No more: hope opens in Bolivia

Havana, Cuba. – This Sunday, the official results of the first round of the general elections held in the fraternal Bolivia confirmed (essentially, although not in the details) the forecasts advanced by the different pre -electoral surveys. In the Altiplano country, the era of the dire evisting-artist socialism touches to an end.

According to the information from the Supreme Electoral Court of the Andean Republic, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, was first, with 32.2% of the votes. Former President Jorge follows Tuto Quiroga, who obtained 26.9%. In accordance with the Constitution and the Bolivian electoral laws, the first president will be selected in the ballot, which must take place on October 19.

The numerous polls succeeded in predicting the lousy role played by the leftist candidates linked in one way or another with the MAS official (Movement to Socialism): the government Eduardo del Castillo, for example, received only 3.1%, which left his political organization at the edge of losing his legal personality. For their part, the null votes reached 19.2%. It was the option that, since his hiding place in the tropics of Cochabamba sponsored former governor Evo Morales. Although, by the same nature, not all those invalid tickets could be attributed to the coca leader, he felt in the duty to lie: “The vote has won,” he said …, although this option was behind the valid votes received by the three most voted candidates!

However, those same surveys did not advance the success of Paz Pereira. To this, which made a campaign with modest resources, they predicted a third place, but won – insist – something that the interested party attributes to the “rural vote”, which he describes as “surprise.” Also his vice presidential candidate, the “Captain Lara”, an expolition very often in social networks, which denounces corruption in the body to which he belonged and rejects traditional policy, contributed to success. Nor did the polls predict that Samuel Doria Medina, whom they used to give as winner, would be third and, therefore, out of the second round.

In any case, it is a certain fact that, if things continue to develop normally, in a couple of months our Bolivian brothers will determine whether the first magistracy in the country will become performed by Paz Pereira (who starts with support from almost a third of the electorate and the express support of the defeated Doria Medina) or by Tuto Quiroga (whom, by the way, in the years in which even the Castrocommunist regime allowed me to travel abroad, I had the honor of knowing in person). Whoever wins the ballot can have a non -leftist majority in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly.

Both options are – insist – nothing socialist. Paz Pereira, who is postulated by the Christian Democratic Party, promises “capitalism for all”, and is qualified by the press as “center-right”; Quiroga is considered further from centrist options, so it is cataloged as “right -wing.” In any case, both one and the other may preside over Bolivia’s change towards a more open and free society, less subject to the dire socialist leadership that has plunged the country into scarcity, stagnation and economic limitations.

We are talking about a scenario that, unfortunately, is well known by the Cuban reader; Only, in the case of the largest of the Antilles, that ruinous scenario is much more widespread, evident and deep than in the distant Bolivia. It is also true that the learners of the sorcerers of the MAS have arranged for less time (and of a less absolute control of society) than their Caribbean counterparts.

Another essential difference between one country and the other is that, as it has just been revealed with Sunday’s choice, the Bolivian brothers did not lose the mechanisms to change course in a peaceful and orderly manner. Nothing similar to what happens in Cuba, where the legal existence of opposition parties is somewhat inconceivable, and where the electoral system (somehow must be called) ensures that each and every candidates for deputies (which are, in mass, governors, of course) have “won” in each election.

But it is also to recognize that the situation of Bolivia contrasts diametrically with that observed in – let’s say – Nicaragua or Venezuela. Unlike Cuba, these other sister countries do recognize, in principle, the existence of opposition political organizations and candidates contrary to power, but in practice they reduce those possibilities to zero. In the first case, through the imprisonment of those who apply against; in the second, through an electoral body completely submitted to the Executive and that, in more than a year since the elections won by Edmundo González Urrutiahe has not been able to publish the acts that would endorse the alleged favorable result to the Maduro dictator (which, as it is known, did the opposition to demonstrate that his candidate devastated).

In fact, one, as a Cuban, finds it extraordinarily pleasant to know that, whatever the result of the presidential ballot, the new Bolivian state of state will end the questioned friendship policies with regimes of the “socialism of the 21st century”, such as those of the three newly mentioned countries. Both Paz and Quiroga have described them with the title that, of course, deserve: “Dictatorships.”

With respect to the inspiring result of the Bolivian elections, the observers of democratic ideas, fundamentally, coincide in their positive auguries. In Panampostfor example, colleague Arturo McFields Yescas highlights that “the opposition swept 80% of the votes,” and states that “what happened in the Andean country this Sunday was not an election, it was a ray of hope.”

For its part, in Infobaeits director, Laureano Pérez Izquierdo, says that “Bolivia is heading to a new era.” And he warns about the foreseeable behavior of the fugitive Evo: “He will bet on chaos. He will not have problems setting up the country or ‘counting dead.’ He already did other times.” Let’s trust, for the good of our Bolivian brothers, who in this last approach does not assist his reason.