Goodbye Evo Morales; goodbye, softheaded lefties

It's too bad it took word from the Bolivian military, though not an actual coup, to force constitution-breaking semi-progressive President Evo Morales out of office. (That said, key civilian backers of him were also telling him to resign, but without a nudge from the brass hats, that didn't mean too much.)

What's that? Constitution breaking? Aaron Maté, Glenn Greenwald and others haven't told me back.

Well, per the New York Times, yes.

Bolivia has a term limit on presidents.

Morales, in 2015, pushed a referendum to overturn that part of the constitution. And lost.

So? He had "packed" the Bolivian supreme court and got it to rule that term limits were unconstitutional because they violated his human rights. Background on Wiki. What's laughable indeed is that the American Convention on Human Rights not only says nothing about term limits being a violation of human rights, it limits its own commissioners to two terms. Given this fact, if Bolivia's Bolivarian Tribunal appealed to Article 23 of the ACHR, which is the only thing that comes within five parsecs of Evo's claims and its ruling, it's just barmy.

In addition, Bolivia's Tribunal of Supreme Justice is not only wrong, it's hypocritical. Its own members are elected and ...

Wait for it, wait for it ...

Cannot be re-elected. And, it was inaugurated in 2009, along with other constitutional changes, all designed to make Bolivia .... more democratic. Since it was a new agency, and members couldn't be re-elected, it was ripe for manipulation, even if their elections were allegedly non-partisan. (And, yeah, some right-winger would do the same.)

In addition, most of Latin America has some sort of limits,  if not on overall terms, at least on consecutive terms, per Wiki. The only exceptions? Suriname (set it aside), Nicaragua and .... wait for it .. Venezuela. And also, no recent previous president, whether leftist or rightist, has appealed to the ACHR to overthrow those limits.

So, right there, we're seeing Morales moving toward stereotypical Latin American tinpot dictator territory. (And, giving it an alleged "rule of law" veneer on "snowflake" grounds.)

Next step was then following through and running for a fourth term.

Next step after that was not stepping down, or at least accepting calls for a new election, after this one had charges of major fraud.

It's sad that primarily right-wing opposition was engaging in violence at this point, but that doesn't justify lawbreaking Morales staying in office.

All right here in the New York Times.

But, but, that's a bunch of establishmentarians.

(Update, Nov. 18: Hat-tip to Ken Silverstein [tho I had to Google myself to find the actual link]. Russia allegedly meddled on Morales' behalf. Says who? The Organization of American States? The New York Times? No, Quartz says this was first reported by Proekt, a Russian independent media outlet. If only this Australian native had encouraged leakers inside Russia ... 

The piece offers compelling reasons why. Russia wants a cut of Bolivian lithium, like all developed nations do. It though the opposition would be less favorable to mining on Russian terms, or to follow through with plans to buy nuclear reactor construction from Russia. 

Now, Quartz reports that Americans who don't write for the NYT think Morales would have won anyway. On the other hand, both cited analysts write before the alleged Russian meddling was revealed. Proekt's original report was on Oct. 23, before Morales agreed to new elections, let alone to a nudge to leave office. It's in English, meaning they want it read outside Russia, obviously. How much it WAS read in the first two weeks after that date? About zero, I'm guessing. The actual meddling was allegedly by Rosatom, but I doubt, if true, that it was working in a vacuum. 

Indeed, the piece notes that in 2016, Rosatom head Sergey Kiriyenko became Russia's first deputy head of the presidential administration, which sounds roughly equivalent to White House deputy chief of staff. He maintained Rosatom connections by become head of its supervisory board. Proekt adds that the Kremlin "was only aware" about the effort. In other words they knew, and probably hoped Rosatom would do well enough on its own. 

Also contra Quartz's two American consultants, on Oct. 20, Proekt says the spread between Morales and the second vote-getter was within 10 percent, which would mean a runoff unless the rural votes pulled it off. Who knows?

It's interesting that the MSM and the official U.S. government has not cited this piece so far, though. [AFAIK, it's not been referenced.])

OK, for the truth about Morales leading up to this lawbreaking election?

Let's go to Counterpunch, where, already back in 2016 (reprinted at Popular Resistance) at least one contributing writer was sounding the alarm about Morales apparent moves toward wanting to be the stereotypical president for life. Benjamin Dangl (also at Truthout) discusses Morales' electoral corruption leading up to that referendum that failed, and even more notable for lefties who would put him on a platform, promises already either failing or broken.

Among broken promises? Many of those massive fires of September that many people thought were all in Brazil were actually in Bolivia.

The broken promises? They weren't wildfires. They were slash-and-burn clearage fires designed to turn forest into pasture, and burn out Indian natives, just as has been done in Brazil in the past. Whether it was "just" Morales betting on Big Ag, or what, that's a clear abandonment of the campesinos he claimed to represent. As Truthout notes, they were arguably both an ecocide and a genocide.

Also unnoted by many leftists, but written up at Truthout? The degree to which Morales had become a populist nationalist. That link also notes how Morales did some Mandela-like compromises to get elected to a third term. (Actually four, but his first term was before the two-term limit was enshrined in the constitution.)

In response, it's not just those mentioned above. At The Nation, Mark Weisbrot calls it a coup, while listing Morales past history — but without any criticism. I've responded that I'll call the past few weeks' action a "countercoup" IF he'll use the C-word for Morales from three years ago up to a month ago. Ditto goes for you, Ken Silverstein, where I saw Weisbrot's piece. Also "interesting" is that both of them reference Dangl without referring to any of his above work.

If Weisbrot wants to say "rule of law," beyond my refudiation above? Even Putin had the constitutional decency, on paper, to serve a term as prime minister.

In addition to not wanting to let go, Morales failed to groom a successor. Nicolas Maduro may be semi-craptacular, but Hugo Chavez gave him at least a bit of a head start on running Venezuela.

Dangl, a Canadian historian of Latin America, is not unsympathetic toward Morales. Just a month ago, he noted his successes in office — along with his manipulation of leftist symbols.

The thing is that Greenwald, though not always in the same orbit as Maté, Matt Taibbi and others, is often enough to be a fellow traveler. The so-called anti-imperialist leftists are in my book, as I've said before, alleged outside-the-box thinkers but really some sort of twosiderism stenos.

And, all of them know this. And unless they decried Morales' actions three years ago, they have no leg to stand on.

I've decried Counterpunch for years in the past sometimes engaging in reflexive anti-Americanism itself. When the folks above are worse, that's sad.

Is Morales as bad as a Pinochet or Galtieri? Of course not. But, he was bad enough.

And, no, softheaded lefties, this wasn't a coup. I eventually accepted the 2009 ouster of Mel Zelaya in Honduras as a coup after first calling it just a semi-coup.

This isn't even a semi-coup — unless we use that term for Morales' actions. The reality is that in parts of the world with less stable democratic traditions brandish the word "coup" like a blunt meat-axe for purely political purposes. And, international allies, mainly the US with rightists, back them up and egg them on.

(Update, 2020: Given the post-electoral history of Morales' successor, Jeanine Añez, and her backers, I am willing to use the word "coup" in dialogue BUT ... IF and ONLY IF Morales' blank-checkers use the phrase "semi-coup" for his own actions. Otherwise, per Wittgenstein? No dice.)

And, there's centrists, as well as some leftists and the many rightists, who thought Morales was wrong on matters of law first, political differences second. Can the centrists and leftists together block rightists from winning the election redo?