Herve do Alto "We ourselves were surprised by the scale of our victory. am moved, and I thank all the social movements, all those who have fought to recover our natural resources, those who have fought for our rights, those who have fought to change the course of history in
These were the first words of the new Bolivian president, Evo Morales. Someone who in the course of his life has been a llama breeder, a trumpet player and a coca grower, became, on December 18, the first indigenous person to accede to the office of President of the Republic in the whole of Latin America.
The unexpected landslide in favour of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) enabled its leader, EVO Morales, to obtain 51 per cent.
With a result like that, the MAS is sure of being able to govern alone. But that doesn't mean that governing will be an easy thing to do. The Right is not definitively beaten.
The distance between Morales and his presidential rivals is enormous and they could withdraw from political life.
The only good news in the camp of the "neo-liberals" is the surprising "survival" of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR), identified as mainly responsible for the massacres that took place during the first "gas war" in October 2003.
With a candidate who was virtually a political unknown, the son of Japanese immigrants Michiaki Nagatani, the MR won 7 per cent of the vote thanks in particular to a significant mobilization of its historic bastions, such as the department of Beni.
The Right could still have the possibility of "blocking" initiatives of the future Masista government. The MAS only has a relative majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
The majority of regions were won by the Rght, meaning that the government's room for manoeuvre could be very limited at this level.
"Now, Evo must respect his promises". That is how a militant of the MAS put it in on election night.
Pressure is coming from the "base" of the party itself, and the newly elected parliamentarians, like Maria Esther Udaeta, stressed the importance of "maintaining a permanent dialogue with all the social movements", whether or not they are members of the MAS.
Expectations are high, in particular concerning the nationalization of hydrocarbons and the election of a Constituent Assembly in August 2006. Julio Colque, a former mine union activist said, "the goal is to put an end to the neoliberal model and economic globalization.
"To do that, we have to do away with decree 21060[a decree promulgated in 1985, which made it possible to privatise state enterprises] which is nothing but a Trojan horse for
For Evo Morales himself, speaking from Cochabamba this Sunday, the struggle is not only economic.
"The election of an indigenous person to the head of the Republic will only be of use if it makes it possible to put an end to the colonial state in which we live, and for this new state to be a point of support in the struggle against all forms of racism".
Many questions remain concerning the attitude that the United States will adopt towards the future MAS governFor the moment, although the United States embassy has up to now maintained a cautious attitude, the declarations of the former functionary of the State Department Otto Reich reveal the hostility that the Bush administration maintains towards Morales, who the United States have often seen as nothing but a "nacre-terrorist" because he wants to depenalise coca. • Herve Do Alto is the correspondent in Bolivia of Rouge, weekly paper of the LCR (French section of the Fourth
This is an edited version of an article which first appeared on www.internationalviewpoint.org Victorious: Bolivia's Evo Morales (left) and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, voting with his grandson