May 9, 2011

Leftist populist President Evo Morales -- until recently one of Latin America's most popular presidents -- is playing a dangerous card to improve his falling support at home: reviving a 132-year-old territorial conflict with neighboring Chile.

During a three-day visit here last week, I was surprised to find out that Morales had declared April 29 as national Day of Sea Reclamation, only a few weeks after the country had celebrated its traditional Day of the Sea on March 23.

The new national observance, just like the old one, was marked by government-organized rallies throughout the country to demand that this landlocked country be given an outlet to the Pacific Ocean through what today is Chilean territory.

Morales announced recently that Bolivia will go to international tribunals "to demand free and sovereign access to the sea." Since then, in addition to creating the new "Sea Reclamation" day, he has vowed to demand that Chile pay Bolivia for its use of the Silala River on the two countries' border.

Chile claims that it is willing to continue ongoing negotiations that could provide Bolivia with a passage to the Pacific Ocean through Chile, but without giving Bolivia sovereign rights over that territory.

The two countries broke diplomatic ties in 1978 over the issue, but had been negotiating a solution to the conflict in recent years.

What's going on?, I asked several Bolivian politicians and journalists. Virtually all responded that Morales, who won a second term in 2009 with a massive 64 percent of the vote, has been in a political free fall since December, and is propping up the fight with Chile for domestic political reasons.

Morales' poll numbers fell abruptly in December, when he announced a 70 percent increase in gasoline prices.

Facing massive street protests, including from many leftist unions and indigenous groups that had been his allies, he backed down, but he has yet to recover from the political blow.

Morales' popularity has fallen to 32 percent in most polls, his lowest number since he took office five years ago.

"The government is rapidly losing popular support, and this fight with Chile is a consequence of that," says Samuel Doria Medina, a business tycoon and opposition leader who is currently facing several government suits for alleged economic crimes. "Morales is trying to divert public attention from our economic problems."

Santa Cruz governor Ruben Costas, one of the few Bolivian opposition governors who remain in their jobs after the government forced most of his colleagues out of office through lawsuits or intimidation, told me that he expects a "continued and irreversible deterioration" of the Morales government.

Despite record world prices for Bolivia's mineral exports, which increased the country's income by a whopping 160 percent since Morales took office five years ago, the economy is in a mess.

Silver prices soared from $7 an ounce years ago to $45 nowadays, and tin prices rose from $2 to $14 over the same period.

And yet, Morales' massive cash handouts, disastrous government takeovers of major companies and mounting debts with Venezuela and other countries have left the government broke.

To make things worse, there are virtually no investments, because nationalizations have scared away national and foreign investors. While the government has changed the way it measures inflation to report lower figures, real inflation is at about 15 percent, and rising.

"I'm afraid that inflation is going to soar, and the government will become even more radical," Costas said. "They will try to generate even greater confrontations, to create a climate that will allow them to maintain this populist project."

My opinion: It is not unusual for Bolivian presidents to revive their country's territorial dispute with Chile whenever their poll numbers are low. I can remember several of Morales' predecessors, centrists and rightists, who did the same thing when in trouble at home.

The difference this time is that Morales has added an ideological element that didn't exist before -- the political partisanship of his country's armed forces. Last year, at the request of Morales, the Bolivian army declared itself "socialist," "anti-imperialist" and "anti-capitalist."

While Bolivia's army is no match to Chile's, by a long stretch, one could not rule out its willingness to create a border skirmish with Chile in an effort to help Morales draw support at home and win the 2014 elections. That would have been unthinkable in recent times, but not in today's Bolivia.

 

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(C) 2011 Andres Oppenheimer, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services