Poll Says Bolivia Presidential Race Tied

[Judi Lynn]

Poll Says Bolivia Presidential Race Tied

By Associated Press
November 14, 2005, 8:29 PM EST

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The leader of Bolivia's coca farmers is running neck-and-neck with a center-right former president ahead of next month's presidential election, according to an opinion poll published Monday.

Leftist congressman Evo Morales has 30.7 percent support to Jorge Quiroga's 28.7 percent, according to the poll conducted by IPSOS Captura for a group of Bolivia's largest newspapers and television stations. Businessman Samuel Doria Medina lags with 13.9 percent.
(snip)

Morales has said he would decriminalize coca farming if elected. Coca is used to make cocaine, but it is also has traditional uses among Bolivia's Indians. U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate coca plantations have led to clashes with Andean farmers.

Quiroga wants to keep Bolivia on a free-market track. The Texas A&M alumnus promises to attract foreign investment and to be tough on coca-leaf farmers who sell to the cocaine industry.
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-bolivia-election,0,4630565.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines



Evo Morales, Samuel Doria Medina

[Skink]

1. So one guys running on legalization.

:hippie:

[CHIMO]

2. Sliding into the Soap Dish of the US War on Drugs

They call it La Jobónera. The “soap dish”, I thought the nickname had been born because at first glance, the place looks like a wash-by-hand laundromat. Clotheslines run criss-cross through the open patio, giving shade like a tree as it drips dry above a place that feels more like hopelessly passing time than life. There is a constant scrubbing noise. Water is always running somewhere. Braids are tied back and sleeves are rolled up. But no, I was wrong.

The “soap dish” has nothing to do with spending hours a day soaking and scrubbing soapy clothes. It gets its name because it is both getting in and getting out is slippery. Welcome to the San Sebastian prison.

La Jabónera is not just any prison. It is a confined residence for women, most of them supposed narco-traffickers, and their children. A jail that does not provide food to its prisoners. A jail filled with 112 women, many of who do not know how long they will reside there, and are guilty until proven innocent.

Law 1008 strips a person of their rights as a citizen. There is no justice. People are guilty until proven innocent. Walter Vino, a National Police guard of the jail whispered to me on my way out of the jail “I think there are more innocents here than guilty”. The lives of people should not be determined by an unlucky slippery slope that lands hundreds in jail for the sake of misleading statistics that imply that the War on Drugs is being won.

http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/index.htm

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's not too hard to imagine which candidate is going to get a whole lot

of support from the _Bush administration:

With this in mind, during the 2002 elections in Bolivia, the US ambassador Manuel Rocha issued a thinly veiled warning not to elect the socialist candidate Evo Morales: "As a representative of the United States, I want to remind the Bolivian electorate that if you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of U.S. assistance to Bolivia." Morales fell just short of victory in 2002, but after a ruinous and highly unpopular flirtation with neoliberalism, much to US government chagrin, Morales is poised to perhaps become the first indigenous president in Bolivia.
(snip/...)

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17827&l=i&size=1&hd=0

December 2, 2003

An Interview with Evo Morales
Legalizing the Colonization of the Americas
By BENJAMIN DANGL

Cochabamba, Bolivia

~snip~

EM: Where do the causes of the conflicts in Latin America come from? Neoliberalism and the politics of the free market. The FTAA is the radicalization of the application of neoliberalism, and neoliberalism is the cause of the social conflicts to the point that it controls the activities of presidents in Latin America. Whatever commercial agreement between countries can take place, but only with just and fair business deals. The FTAA is the law of the jungle, only the strongest survive. Therefore, how could we permit the application of this agreement? From the point of view of the indigenous people here, the FTAA is an agreement to legalize the colonization of the Americas.
(snip/)

http://www.counterpunch.org/dangl12022003.html