Bolivian opposition is on defensive over alleged terror plot involving Irishman Michael Dwyer, writes TOM HENNIGANin São Paulo
BOLIVIA’S FIRST ever indigenous president Evo Morales is set to sweep back into power in Sunday’s presidential election after a campaign in which the opposition has been put on the defensive by the government’s accusation that it was involved in an alleged plot that included Irishman Michael Dwyer.
Morales has a lead in all opinion polls of about 30 per cent, which would see him win a new five-year term outright in the first round and could give his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) a large majority in the new congress.
Morales’s opponents say their campaign has been hindered by the government’s claim that leading political, business and civic leaders in the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz brought Dwyer and his colleagues to Bolivia in order to set up a separatist militia.
Dwyer and two other men were killed in a police raid on their hotel in Santa Cruz in April.
The government claims they were terrorists planning to assassinate Morales as part of a wider plan by separatists in the country’s wealthier east to break away from the poorer, indigenous majority highlands in the west.
To support their claim the authorities produced arms they said belonged to the group as well as photos of Dwyer and his colleagues posing with weapons.
But in the subsequent months evidence has emerged that throws into serious question the Bolivian government’s explanation of events. This includes photos that allegedly show the special forces police officer who led the hotel raid with Eduardo Rózsa Flores, the supposed leader of Dwyer’s group, in January 2007 – over a year before authorities say they detected their presence in Bolivia.
Leading opposition figures claim the entire episode was orchestrated by the government to undermine the opposition ahead of Sunday’s vote.
“The facts are, we know the government had infiltrated this group which they then summarily executed. They are victims of a conspiracy by the government to criminalise the opposition in Santa Cruz,” says Oscar Urenda, leader of a block of opposition parliamentarians from Santa Cruz in Bolivia’s congress.
“The impact of this is that now people are afraid to support us because they fear the government will label them terrorists too. The opposition’s campaign lacks volunteers and is poorly funded while the government has thrown many resources behind the MAS campaign.”
Though benefiting from a weak and divided opposition, Morales is running on his record of a successful if turbulent first term. During this he fulfilled his main campaign pledges including the nationalisation of the country’s gas industry and raising taxes on gas exports which have resulted in three years of budget surpluses and $8 billion in reserves.
He has also fulfilled a pledge to produce a new constitution which strengthens the rights of the country’s long-neglected indigenous majority. And he has expelled the US’s Drug Enforcement Agency from the country and allowed coca farmers to grow more of the raw material from which cocaine is produced.
Mr Morales – who entered politics as a leader of the coca growers’ trade union – says his stance is “coca yes, cocaine no” but observers say his coca policy has given a major boost to the country’s cocaine industry.
But regardless of his policy successes, Morales’s biggest vote getter is probably his position as the country’s first indigenous president.
“The key to his success is his identity. It is the first time in Bolivia’s history that the poor indigenous majority looks at their president and sees someone who looks like them and understands their life. Evo was born and grew up in poverty and every day speaks about raising people out of poverty. On a visceral level this is enough on its own to get him re-elected,” says Jim Shultz of the Democracy Center, a Bolivian think tank.