Blogging the democratic revolution
They grossly undercounted the amount of support shown by Evo Morales in that strikingly well-executed election this past Sunday. Boz goes into several reasons why in an extremely interesting post here.
Far-left and strongly anti-U.S. Evo Morales has won a decisive victory as president of Bolivia with over 50% of the popular vote, preventing any moves in Congress to deliver the election to any other candidate. There was nothing fraudulent about it, and voter turnout was an amazing 80%. Bolivians who are celebrating this are happy because Morales is the first-ever indigenous Aymara president the nation has ever had. For people who have been shut out from the existing system, for whatever reason, it’s a great step forward to see one of their own in the highest office in the land.…
…according to exit polls. The AP report is here: COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AP) – Bolivia’s Socialist presidential candidate Evo Morales, who has promised to become Washington’s “nightmare,” held an unexpectedly strong lead over his conservative rival in Sunday’s election, according to two independent exit polls. The wide margin means Morales, a coca farmer who has said he will end a U.S.-backed anti-drug campaign aimed at eradicating the crop used to make cocaine, will likely be declared president in January. “If (the U.S.) wants relations, welcome,” Morales said after voting, holding a news conference where piles of coca leaves were spread atop…
Source: El Universal Two years of riots, roadblocks, and instability have culminated in today’s impossibly important presidential election in Bolivia. Bolivia matters because as Bolivia goes politically, so goes South America. The country is often compared to Tibet but politically, it could also (imperfectly) be compared to Iowa, Ohio, or Peoria, Illinois. What direction this wind blows may influence events all over the continent. There’s more to that, though. Far-left Evo Morales is the current frontrunner. If he gets 50% plus 1 vote, he becomes president outright and if he gets less than that, the election moves into the Senate.…
As growing numbers of elections approach and get down to the wire, Boz has all the latest poll numbers from around the region, giving one indication as to how they may go. Read it here.
That????s what happened in Venezuela today. I????m blogging live from Caracas, and today I saw utterly empty polling stations, one after another, guarded only by tinpot military men with big guns and the occasional red-t-shirted chavista troll on the street corner, standing around looking mean and intimidating for voters. On and off it rained, as if to signal the end of Chavez????s fortunes. A news story about the fiasco is here. Miguel Octavio and I went across the entire city of Caracas in search of a polling station full of people. Or half full. Or people at all! We targeted…
The Primero Justice party has pulled out of the coming Venezuelan election Sunday, leaving just Hugo Chavez’s MVR party all by its lonesome to run for Congress. This news comes from Marta Colomina, a well-known journalist in Venezuela. This pullout represents the full unification of the Venezuelan opposition, something never seen in Venezuelan history. They have all decided together to refuse to acquiesce to electoral fraud through a rigged election. All of the parties who can make a statement by pulling out have done so now. They are demanding free and fair elections or they won’t participate at all. This…
…except Hugo Chavez’s MVR party, exiting because the electoral setup is utterly tainted. It lacks transparency, it lacks secrecy and it lacks integrity. By doing this, the opposition is saying: No more participating in fraud. It’s amazing that whole political machines can operate in unity like this. It is the first time I’ve ever seen the Venezuelan political opposition ever agree on anything. Now they have, and now they finally have power. The move comes five days before the scheduled Dec. 4 election day for congressional seats. The only remaining opposition party now is called Nuevo Tiempo, and it’s running…
On Dec. 4, Venezuela will hold Congressional elections. They are expected to be the final nail in the coffin of the Venezuelan opposition as dictator Hugo Chavez consolidates power and installs a Marxist regime. There are pretenses of them being legitimate as a vote however and therein lies the farce. A test of the Smartmatic voting machines and the Cogent Systems fingerprint machines showed that not one ballot had ever been secret when the matter was put before European Union election observers, who indeed were not fooled. That led to a threatened boycott of the election and this morning, the…
Reuters has the first report here. The lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key candidate won over the bring-back-the-death-penalty candidate from the incumbent party. This is considered a suprise upset for the challenger who is said to be slightly more left-leaning, though I am curious about the name of his party ‘Liberal’ – which, internationally, means Libertarian. More to follow… UPDATE: A bit more from Boz here. UPDATE: Boz has a good roundup of the event here. And this interesting commentary here: After independence in the 19th century, most Latin American countries ended up with a two party political system. The two parties were nearly always…
This Sunday, Nov. 27, Honduras holds its presidential election. This is an important election because it’s seen by some analysts as the bellwether of how the all-important next 13 months of elections go in Latin America. Will Latam swing further left or move right with these elections? Honduras is expected to give some sort of indication. But to read Boz’s writeup – and he’s the only one I know covering it (and doing a nice job) – along with all his links – suggests that this isn’t some great argument about Left and Right, it’s more a conglomeration of local…
Miguel Buitrago has uncovered new polling numbers in Bolivia as the elections close in there in less than a month. He’s got terrific insights and observations about the narrowing lead of Evo Morales in the election, along with some anomalies we might not have expected, like the fact that Morales is doing well in Santa Cruz, a place we expected the opposition to take, and that Oruro, a very old traditional – and beautiful – mining town, expected to be a Morales stronghold, apparently is up for grabs. Miguel suspects the government (I think that means non-Morales forces) to likely…
Where’s the hemisphere going politically? Boz has an excellent news roundup showing the latest political cross currents. Among these are a poll showing left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador dropping down in the Mexican polls, Evo Morales of Bolivia apparently ticking downward, Michelle Bachelet of Chile a little lower and possibly facing a runoff and Lourdes Flores in Peru holding her lead (and I’m really glad the godawful Alan Garcia can’t get more than 15%). There are a host of smaller indicators of public sentiment too. Go read the whole thing here.
