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Andean Group - January 2012 (ISSN 1741-4466)

BOLIVIA: Morales’s efforts to reach out fall flat

The build-up to the start of President Evo Morales’s seventh year in office (and third as president of the new plurinational state) on 22 January saw two unprecedented gestures by him to include new sectors in national policymaking - the parliamentary opposition and social organisations not aligned with his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). Both efforts, in their own ways, ultimately backfired. The political damage to Morales should not be over-played: the economy remains strong, growing 5.3% in 2011, (above the 4.7% regional average) and the next elections are not due until end 2014. Yet in these overtures, local critics discern a new awareness on the part of Morales of the need for consensus and of the vulnerability of his MAS government which, damaged by unpopular policies such as the proposed road through indigenous territory (Tipnis), suffered its first electoral defeat last year over the judicial vote [RA-11-11].

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