An influence-peddling scandal involving a former lover and a deadly incident of political violence could not have come at a worse time for Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Bolivians were to decide in a referendum yesterday whether to amend the constitution so Morales can run for a fourth consecutive term in 2019.
Voters were about evenly split — with about 15 percent undecided — on whether to give Bolivia’s first indigenous president another shot at governing before the bombshell hit.
Two weeks earlier, a journalist revealed that an ex-lover of Morales in 2013 was named sales manager of a Chinese company, CAMC Engineering Co Ltd (中工國際), which has obtained nearly US$500 million in mostly no-bid state contracts.
Morales denied any impropriety and said he last saw the woman was in 2007 when a child they conceived died under circumstances that neither has explained.
The case deepened doubts about the integrity of Morales’ governing Movement Toward Socialism, which has been dogged by scandal.
Adding to Morales’ woes were last week’s asphyxiation deaths of six municipal officials in El Alto, the city adjacent to La Paz, governed since last year by an opposition mayor.
Pro-Morales forces are accused of setting the fire that provoked the deaths, sacking the building where the slain officials worked and torching documents that allegedly incriminate the previous mayor in payroll corruption.
Both developments threatened to eclipse Morales’ achievements in cutting poverty and empowering Bolivia’s indigenous majority during a decade in office.
South America’s left has recently been sullied by scandal, but Morales had personally remained unscathed.
However, his ruling circles have been discredited by the skimming of millions of US dollars from the government-managed Fondo Indigena, which runs agricultural and public works in the countryside.
Morales presided over Bolivia’s largest economic boom, as prices for raw materials soared just as he took office, constructing airports, highways and the pride of La Paz, an Austrian-built aerial tramway system, while putting a Chinese-built satellite into space. In 2014, he won re-election with 60 percent of the vote.
however, that boom is over.
Bolivia’s revenues from natural gas and minerals, making up three-fourths of its exports, were down 32 percent last year.
Economists said Morales leaned heavily on extractive industries to pay for populist programs and failed to diversify the economy.
At the same time, judicial corruption became endemic, jail overcrowding worsened and healthcare did not improve.
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