In the wake of the Fox-Chavez spat, Mexico’s leftist presidential frontrunner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has slid by nearly 8 basis points in the presidential polls. From a Goldman Sachs research note: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines – AMLO Slightly Down on the Polls According to pollster Mitofsky, in November Lopez Obrador (AMLO) lost some ground in the opinion polls, falling to 29.5% in November from 37.9% in August. Most of the intentions to vote lost by AMLO went to PANista candidate Felipe Calderon, who climbed to 24.4% in November from 20.2%. Madrazo (PRI) remained stable in second place in the…
Miguel Buitrago at the first-rate MABB blog has the whole dynamic explained. The short story is this: Based on current polls, far-left leader Evo Morales is in nearly a tie with his nearest rival. Due to how legislative seats are distributed in the Senate, Morales may not get the majority of votes he needs in the upper house of Congress to become president. In the lower house, the outcome is more uncertain. If the polls are right, this is very good news in one sense – that Morales won’t be able to confiscate land and energy through the power of…
It’s final. A court in Colombia has ruled that President Alvaro Uribe can run for office again. A constitutional change is now in effect to allow a president to run for a second term. We’ve been waiting for this news for a long time and it’s reason to celebrate. Uribe is the most popular leader, probably in the world, with a phenomenal 80% approval rating. He’s got it because he’s a revolutionary leader in every sense of the word. No region on earth lacks leadership so sorely as Latin America. President Uribe is a major exception, and his achievements, bringing…
Boz has an excellent roundup of all the week’s polls around Latin America as this critical coming election year beckons. It’s two weeks’ worth this time. Read it here.
Felipe Calderon’s entry into the Mexican presidential race for 2006 creates a whole new dynamic in the election. It’s something I’ve believed since the beginning. Calderon is from the right-leaning PAN party, same as incumbent President Vicente Fox, but he comes across as a different player because he wasn’t Fox’s choice as successor. Fox himself is viewed as a disappointment by many Mexicans for his failure to really reform the country. He’s not an utter disaster but there’s nothing worse than soured hopes from a man who was brought to office as Mexico’s first opposition candidate in over 70 years…
Breaking news – and likely trouble. An electoral board has ruled that the Dec. 4 presidential election will not go through, due to a redistricting dispute. Now, the possibility of roadblocks and using food as a weapon looms. The current caretaker president – who’s in office only because the last two presidents were thrown out by roadblockers – said he would resign if elections were not held by Dec. 4. Well, they’re not being held. I have a blogosphere reaction roundup to follow. But first, here is the news: Agencia EFE has the story here: Electoral court suspends Bolivia’s December…
The bloggers have come up with a real big one on voter fraud in Venezuela. Miguel explains it out very well here. Venezuelan congressional elections are being held on Dec. 4 and a court has ruled in favor of stacking the vote today. See my post here. But that’s not the only problem. Now Javier at Notiven has found thousands of Gonzalezes all born on the same day and the same state, 95% of them in Zulia. He’s got the documents to go see. Here is a translation below from the original on Notiven: Can Venezuelan Electorate Authority explain this?…
In a significant defeat for Venezuela’s democracy, a new voting system installed by the Chavista government, called ‘los morochas’, which disproportionately benefits Chavista incumbents, was affirmed by Venezuela’s Supreme Court, an appointed body stacked with Chavista loyalists. It is expected to raise Hugo Chavez’s representation in the Congress – where he already has a majority – to Kim Il Sung levels of popular ‘support.’ The bell tolls for Venezuelan democracy with this ruling. Non-government organizations like Sumate have stated that this is a blow for democracy and there is no chance of fair elections being held now. This is a…
Boz has an excellent roundup of all the polls being taken around the hemisphere, with at least one for each country. The polls are invaluable tools for sensing which way the winds of change are blowing in this coming fateful election year in the Americas. He also has a link to a very valuable poll from The Economist that shows how the attitudes of the public from different countries stack up against each other. In this particular poll, note the powerful pro-market sentiment expressed by the stars of Colombia, who rate number one in our hemisphere for faith in free…
Given that politicians tend to hone to their campaign financiers’ agendas, it’s pretty creepy to see that Evo Morales has gotten a new Web site – financed and hosted, not from his home country, as any self-respecting candidate for president would want, but brazenly from MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA. Morales, you will recall, is running for president of Bolivia on a legalize-cocaine election platform.UPDATE for Eduardo: Morales SAYS he’s not for legalizing cocaine, only the coca leaf, but there’s no such thing as cocaine without the coca leaf. I think his stance is a ruse. Morales also claimed he was ‘only’ for…
Boz has a new collection of polls from around the Americas, and with more than a dozen elections scheduled for this hemisphere in the coming year, they are all worth watching. One of the most significant polls he’s found is on Mexico, showing that upstart-dinosaur Arturo Montiel Rojas, was running even with establishment-dinosaur Roberto Madrazo, meaning that he was mounting a significant challenge to the oldest of the old party guard. His sudden exit after a finance scandal today from the PRI primary race will likely hurt the PRI’s chances for the presidency when elections are held in mid-2006. The…
An international panel ruled that the Mexican government cannot prevent former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda from running for president as an independent in 2006. Castaneda is a former NYU professor who, although distinctively left-leaning, is on the DEMOCRATIC left, and more to the point, is not a muddlehead. He wrote the first scathing biography of Che Guevara to his great credit and for that, Castro has never forgiven him. If I were Mexican, I might not vote for him because of disagreements on ideology but I would appreciate the chance to vote for him as one candidate among many. I…