa hopes to implement. They demand a changes in his policies that would provide equality, justice, and employment for all Bolivians.

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.

Thanks Dan and Gissel for covering this. I went to check out more of Mesa’s speech, and came away equally incredulous.

He suggests that Bolivians, rather than cynically moaning about price hikes in fuel, should re-examine the five questions of the July 18th referendum, that “the questions point towards change, they have a sense of a new vision, a sense of recuperation by the State, of higher taxes and better deals with the petroleum companies operating in Bolivia, without a doubt.” The fact is, those five questions (which were inexplicably drafted in Washington), have been examined thoroughly by many parties, and a consensus as to their exact meaning has yet to be reached. In the weeks prior to the referendum, even the Bolivian Minister of Hydrocarbons confessed not to understand them fully, and admitted that in the event of a yes vote, the Bolivian Congress would have the unenviable job of trying to interpret them.

Mesa speaks of change, and pretends that the referendum heralds that change. Yet one of the most seemingly simple questions on the ballot – regarding the desirability of the State recuperating gas from the well head – is actually a bit more complicated than that.

I was in Bolivia to cover the referendum, and the one thing that everyone – from the various government functionaries quoted in newspapers, to Mesa himself, to the alteños on the barricades – agreed on was that the recuperation would not apply to the existing contracts Bolivia has with oil companies. Seventy-eight oil companies, to be exact. And if I remember correctly, those contracts would be fulfilled, meaning that those 78 companies could continue extracting gas at the world’s lowest costs for the next 39 years.

What will be remaining of Bolivia’s gas after 39 years? A hollow shell, like that created by the Spanish when they emptied Potosí of its silver? This is the “change” and “new vision” that Mesa brags about?

It was that very question which led some people to refer to the election as a vote on nationalization, yet nowhere on the ballot did that word appear, except when scrawled across it in protest. I see that question, not as having the slightest thing to do with nationalization, but rather, as a complete obfuscation, serving the interests of those who, like Mesa, can afford to pay the higher prices on diesl and gasoline.

Mesa tries to discredit his opponents by saying that they are small in number, that he cannot imagine them counting as many as 10,000, and he complains that it isn’t fair for them to be preventing him from governing, saying,  “It’s not fair that after the popular response to the referendum [sic], of the municipal elections [won overwhelmingly by the opposition MAS], the productive dialogue [resulting in...?], that small groups of people come back to shove us up against the wall with an excuse [the price hikes], and nothing more than an excuse.” To refer to the price hikes as an excuse shows a complete lack of understanding of a largely poor and spread out population which depends on transportation for its livelihood. The people of Bolivia have more “excuses” than most to rise up against their government, and I expect that in the days and weeks to come, we will see if his estimate of less than 10,000 holds any water, transnationally provided, or otherwise.

Dan makes a point above, that I feel is worth reiterating: one must remember, while reading Mesa’s televised address, that the referendum on which he hangs his entire mandate and legitimacy saw forty percent of the electorate abstaining and fifteen percent of ballots either blank or void. This resulted in only about forty-five percent of the electorate having voted at all (and even less voting yes). Not much on which to base one’s legitimacy.

Mesa then goes on to say that while he is busy governing, “those who are not governing have the luxury of asking for utopia, the heavens, the sun, the moon, and the stars.” This is patently absurd. In Bolivia, no one is asking for utopia; people are too busy courageously fighting to bring former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to justice for his role in the massacres of October, 2003. The heavens are not on their list of demands; instead they are going for the Constituent’s Assembly, promised them that same October when Mesa assumed power. As for the sun, they’d rather have affordable drinking water, as evidenced by the people of El Alto’s eviction of the transnational Aguas del Illimari. The moon and stars can wait too. Oscar Olivera, in his response to Mesa’s address to the nation, sums up quite clearly what people are asking for: “The people want to participate, the people want another kind of democracy, the people want economic security, the people don’t want more anxiety.”

Mesa would do well to stop believing his own press and yes men (referendum-related and otherwise) and pay attention to the people he claims to represent, who are making their demands as clear as could be imagined.

The final thing that drew my attention was Mesa’s theorizing about what might happen this week if violence continues or increases. What Gissel reports is, of course, true: Mesa stated that he isn’t like Goni and that there will be no tanks in the streets or state violence. Confusingly, he says those words sometime after leading his audience through a lengthy and elaborate “hypothesis,” the possibility that “protesters and activists in any city in the country decide to assault offices, burn buildings, attack state symbols such as the National Palace or Parliament...a hypothesis of a situation of growing violence, the occupation, for example, of the offices of Aguas del Illimani, would oblige the government not only to guard the perimeters of many public and private offices, but also to use tear gas and to contain the violence with violence, and that we would lose Bolivian lives. What would you say if in 5 or 6 or 7 days, [I] had to return to give you the message of 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 dead fellow citizens?”

How is one supposed to read that? Is this a message to the right-wingers who are demanding that he get on with governing (a euphemism for cracking down)? Is it a threat? And if so, how are we supposed to read his later declarations of stepping down from power rather than resorting to violence? Who is President Carlos Mesa, really? A pacifist who doesn’t want to meet the fate of his former boss and end up exiled in Miami, or a hardliner with a “hypothesis?”