A Vote That May Strengthen Bolivian Leader

[Judi Lynn]

A Vote That May Strengthen Bolivian Leader



Noah Friedman-Rudovsky for The New York Times
President Evo Morales of Bolivia on Thursday in El Alto, campaigning for a referendum Sunday.

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: August 8, 2008

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Faced with calls in a rebellious province for a military coup and with spreading protests that have kept him from landing his plane in parts of the country, President Evo Morales is pressing ahead with plans for a national referendum on Sunday intended to determine whether he and his top regional rivals should remain in office.

~snip~
Despite the spreading protests, Mr. Morales is expected to win the referendum, with support among Aymara and Quechua Indians in the highlands remaining strong. But the vote’s rules, drafted to make it easier to oust governors than the president, may open a new stage of confrontation if some of the governors lose.

That outcome would allow Mr. Morales to pick the governors’ successors, which could aggravate tension in some areas over redistributing petroleum royalties to bolster social security payments for impoverished elderly citizens. Political leaders in eastern Santa Cruz began a hunger strike this week aimed at recovering a portion of the royalties.

Yet while Mr. Morales and his opponents square off over specific policies, the vote on Sunday also revolves around the president’s broader ambitions to reconfigure Bolivia’s political system to benefit the country’s indigenous peoples, who make up more than 60 percent of Bolivia’s 10 million inhabitants.

Despite discontent in several provinces that have drafted their own autonomy statutes, with vague prospects of how they could be put into effect, Mr. Morales has higher approval ratings than any Bolivian president in recent memory, about 60 percent. Partly because of high prices for the country’s mining exports, the economy may grow 6 percent this year.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

[Peace Patriot]

1. I don't know if you meant it, Judi, but it is VERY FUNNY that you posted Simon Romero's

capitalist predator scrib on Evo Morales in "Editorials." Supposed to be a 'news' article, I gather. (I've been boycotting the NYT since Judith Miller, so I can't tell for sure).

Is Simon writing editorials these days? (Has he ever not been?)

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GREAT PHOTO OF MORALES! Viva la revolución! :bounce: :party: :bounce:

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Every paragraph contains some item of disinformation. I will just take on one of them:

"Faced with calls in a rebellious province for a military coup and with spreading protests that have kept him from landing his plane in parts of the country, President Evo Morales is pressing ahead with plans for a national referendum on Sunday intended to determine whether he and his top regional rivals should remain in office.

"But analysts here expect the vote to heighten political tension in Bolivia, often described as South America’s poorest country, instead of relieving it." --Simon Fucking Romero

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He puts it all to a vote of the people...BUT that will "heighten" tensions!? What is he supposed to do? Rule by fiat? This is straight from Bush's State Dept. Vote or no vote--democracy or autocracy--"tensions" will be "heightened" because why? Because Bush's fucking State Dept. will make sure of it--by pouring more millions of our taxpayer dollars into fascist, racist white separatist groups! That's why!

"But analysts here..." What "analysts"? He quotes none. Condi Rice? John Negroponte? Who? "Analysts here" is like the ubiquitous "his critics say" that they use so often against Hugo Chavez. "His critics say" he is "increasingly authoritarian." I tracked that one, early on, to a fascist Catholic Venezuelan cardinal who spent his career in the Vatican finance office (and got fired in the fascist banking scandals of the 1980s). His critics.

Fuck this noise. I mean really. Simon Romero is sneaky. He's a better writer than they have at the Associated Pukes (AP) or Roto-Reuters, so you have to read him carefully. But the fascist/Bushite narrative is all laid out, nevertheless.

Best anti-dote to Simon Romero: www.BoRev.net (they take him apart).

Another good anti-dote (when they report on Bolivia): www.venezuelanalysis.com (the other side).

[Judi Lynn]

2. Those links are lifesavers! The link in BoRev.net shows a quote from Simon Romero which should win

an award from someone, for sheer nastiness. I don't think this is simple stupidity, either. No one can be THIS stupid!

"Perhaps the most contentious issue has been Mr. Morales’s land reform project in Santa Cruz, the economically vibrant eastern department. Rich landowning families in the area have clashed with government officials seeking to distribute their landholdings to Aymara and Quechua Indian migrants."

Astonishing, isn't it?

Many of those same "rich landowning families are living on land which was seized, and stripped away from the Bolivian indigenous people by dictators like Nixon-assisted Hugo Banzer in his plan to create a "white Bolivia." He literally banished the occupants who had lived there since time immemorial, threw them out, and gave away their land to settlers he started luring from South Africa and Rhodesia in the 1970's.

If the Bolivian natives were "immigrants" they would be "immigrating" right back to their own homes on the very spots stolen from them and awarded the European-descended racists for their good fortune in being Caucasian.

The New York Times has used a Trifecta of dirty political writers on Latin America: Francisco Toro, Simon Romero, and Juan Forero. Each one may sometimes be even more untrustworthy than the rest. They ALL mutilate the truth in their stories beyond any resemblance to reality.

It was discovered that Francisco Toro was actually a man who BELONGS TO ANTI-CHAVEZ opposition groups in Caracas, where he was living, groups which actually take money from U.S. taxpayers to create anti-Chavez programs, while he worked writing anti-Chavez "news" articles for the N. Y. Times, as well as The Economist, and others. Juan Forero has been working at the Washington Post lately.

As for what it is these clowns are believed to be writing, it would be almost impossible to call them news stories by now, wouldn't it? This sure as hell isn't what students used to be taught in Journalism classes. Not by a long shot.