Bolivian President Evo Morales yesterday was gearing up to redouble his nationalization push and other socialist reforms after winning huge support in a weekend referendum.
But his victory in Sunday’s vote, with 63 percent of voters backing his mandate, was tempered by strong gains also handed to political enemies — four opposition governors who are defying his program.
In a triumphant speech late on Sunday, Morales called on those governors to work with him.
PHOTO: EPA
But he also told a flag-waving crowd in La Paz: “Your vote consolidated the process of change.”
“We are here to continue recovering natural resources and the consolidation of nationalization,” he said.
Despite his solid win — improving on the 54 percent support that elected him Bolivia’s first indigenous president in December 2005 — Morales was facing a polarized country.
In the eastern lowlands, where the opposition governors rule, his authority was just as roundly rejected.
The divisions are ethnic, economic and historic.
The president relies on massive support among Bolivia’s indigenous majority, which accounts for six in 10 of the country’s inhabitants.
They live mostly in the Andes to the west and have become increasingly assertive under Morales in their demands for a greater share of the national wealth.
But the elite, mostly of European descent, sitting on much of that wealth in the eastern lowlands in the form of farmland and gas fields, are just as determined to resist.
The governors of the states of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando and Beni overnight celebrated their own landslide wins in the referendum.
Ruben Costas, of Santa Cruz, struck out in his speech against the president’s “dictatorship” and vowed Morales would not be able to step foot in his state.
Of the other four state governors whose jobs were also on the line in the plebiscite, three were seen to have been ousted in the referendum — two of them Morales critics, and one of them a Morales ally. One other Morales ally was reconfirmed to office.
Analysts said the referendum did not change the standoff between Morales and the opposition — although the president would probably now organize another referendum, this one to approve a new constitution that would enshrine many of his reforms.
Morales’ challenge now was in “melding together his roots as a president of South America’s ‘new left’ and at the same time a leader desperately in need of a formula for national unity,” said Jim Shulz, director of the Democracy Center in the city of Cochabamba.
Cochabamba Governor Manfred Reyes was one of the opposition leaders ousted in the referendum, with exit polls showing 57 percent of voters rejected his mandate.
However, he vowed to fight any attempt to make him stand down, raising the prospect of violence in his state, which has already been shaken by clashes early last year between his supporters and Morales loyalists.
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