By Luis Covas, for El Socialista (Argentina)
The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) would win in the first round, according to the initial calculations and the results, by 52.4 per cent and with results above 60 per cent in La Paz and Cochabamba. The de facto president, the reactionary Jeanine Añez, has already admitted the victory of MAS in the first polls.
The candidates Mesa and Camacho have done the same. Luis Arce Catacora, former economy minister and MAS candidate, won well above the 31.5 per cent of his immediate rival, Carlos Mesa of Comunidad Ciudadana. Meanwhile, the ultra-right-wing Luis Fernando Camacho, of Creemos, is said to have won 14 per cent.
Evidently the victory of the MAS reflects that the civic-military coup was a weak blow, repressed but unable to impose a counter-revolution, failed to achieve a defeat of the Bolivian workers’ and peasants’ movement. Imperialism, the oligarchic right wing and the sectors of the big Bolivian bourgeoisie (especially from Santa Cruz) did not dare to go there for fear of the reaction of the mass movement. That is why, for example, it did not dissolve the parliament and called for elections, making a pact with MAS and Evo Morales himself that he would not be a candidate.
This is the weakness of the reactionary Añez government, which leads to this result. Broad sectors of the working class, peasants and popular sectors came with criticisms and aspects of break with MAS, because of its betrayals and surrenders. There were even workers’ and peasants’ organisations that publicly questioned the candidacy of Luis Arce and other candidates for deputies. But in the face of the oligarchic and pro-US right wing candidates, in the face of the consequences of Covid 19 and the whole policy of austerity and repression, they voted for and ratified MAS, the centre-left reformism.
We understand the vote of those millions of workers, but we do not share it. Because a new MAS government will not bring the solutions that the Bolivian working people need. It comes from governing for 16 years in the service of the gas and agribusiness multinationals while saying it was «socialist». That is why our comrades of ARPT, section of IWU-FI, called for a blank or void vote, in the perspective of continuing the struggle for a fundamental change and to build a new political alternative of the working class.
Since the MAS has already won and not Mesa or Camacho, it is a political blow to the continental and US ultra-right. It is a political defeat for the Trump, Bolsonaro, Duque or Piñera.
But we cannot fail to point out that the new MAS government will continue to be a government of double talk and pacts with the multinationals. As is the government of Alberto and Cristina Fernandez.ndo un gobierno del doble discurso y de pactos con las multinacionales. Como lo es el gobierno de Alberto y Cristina Fernández.
