Weekly Report - 21 October 2003
Bolivia's new President may find his first pressures coming from abroad
While Morales and Quispe offer a truce, Washington warns Mesa to tread carefully in areas linked to investment and coca eradication.
When Carlos Mesa was sworn in as Bolivia's 64th President on 17 October there was much talk about the Bolivian congress having `saved' the constitutional order, after former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada `accepted the inevitable' and resigned. Overlooked is the fact that Goni's departure was not inevitable; indeed, right up to the end he was considering a tough response to prevent Bolivia from falling into the hands of what he described as a `narco-terrorist dictatorship'.
By this Goni was alluding to the two leaders of the protest movement that had him against the wall: Evo Morales, the leader of the coca growers who had come out a close second in the last presidential elections, and Felipe Quispe, the leader of the peasants' confederation, who had once been imprisoned for belonging to a terrorist organisation. He was sidestepping the fact that they had not acted together; indeed, that he, the President, had allowed the protest that Quispe had started to grow as a counterweight to Morales's influence.
The merit for convincing Goni that a peaceful solution was better than opting for violent repression has been attributed by some to the joint mediating effort launched by Brazil's President Lula da Silva and his Argentine peer Néstor Kirchner (see page 3). The two have also offered Goni's successor their support.
He is likely to need it. The two protest leaders, Morales and Quispe, are offering Mesa a truce of sorts, to see if he delivers on his promise to `respond to the gas issue [with] the participation of all Bolivian men and women,' to work on reforming the hydrocarbons law and to review the privatisations carried out since 1995. There is no telling how long that truce will last.
But Mesa is likely to come under pressure soon from another quarter: the US. The day after he was sworn in, Washington conveyed through its ambassador in La Paz, David Greenlee, its willingness to `accompany' the new administration. Greenlee also told Mesa that the Bush administration was concerned about the preservation of `clear rules' for foreign investors and considered it `important' that there should be a serious policy of eradication of illegal crops.
In other words, he was told to tread carefully on such issues as the privatisations review, the reform of the hydrocarbons law, and the coca growers' demands for an end to eradication.
When Carlos Mesa was sworn in as Bolivia's 64th President on 17 October there was much talk about the Bolivian congress having `saved' the constitutional order, after former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada `accepted the inevitable' and resigned. Overlooked is the fact that Goni's departure was not inevitable; indeed, right up to the end he was considering a tough response to prevent Bolivia from falling into the hands of what he described as a `narco-terrorist dictatorship'.
By this Goni was alluding to the two leaders of the protest movement that had him against the wall: Evo Morales, the leader of the coca growers who had come out a close second in the last presidential elections, and Felipe Quispe, the leader of the peasants' confederation, who had once been imprisoned for belonging to a terrorist organisation. He was sidestepping the fact that they had not acted together; indeed, that he, the President, had allowed the protest that Quispe had started to grow as a counterweight to Morales's influence.
The merit for convincing Goni that a peaceful solution was better than opting for violent repression has been attributed by some to the joint mediating effort launched by Brazil's President Lula da Silva and his Argentine peer Néstor Kirchner (see page 3). The two have also offered Goni's successor their support.
He is likely to need it. The two protest leaders, Morales and Quispe, are offering Mesa a truce of sorts, to see if he delivers on his promise to `respond to the gas issue [with] the participation of all Bolivian men and women,' to work on reforming the hydrocarbons law and to review the privatisations carried out since 1995. There is no telling how long that truce will last.
But Mesa is likely to come under pressure soon from another quarter: the US. The day after he was sworn in, Washington conveyed through its ambassador in La Paz, David Greenlee, its willingness to `accompany' the new administration. Greenlee also told Mesa that the Bush administration was concerned about the preservation of `clear rules' for foreign investors and considered it `important' that there should be a serious policy of eradication of illegal crops.
In other words, he was told to tread carefully on such issues as the privatisations review, the reform of the hydrocarbons law, and the coca growers' demands for an end to eradication.
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