The Failure of Populism
When a person believes that the rules no longer apply to him, he’s just another Donald Trump
I remember the first election of Evo Morales. He was the Leftist former coca union boss who became the first popularly-elected indigenous President of Bolivia, famously known as “the land of coups”. Morales seemed to be cut from a different cloth than even the other Left-populists: He didn’t seem to enjoy the same sort of “cult of personality” status that Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva or Hugo Chavez had carefully cultivated for themselves, and which later served as a source of massive internal strife when those individuals fell. Nor did he come to power after a populist “revolution”. He was elected, in what most, if not all observers deemed a free and fair election, obtaining the first absolute majority in more than 4 decades of Bolivian History.
While his policies were certainly Left-wing — he was famously aligned with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro — I always viewed him as much more moderate, a person who actually tried to include more of the nation’s population into his government, rather than creating a cadre of hard core supporters and then simply relying on them to carry him through sham elections and plebiscites dedicated to rewriting the Constitution. He cut his own salary, he only nationalized the profits of the hydrocarbon sector by massively increasing royalties paid to the State, but otherwise left most investment, foreign and domestic, alone. He balanced the budget on the back of high international commodity prices, enacted measured increases in capital and social spending, opposed the IMF and focused on rural infrastructure. Morales’ reforms were always far more modest than his rhetoric.
But he apparently also loved power and was corrupted by it while in office. Apparently, he built himself a 26-story Presidential Palace complete “with a heliport” (like that somehow makes the opulence of the Trump Tower-like building a bit more obscene). Apparently, Morales fathered a child with someone, and then gave her company special favors. Apparently, the Constitution was amended to limit the President to two terms, but he held a referendum to take a third term, won that and was re-elected, and then held another referendum to allow him to run for a 4th term, but lost that, and then ran anyway. Now, after losing an outright majority in October elections, he is accused of tampering with votes to give him just enough votes to prevent a run-off, which he would most likely lose with a united opposition in a run off. Leftists in the US are declaring that there has been a “coup” in the Bolivia, but nothing screams “DICTATOR” like a person who refuses to acknowledge election results (I’m looking at you, Trump!)
Here’s what we know. This weekend, following the contested election of last month, most of the constitutional officers in Morales’ Government resigned. Why? Unknown, but it might have something to do with the mass protests which have erupted over the country. But Sunday, Morales was informed by the head of the Military that his continued existence in the office was making it impossible to restore order. I think he wisely took that as a hint, something akin to “You can either go out of that window, or take the stairs,” a la 80s classic I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.
He took the stairs.
In the end, Morales ended up, as so many dictators do, on a plane, seeking asylum in a foreign country, while their own country goes straight to hell. Whether or not Bolivia just had a coup is up for debate. There are some of the telltale marks of foreign support for opposition in Bolivia: An unrelenting procession of rightist, inexplicably anti-government protestors taking to the street, for example, is a long standing tactic of the US Government’s clandestine service in Latin America. That sort of “organic” “protest” is what is happening in Venezuela, coupled with a US backed, extra constitutional President who claims that he has sworn to “serve as President” after unilaterally, and with immediate support from the Trump Administration, declaring Maduro’s re-election to be illegitimate.
But what is happening in Bolivia does not appear to be the same thing. There is no doubt that Maduro in Venezuela is a tyrant. Nobody said his election was fair or that he enjoys broad support among the general population. That fact alone does not justify a coup, whether it is of foreign or domestic origin — extra constitutionality by the Chief Executive does not justify extra-constitutionality by the opposition, regardless of what that Guaidó says, or whether his Wikipedia page has declared him the “Acting President of Venezuela”.
