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Evo's approval drops, yet again

09.29.2006

Technorati tags: Bolivia politics Evo Morales

Evo's approval ratings dropped again, according to a recent poll by Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado. Figures now put him at an approval of 52% (from a high of 81% in May) w/ a disapproval of 38% (from a low of 12% in February/March) — the honeymoon's over. Alvaro's approval ratings have also dropped to 59%. Similarly, public confidence in the constituent assembly declined to only 47% approval in September.

All this while Evo has pushed the constituent assembly to become an "originary" body. That means, he's insisted that the constituent assembly authority should override parliament, the courts, and other constitutional organs. Ironically, when the assembly (where Evo's MAS has a majority of the delegates) makes a compromise decision w/ the political opposition, Evo routinely rejects the body's decisions & orders his party's delegates to take the hard line: principally, that all decisions should be made by simple majority, period.

The recent tensions w/ the media luna departments continue. In the poll data (which includes four cities: La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz), Evo's approval ratings is lowest in Santa Cruz (27%), while it's highest in El Alto (78%). Other city approval ratings figures are 47% in Cochabamba & 64% in La Paz. Things are clearly polarized regionally, w/ Evo losing support as we move west to east.

Recently, Evo lashed out at the media, calling them his "enemies." This came after a series of accusations by several newspaper reports (from various papers) that members of the MAS government had attacked them (mostly verbally) on various occasions — though La Razón, a paper that was once moderately pro-Evo but has turned more critical recently, has been facing a spontaneous strike by the La Paz newspaper venders' syndicate who've refused to sell the paper & have physically attacked the paper's staff during the past week.

Yesterday, eight departmental "civic committees" (minus Cochabamba) declared themselves in a "state of emergency" dedicated to insisting that the constituent assembly decisions require a two-thirds supermajority (the principle demand of the Santa Cruz 24-hour strike last week) & respect for regional autonomy (in several departments, the "Yes" vote won on the autonomy referendum). The civic committees leaderships are in Sucre, hoping to meet w/ the MAS delegation of the constituent assembly (the assembly's directorate). So far they've been refused.

For me, it's interesting to see that all this talk of a constituent assembly dominated by the country's "social movements" (as Evo frequently declares) really only means "social movements friendly to MAS" — since various other social movements (if we mean by "social movement" some organized group of citizens organized around a public, political goal) that aren't friendly towards MAS are routinely ignored or berated as "enemies of the people."

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ADDENDUM 1: Things aren't looking so good for Hugo Chavez either. Recent polls for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election put him w/ only 48% support — though his chief opponent only has 30%. For various reasons, it's likely that Chavez will remain in power (he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who accepts defeat graciously), but there is mounting evidence that support for populist politicians has a short lifespan — which is consistent w/ the kind of support other populists (both left & right populists) have had in recent years.

ADDENDUM 2: This via Publius Pundit (an interesting blog about world politics): There's a wildcat consumer boycott in the US — a massive one, it seems — against Venezuelan oil companies (i.e. Citgo). Ouch.

Posted by Miguel at 09:50 AM

Comments

Posted by: Tambopaxi at September 29, 2006 01:05 PM

Posted by: Frank IBC at October 2, 2006 11:29 AM

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