Pres. Evo Morales wins Bolivia referendum by 63%

Run time: 07:16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMzxknlLfFs   Posted on YouTube: August 13, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 13, 2008 By DU Member: L. Coyote Views on DU: 513

 
A HUGE blow to the right wing in Bolivia, a victory for Bolivians and towards nationalizing energy resources.

Nationalizing means taking those businesses away. They are just basically
renegotiating a more just split...to help the native Bolivian people.

http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/

"By any measure, Evo’s victory in Sunday’s ‘revocatoria’ vote was a political landslide. According to an official tally based on 75% of votes recorded (and his margin increases as those votes are counted) Morales won 65% of the vote, surpassing his already formidable 2005 victory by 11%. He won majorities in five of the country’s departments – La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Potosi, and Pando – and is split bascally 50/50 in two others that are part of the supposed opposition, Chuquisaca and Tarija.

"In what other nation on earth is the President supported by 2/3 of voters? More dramatic still this comes on the heels of decades of Bolivian Presidents elected with less than a quarter of the vote." --Jim Schultz

I'm shocked at their coverage. Shocked, I tell you. :sarcasm:

this sort of popularity, coupled with a democratic socialist agenda, means: he's a dictator.

The Bushites have been pouring millions of our (non-existent--borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia) tax dollars into funding, organizing and training--and, more than likely, arming--the white racists who want to secede from the Morales government and take Bolivia's gas/oil reserves with them. The first blow to this Bush-backed scheme was the election of a leftist--the beloved "bishop of the poor," Fernando Lugo--earlier this year in neighboring Paraguay, which is adjacent to the gas/oil rich, secessionist Bolivian provinces, and where the U.S. military had been holding maneuvers under the Bush-friendly, rightwing government, very likely in anticipation of providing U.S. military support to the secessionists*. President Lugo wants the U.S. military out of his country, and is aligned with Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and the South American left in general (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay).

Now this. A smashing victory for Morales, who won 50% of the vote even in the fascist provinces, and an unprecedented 65% overall. This is truly unusual unity in Bolivia--where historically presidents win elections in multi-party fields with maybe forty percent of the vote, and of course have a struggle in governing a politically splintered country. Morales broke that precedent in his first election, winning a big--for Bolivia--victory of 54% of the vote. He has now smashed that record, with a 65% win, and the rich and racist elite are exposed as the small minority they are, overall in the country. It is their provinces that are split--50/50--not the nation as a whole, which has backed Morales 65/35.

As Jim Schultz says: Where else in the world does a president govern with such a large mandate? Well, actually, Ecuador's leftist president, Rafael Correa, has similar support. And Hugo Chavez--who lost a recent constitutional referendum by a hairsbreadth (50.7% v 49.3%--possibly due to rightwing Catholic prelates' opposition to an equal rights for gays and women amendment, among 69 amendments--a confusing ballot)--won the last presidential election with 63% of the vote, and continues to enjoy personal popularity. The question is: Will Morales' huge popularity translate into support for the new Constitution, which Morales will likely put to a vote fairly soon?

I think it will, partly because the opposition is so goddamned ugly--they are white racists--and partly because the Bushites and the corporate media have less sway in Bolivia. The small coca farmers recently ejected the USAID from their region, for instance, saying that the Bushites were using U.S. aid to oppose Morales and to live in luxury amidst dirt poor farmers. USAID has had less success in Bolivia than it has had, say, among righwing student groups in Venezuela. Also, many Bolivians are REALLY poor--they have no TV and thus are less subject to fascist propaganda. They have their own word-of-mouth communication systems, and real free speech. The indigenous are in the majority in Bolivia, and they are very unified and adamant about reversing centuries of discrimination and rape of the land by the fascist elite and their U.S./corporate backers.

In fact, Morales came to power on the heels of a popular revolt against Bechtel corp., which had privatized the water in Cochabamba, and then raised the price of water to the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater! It is this kind of arrogant, profiteering U.S. corporate behavior which has spurred revolts all over South America, but the relationship to popular revolt has been most intense in Bolivia. And the other issue--very intense in Bolivia--is the U.S./Bush corrupt, failed, murderous "war on drugs." Morales himself was a poor coca leaf farmer, and is still head of the coca leaf farmers' union. He was abducted and beaten up by the police in a union protest against the U.S. "war on drugs." Bolivians reject the INSANE U.S. drug policy that coca leaf chewing and tea drinking--a thousand year old tradition in the Andes (because coca leaves are high in vitamins and proteins, and essential to survival in the frigid, high altitude mountains)--should be crimnalized. They make a SANE distinction between coca leaves and cocaine, and have been much more effective at fighting the cocaine trade because of this. And U.S. corporations, of course, are heavily involved in "war on drugs" profiteering, and the promotion of fascism and militarism throughout the region.

This Morales victory is also very, very important to retarding U.S./Bush schemes for splitting off oil-rich provinces in Venezuela and Ecuador, where there is evidence that similar schemes are afoot. The Bushites' reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet (a nuclear fleet) in the Caribbean, off the coast of the oil-rich Venezuelan province of Zulia, may be intended to provide support for the fascist elite in Zulia, in a move for "independence" from the Chavez government. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has stated that there is a three-country Bushite plot to create fascist mini-states in control of the oil. Morales' successful effort to pull his country together in the face of this Bushite scheming with the rich elite is a serious blow to this Bushite strategy. Bolivia was the least unified, and most fractious, of the Bolivarian countries--with this violent, greedy, white racist minority in the gas/oil rich provinces, one of whose governors just yesterday called for a military overthrow of Morales (not likely). To unify Bolivia is to unify the continent for democracy and social justice. It will further plans for the recently created South American "Common Market," and for the self-determination of all Latin American countries. It is a tremendous victory for the people of Latin America.

