Thursday, 5 January 2017

Bolivia’s president chafes against term limits

Why stop in 2025?

AS 2016 drew to a close, a resignation letter from Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, lit up social media. It was a hoax, perpetrated on día de los inocentes (“day of the innocents”), the Latin American version of April Fools’ Day, which falls on December 28th. The unamused communications minister, Marianela Paco, denounced it as an “attack on the people’s right to reliable and truthful news”.

In fact, Mr Morales’s allies are scheming to keep him in office indefinitely, even though, in a referendum last February, Bolivians voted to deny him the right to run for a fourth term in 2019. On December 17th his party, the Movement to Socialism (MAS), named him as its presidential candidate for the next election. “If the people decide it, Evo will continue,” Mr Morales promised his supporters.

The clamour to keep him is not a sign of recent success. Bolivia is suffering from a severe drought, whose effects are made worse by the government’s failure to plan and invest. Economic growth, which sustained Mr Morales’s popularity for most of his 11 years in office,...Continue reading

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