BOLIVIA: LOSING THE MORALES HIGHGROUND

When the government of Evo Morales declared its Christmas present to the Bolivian people would be an 70-80% leap in fuel prices, the public’s furious response made him glad he had kept the receipt.

The backlash began when a strike by bus and taxi drivers set to have their livelihoods savaged by the price hike brought La Paz shuddering to a halt. The counter movement gathered pace as demonstrators took to the streets in La Paz and El Alto, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Potosi and Oruro. The protests quickly turned raucous as fuming demonstrators showered police and government buildings with stones and erected burning barricades. In the clashes that followed, 15 coppers were injured as police tried to clear the streets with tear gas.

Morales and chums’ plan was to put an end to the fuel subsidies which put a 6 year freeze on prices in the poverty wracked country. The government claimed that not only did the subsidies cost them $380 billion a year but also that every year $150 billion worth of fuel was smuggled out of the country and flogged in neighbouring countries where prices are much higher. However, the measures would have had a disastrous impact on the millions of Bolivians living below or around the poverty line as transport and food costs were set to rocket. The announcement of the plan had an immediate impact with runs on supermarkets and banks.

With more strikes and protests on their way and unions and social movements about to wade in, Morales addressed the people - many of them the same feisty bunch that set him on his way to power in the first place. There was no condemnation of a violent minority or strikers holding the country to ransom and no ‘we’re in it together’ economic-necessity rhetoric. Instead, Morales announced “We have decided to obey the people” and revoked the law. Whether the sudden change of heart was down to a Road to Damascus epiphany of the damage the measures would cause, or fear of being run out of town like so many of his neo-liberal predecessors, the U-turn chalked up another victory for people power in the gutsy Andean nation.