-----

*"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

Rumsfeld urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. The Bushites don't have any "friends and allies" in South America, except the fascist narcothugs running Colombia, the corrupt "free tradists" in Peru, and fascist cells planning coups within oil-rich leftist countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. The Bushites basically can't win elections in South America--which (except for Colombia) has far more transparent vote counting than we do--thus, the secession strategy, to get control of the oil.

One of the issues in the new Constitution proposed by the Morales government and the indigenous majority removing the current Constitutional term limit on the president. Our own country did not have a term limit on the president prior to the 1950s. Most of our Founders considered term limits to be undemocratic. The two-term limit was pushed through in the 1950s by the Republicans specifically as an anti-FDR, anti-New Deal measure. They did not want a pro-poor president to ever stay in office that long again. FDR ran for and won FOUR terms in office (and died in his fourth term--he was "president for life").

The thing is, the entrenched rich have their money and their inherited power, and their private clubs and cabals, and the poor have only one advantage: time. With time, a good leader can make inroads into the power of "organized money," as FDR called it. ("Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!"--Franklin Delano Roosevelt).

So, what all of these South American leaders--Chavez in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador and Morales in Bolivia--are aiming for is TIME. Time to undo the vast corruption of the rich elite, the untoward power of the U.S. corporations in cahoots with the rich elite, and time to address the vast poverty that has resulted from fascist/corporate rule. The crisis that South America has been facing over the last decade is very similar to the crisis that FDR was elected to address--the Great Depression. Decades of brutal fascist rule, followed by Clintonite "free trade" (global corporate piracy) and World Bank/IMF loan sharks, followed by Bushite "free trade," World Bank/IMF loan sharks and fuckwad scheming to topple democratic governments (including a violent military coup attempt in Venezuela), has left South America with vast populations of extremely poor people, ruined economies, and governments that have constantly to deal with Bushite plots and fascist/corporate 'news' lies and slander. The new leftist leaders need TIME to undo all of this harm, and to set South America on a more prosperous, independent course.

There is no evidence--zero, zilch--that Hugo Chavez is a "dictator," or even mildly "authoritarian." The evidence just isn't there. It is a BIG LIE--very similar to the Bush junta's lie about Iraq and WMDs. The corporate 'news' fuckwads think if they repeat it often enough, people will believe it. Well, some people who don't think, and who don't consult alternative news sources, do believe it. North Americans, anyway. South Americans know full well that Chavez is not a "dictator." Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, for instance, recently said, of Chavez: "You can criticize Chavez on a lot of things, but not on democracy." Chavez is a thorough-going democrat with a small d.

Chavez and the Chavistas put lifting the term limit on Chavez TO A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE. Some "dictator," eh? And when they lost--very narrowly (with a complicated ballot, containing 69 amendments, on multiple issues)--they gracefully conceded and moved on. They may re-visit the term limit issue, in a vote confined to that issue alone, and why shouldn't they? They lost by only 1%. And it is, after all, A VOTE...of ALL OF THE PEOPLE!

Compare and contrast to Colombia, where Bush's pal Alvaro Uribe BRIBED legislators (one of whom is in jail for it) to extend his term of office. The Bushites have larded $6 BILLION in military aid onto the Uribe government, which has one of the worst human rights records on earth. Last year, 29 political candidates were murdered in Colombia. Over forty union organizers have been murdered so far this year alone. Leftist organizers--also human rights workers and journalists--live in constant peril in Colombia. These political murders occur with almost complete impunity. Rightwing death squads are running rampant. Voters are routinely bullied. Which country has a "dictatorship"? Venezuela--where none of these things occur, and which holds elections that put our own to shame for their transparency--or Colombia, Bush's favorite country (outside of Saudi Arabia), where, if you raise your head in a leftist cause, you risk being shot or hacked to death and your body parts thrown into a mass grave?

It is total and complete bullshit that Chavez is a "dictator." In fact, Chavez has greatly enhanced citizen participation in Venezuela, as have these other Bolivarian leaders--Morales in Bolivia, and Correa in Ecuador. For the first time in South American history, the poor have a voice in their own destiny. It is a slander on the poor and on the majority of voters of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, to assert that they would elect "dictators." They don't want "dictators"; they want a FAIR government, that rights the wrongs in their society, that defends the sovereignty of their countries vis a vis the U.S. and its corporate bully power, and that cooperates with other Latin American countries for mutual prosperity.

Strength and tyranny are two very different things. The left needs strong leaders, to act on behalf of the people against humongous powers like Exxon Mobile and Bechtel backed by the U.S. military. Weak leftist leaders invite fascist coups and U.S. intervention. The Bushites thought they saw a weakness in Morales' government--these racist secessionists--and pushed it for all it was worth, and lost, big time. And now they will start calling Morales a "dictator" because, like FDR, he seeks more TIME (removal of term limits) to right the wrongs in Bolivia, and to join with all the many other leftist governments in solidarity against dictation by the United States and its corporate rulers.

Who are the dictators? Morales, Chavez and Correa? Or Bush, Cheney and Exxon Mobil?