Bolivian Bosses I Election Ploy

Scan page 3

The election scheduled country will know, an established feature of its political system.

This poll, like those held in Ecuador and planned in Peru, is the manoeuvre of a bourgeoisie ceding ground in the face of popular mobilisation.

Ploy

The ploy is not new-it was tried by General Banzer in 1978 after he had. failed to halt opposition to a regime that had imposed the most severe repression on the masses of Bolivia for seven years.

The present military president, Generai David Padilla, faces the same basic problems of serious economic crisis and widespread unrest.

But the Padilla regime, unlike that of Banzer, has from the start manifested the changed tactics of the political control of capital. It has focussed on the motifs of 'democracy', human rights, return of the army to a 'civic' role, and the handing back of power to the professional 'politicos' of the bourgeoisie.

Such policies do not only emanate from the shift in the imperialist design for the subcontinent.

They are also rooted in the ambitions of the reactionary but still powerful MNR (National Revolutionary Movement-the petty bourgeois populist party that initiated the revolution of 1952).

Moreover important sections the army, divided and disflusioned by the failure of its seemingly endless task of killing workers and peasants to maintain 'peace' and " 'order' , have shown themselves to be at least temporarily acquiescent towards the new mandate from the Pentagon.

Contradictions

First and foremost, however, it is the Bolivian masses who, through reconstructing their organisations and re engaging in political activity have deepened the contradictions inside the power bloc and obtained the promised concession, as yet unrealised, of bourgeois democratic rights.

When in January 1978 Banzer attempted to stamp out a national campaign for amnesty for political prisoners he was unable to impose his characteristic blood-etting without risking the total collapse of his regime. Banzer had long been the leading hatchet-man for Santa Cruz, the boom town' in the east of the country with strong political and economic links with Brazil.

But by the Spring of 1978 he was obliged to transfer this role to a lacklustre airforce general, Juan Pereda.

Pereda and Banzer between them masterminded such a blatant and massive fraud in the ensuing elections that not even the hand-picked electoral court could countenance ratifying the results.

International observers witnessed the dumping of hundreds of ballot boxes in Lake Titicaca, the murder of opposition election officials, multiple voting and a whole series of dirty tricks.

These way beer and sandwiches for bemused peasants ferried to voting stations by the army, which is the customary practice of Bolivian governments when obliged to hold elections.

Pereda, faced with an embarrassing mishap, duly proceeded with the preferred activity of the Bolivian army and carried. out a coup, claim. ing fraud on the part of the these men, taking the Commander-in-Chief Padilla as their figurehead, reversed Pereda's coup.

In preparing the ground for the return to civilian rule the Padilla government has refused to court the risks of 'stabilising' the economy by approving widespread price rises, which are considered essential by its economic advisers and by the US embassy.

Yet the military have not hesitated to declare that all strikes that are not preceded by a prohibitive arbitration process are illegal, anti-democratic and liable to immediate repression.

Neither have they withdrawn the troops from the mining areas where, with the exception of the Torres period, a state of siege has existed since the early ous As yet very little has changed but the prospect of 'civilian rule' goes far beyond the trite self-congratulation put about by the bourgeoisie.

Leading the field of candidates the electoral front Unidad Democratica y Popular (UDP) headed by Siles Zuazo's MNRI (left-wing MNR), which is attempting to recapture the populist heyday of the original party after 1952.

Siles is pledged to Carter and has the advantage of his success last year. However his strategy goes little further than drawing on the White House purse to pay the large wage rises that he accepts are unavoidable if he is to stem renewed militancy.

Even in the short term Siles' chances of success in this are

----- pull-quotes -----

to take place in Bolivia in July is not, as anybody with a passing knowledge of the