Where the temporary government rules indefinitely

May 5: Bolivia Presidential election
POSTPONED INDEFINITELY

Out of all the countries in Latin America, Bolivia may be the least prepared for a pandemic. It has only 11 ICU beds per 10,000 inhabitants and fewer than 100 ventilators in the whole country. Only Honduras, Haiti, and Venezuela spend less on healthcare per capita. There is exactly one hospital equipped to treat severe Covid-19 cases in all of La Paz and the neighboring city of El Alto, an urban area of four million people. 

As of Wednesday, only 1053  people have tested positive for the virus in Bolivia. But 55 have already died, making it the country with the second-largest Covid-19 mortality rate in Latin America. To avoid catastrophe, Bolivia’s government, under the leadership of interim president Jeanine Áñez Chávez, has imposed severe, even dictatorial lockdown measures. In Santa Cruz, Bolivia's biggest city and the home of the largest number of Covid-19 cases, armed soldiers patrol the streets to make sure they are empty. Nearly 600 people were arrested on the first day of quarantine alone. In La Paz, anyone found violating the lockdown faces a fine of up to 1,000 bolivianos, half of the monthly minimum wage. (People are permitted to shop for groceries on certain days in groups determined by national ID number.)

Bolivia is not alone. In El Salvador, those who break the lockdown are forced to spend 30 days in “virus containment centers.” Guatemala and Peru are likewise using their military to keep citizens indoors. Those countries in Latin America with the weakest healthcare systems have generally imposed the strictest social distancing measures and punishments. But more than any other leader in the region, Áñez’s authoritarian use of force risks delegitimizing her government. She became president last year during an unprecedented national crisis, and her party, the Democrat Social Movement, remains unpopular. In the last election, they got just four percent of the vote. 

The crisis started last October, when it emerged that Evo Morales, Bolivia's socialist president for almost 14 years and its first leader of indigenous descent, might have rigged a national election in his favor. Although popular, Morales’s victory before the election was not secure. Bolivia’s constitution deems a second round of elections unnecessary only if a candidate gets more than 40 percent of the vote and is at least 10 points ahead of the other candidates. Morales hoped to avoid a runoff vote against Carlos Mesa, his closest rival. After the election took place and Morales won by a suspicious margin, an investigation by the Organization of American States found that Morales’s government had used two hidden servers and falsified polling officials’ signatures to manipulate vote counting. 

Tens of thousands of protesters, many of them students, took to the streets of La Paz and Santa Cruz, demanding the transparent release of election results. When Morales's supporters came out to meet them, the protests became violent. For weeks, the country appeared to be in chaos. The commander of the armed forces, General Williams Kaliman, appeared on national TV and suggested that Morales step down “for the good of Bolivia.” The ex-president resigned and left the country two days later. Soon after, the two highest ranking members of the Senate, both loyal Morales supporters, resigned in protest. But they failed to realize that by resigning they would give away control of Bolivia to a marginal opposition party. With their resignations, Áñez, then the Senate's vice president, became next in line to assume the presidency. She was sworn in as the country's interim leader on November 12. Her administration had just two mandates: to pacify the country and organize new elections. 

From exile in Mexico and now Argentina, Morales has claimed that he was ousted by a coup d'etat authored by Áñez. Covid-19 has boosted his narrative, mostly because Áñez cancelled the elections scheduled for May 3 to avoid the spread of the virus. No new date has been scheduled, but Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal has ruled that they should take place by the end of September. Morales has accused Áñez of using the pandemic as an excuse to hold on to power. His supporters claim the lockdown is a strategy to silence Morales’s party, the Movimiento al Socialismo, or MAS. 

Áñez’s actions have not exactly weakened Morales’s narrative. On November 19, 2019, police and military forces used helicopters and armoured vehicles to disperse a group of pro-Morales protesters who were blocking access to a hydrocarbon plant in Senakata, a neighborhood of El Alto. Nine people died in confrontations with the security forces. Another nine were killed when police used firearms, teargas canisters, and batons against peaceful protesters in Sacaba, a city in the Chapare region. Hundreds were injured in both confrontations. Then, early this year, Áñez a religious conservative, announced her candidacy for the presidential elections on a pro-business and anti corruption platform, breaking a promise she’d made to step down after leading a transition government. And just this month, she extended Bolivia’s lockdown, issuing a decree that included a provision allowing for the prosecution of “individuals who incite non-compliance with this decree or misinform or cause uncertainty to the population.” Critics fear the provision will be used to suppress freedom of expression and target political opponents.

Áñez has tried to portray herself as the best option to defeat Morales’s hand-picked successor, Luis Arce. But she has been unable to unify Morales’s detractors under her leadership. Polls show that voters slightly prefer Carlos Mesa, a former president who was forced to resign during a wave of protests in 2005, as an anti-MAS candidate. Luis Fernando Camacho, an ultra-conservative evangelical and formerly popular anti-Morales leader, falls behind both, but still commands enough support to rob Áñez or Mesa of a victory. 

Áñez herself seems to be betting that her two immediate rivals will endorse her after the first round of elections, where no candidate is expected to win enough votes to avoid a runoff. Her supporters say Mesa lies too far to the left, Camacho too far to the right, and that voters will choose Áñez as the centrist option. But Covid-19 has complicated the picture. To navigate this crisis, Áñez will have to make difficult and unpopular decisions. Bolivia's federal budget is among the lowest in the region. There will be little emergency financial support in the form of payments to the informal workers who constitute 80 percent of the country’s workforce and who risk falling into poverty during lockdown. As gas and oil prices continue to fall, Áñez may even be forced to cut the budget for government-backed social programs that brought many people out of poverty.  

The interim president’s chance to prove herself as an effective leader comes in the form of a $327 million IMF loan that she can use to upgrade Bolivia’s healthcare system in time to properly confront Covid-19. But she will need much more than that to make up for Morales's 14 years of meagre healthcare investment. (He invested three times as much money in sports facilities as he did in healthcare infrastructure.)

The MAS, on the other hand, has little to lose. Morales’s sudden fall from power has at least temporarily absolved his party from having to solve what could be the worst health and economic crisis Bolivia has ever seen. MAS’s leaders have also proven themselves wiser than their opponents in one respect: they have united under one candidate. This was no easy feat. There were tensions within the party long before Morales left the country. The former president ruled with the help of a handful of close allies who treated lower ranking party members with disdain. Many MAS newcomers would be happy to see Morales replaced with a younger and less divisive figure. But they have chosen to put their individual interests aside, unanimously accepting Morales’s choice of Arce, the president’s former finance minister and one of his most loyal friends. The strategy may pay off. Arce is currently leading the polls with 33 percent of the vote. 

2020 was supposed to be a crucial year for Bolivia. After 14 years of Morales’s rule, the country would get to decide whether to continue with his legacy. But the interim government’s management of the ongoing crisis may influence voters just as much as Morales’s long tenure.