Morales was supposed to be different. He was the most popular President in the world at one point. And regardless of the action of the chaos agents among the opposition, his removal by the military’s “gentle touch” invitation to leave was more of an acknowledgement of reality on the ground than the determined action of a tiny group of self-interested individuals removing a popular Leftist. It is uncertain whether the person who is now acting as President of Bolivia, Jeanine Añez Chavez will remain in her post, especially given the broad support for Morales in the Legislature, but what is certain is that international election observers noted gross irregularities in the election of last month. This fits the bill of a man who sought to hold onto power, and that, in and of itself undermines Morales’ credentials as a (small “d”) democrat.
Morales’ apparent corruption shows the pitfalls of populism. I believe there are a lot of people who decry populism because it usually involves a demagogue tricking a lot of people into voting for him or her by basically promising everyone their favorite candy for Halloween and then, when they take office, reveal that they only have Peanut Butter Royals to give out. There are a lot of legitimate critiques of populism out there, which I don’t particularly care about: One that is rarely mentioned is that populists convince themselves that they always have the support of “the people” and therefore seek to hold onto power and ignore institutional rules.
In other words, they believe their legitimacy comes from a source other than the Constitution and the process which elected them. And if they feel this way, they very quickly look for ways to do away with the Constitution, amend it so they and their friends can stay in power forever, or ignore it all together while they become a tyrant, ruling for their own benefit, while the people who support them — and they assiduously cultivate that support among a small sector of the population while claiming to speak for all “The People” and ignoring the majority — are merely pawns in their tyranny.
If Morales had been allowed to get away with vote manipulation, and there is apparently evidence that he was trying, though this claim too is controversial, despite the fact that Morales himself called for a new vote as a concession to the opposition, he would be basing his claim of legitimacy on the incorrect notion that he alone speaks for the People. Burning barricades and popular chaos says otherwise, but the populist, who has convinced himself of his mandate to the point where he is willing to engage in vote tampering, will never listen to the opposition. Once corrupted, in a country with weak institutions like Bolivia, the President would simply descend into tyranny.
Any actual legitimacy Morales had evaporated the minute that votes were manipulated. If he ordered it, he is corrupt, and if his minions did it on their own, he is not the winner of the election. If he stayed in either case, he would simply demonstrate that holding on to power was his ethical guide.
I wonder, especially when compared with a President like Jose Mujica in Uruguay, who served one term, gave most of his salary away to ameliorate the conditions of the poor, and then left office peacefully after legalizing marijuana and gay marriage, why it is that populists like Morales can’t trust that their reforms are good enough, and let that be that. Why do they have to make their tenure about them personally? What is it with personalism and populism that makes most of those who arrive in power under a populist agenda obsessed with remaining in power when their time would otherwise be up? Morales did make some dramatic improvements in the lives of the Bolivian people, though it is possible that the development of a Bolivian Middle Class and their rising expectations, coupled with a sharp drop in commodity prices on the world market led to the collapse of support for Morales in the first place. That said: Why did he have to run for a fourth term? Why not just quit while he was ahead, while he actually still was popular with the majority?
Was he convinced that he, and only he, could govern Bolivia properly? Was he so concerned that the reforms he and his government passed into law which were so helpful to so many people in Bolivia, would simply vanish and be overturned when he left office? Or was he just a person who was after power, and used the people of his country to obtain it? I think in any case, a person who rules from that position simply does not belong in office, because public service for them is about power, and not about public service.
In the end, the problems in Bolivia are just beginning. I don’t think Morales will ever serve as President in Bolivia ever again, whatever happens to him going forward. But at the same time, maybe its a good thing they got rid of him before yet another bloodletting happened in the Bolivia. The last thing any country needs, especially one which is just getting on its feet after spending its first century and a half as “the poorest country in Latin America” is another corrupted populist demagogue, left or right, leading them off the cliff of his own vanity and arrogance, especially one who believes that he is so necessary that he is no longer bound by the democratic norms that he claims legitimize his tenure in office even as he subverts them. I don’t know if the person who replaces him will be any better, but perhaps its time that this particular populist learned to enjoy his retirement, and be glad he dodged an assassin’s bullet which was likely waiting for him had he stuck around much longer in the “Land of Coups”.
