CHUQUISACA DEALS EVO ANOTHER BLOW

C O N F I D E N T I A L LA PAZ 001454 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/01/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER EAID BL SUBJECT: CHUQUISACA DEALS EVO ANOTHER BLOW REF: A. LA PAZ 1441 ¶B. LA PAZ 1258 ¶C. LA PAZ 1243 Classified By: EcoPol Chief Mike Hammer for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary. Savina Cuellar won June 29's election for Prefect of Chuquisaca Department (state governor) with between 56 and 62 percent, according to exit polling. As expected, the government accepted the results and voting was generally peaceful (reftel a). Three students have been detained by the police for allegedly planning to attack the Regional Electoral Court in Sucre. Opposition leaders demanded their immediate release. Cuellar's victory puts many government electoral assumptions in doubt and provides the opposition a significant bounce heading into the August 10 recall referendum on the rule of President Evo Morales and all nine department prefects. End Summary. Cuellar Wins by a "Bolivian" Landslide -------------- ¶2. (U) Various exit polls of the June 29 Chuquisaca Department Prefect (state governor) election show opposition-aligned candidate Savina Cuellar winning by between 55 and 65 percent. Cuellar is the only female prefect, won with a higher percentage than any other prefect (or President Evo Morales),and is the first former Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) official to defect and win a major election. Turnout was high, with an abstention rate of only about 23 percent. ¶3. (U) The same polling data tracks ruling MAS party candidate Walter Valda between 30 and 41 percent and Social Alliance (AS) party hopeful Felipe Cruz at three to five percent. Voting appears consistent with pre-election polls discounted by the government, with Valda winning in seven rural provinces and Cuellar winning big in three more urbanized provinces. Official results are expected by July 2. Government: We Won (In Rural Areas) -------------- ¶4. (C) The government appears to be following through on their word to accept the results, albeit unenthusiastically, as they simultaneous attempted to diminish the importance of the vote: --Minister of the Presidency Juan Ramon Quintana, speaking on behalf of the government, said the government accepted Cuellar's victory and looked forward to working with her. He discounted the Chuquisaca election as a "waiting room" for the August 10 recall referendum. --Influential MAS Congressman Gustavo Torrico expressed hopes Cuellar would work for her constituents in a "non-political" way. Torrico opined organizing a recall referendum would be illegal and thus "political." --Ex-Government Spokesman Alex Contreras admitted the results were "a big defeat" for the MAS, but also opined that "racist oligarchs" had cynically engineered the election of an indigenous candidate to split the MAS vote. --Official news agency ABI offered no new coverage of the election since June 29, when they headlined: "Cuellar is Prefect, but Valda Wins in Rural Areas." ABI quoted Isaac Avalos, President of the Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Farmers (CSUTCB),to undermine the results and apply MAS-friendly math. "It isn't true that the people of Chuquisaca voted for Savina Cuellar, only that an elite few are resisting the loss of their political and economic privileges." Opposition Sells Cuellar Win -------------- ¶5. (U) Opposition leaders wasted no time using Cuellar as a symbol of opposition inclusiveness and characterizing her success as a bad omen for Morales' August 10 prospects: --PODEMOS party chief and ex-President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga asserted the election of a female, indigenous prefect, with possibly the most electoral support of any national or regional candidate was a clear sign of "democracy and liberty" defeating the "authoritarian" project of the MAS party in Chuquisaca, where it had won in 2005. --National Unity party leader Samuel Doria Medina claimed Cuellar's victory demonstrates the potential of a united opposition to defeat the MAS. "This victory changed the regional equilibrium, giving departments in favor of autonomy the majority, defeating racism, and making Morales' loss of majority support undeniable." --Santa Cruz's Secretary of Autonomy Carlos Dabdoub viewed Cuellar's victory as symbolic of national support for the social inclusion of ethnic groups and department autonomy. He emphasized that Morales can now only count on the support of two out of nine prefects. --The cover of Santa Cruz daily El Deber ran: "A (indigenous) Quechua Defeats the MAS." Cuellar Pleads for Unity; Scolds Evo as Bad "Father" -------------- -------------- ¶6. (U) In her June 29 victory speech, Cuellar emphasized a need for national unity and to "heal wounds." She accused Morales of exacerbating polarization along ethnic, class, and urban/rural lines in dereliction of his presidential duties. "You have to always keep in mind all nine departments, all of Bolivia. He (Morales) is a father (of the country),he has to recognize all of his children and shouldn't discriminate between them." ¶7. (U) As expected, Cuellar said her first priority would be to organize an autonomy referendum for Chuquisaca. Sucre's Inter-institutional Committee President Jamie Barron said plans for a referendum budget will be approved during Cuellar's first meeting of departmental advisors. Cuellar also promised to press for a full-capital status for Sucre and a return of all three branches of national government, a major campaign issue over which Cuellar broke with the MAS party last year. Sucre is currently the symbolic national capital and seat of Bolivia's judiciary. Smooth Election; Violence Averted -------------- ¶8. (U) Voting was generally peaceful with no serious incidents of violence, accusations of fraud, or technical complaints. There were, however, some isolated incidents including reports of MAS distributing money in Sucre, a disturbance in Tarabuco over an annulled vote, and the arrest of three students were arrested in the morning for carrying 28 sticks of dynamite in Chuquisaca's capital of Sucre. Tuto Rejects Rada's Big Bang Theory -------------- ¶9. (U) By the evening of May 29, Government Minister Alfredo Rada confirmed the students were being held pending an investigation and said the students were planning an attack on the Regional Electoral Court, located near the site of the arrest. All three belong to a student group associated with the opposition-aligned Sucre Civic Committee. One student denied any knowledge of the dynamite and another accused the MAS of planting the explosives in his backpack. Opposition and student leaders accompanied Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, head of PODEMOS, Bolivia's largest opposition party, to the Sucre investigative police department headquarters to demand the release of the students. Vice Minister of Government Ruben Gamarra criticized the move as misguided political inference in a police investigation. "How could they defend people who want to generate violence and death in our country," said Gamarra. An anonymous witness to the arrest allegedly told media it was a setup by the police who planted the dynamite, adding the government designed the incident as a media "show." ¶10. (C) Comment: Government Minister Rada's linkage of the students to an alleged dynamite attack on the electoral court, regardless of the facts in the case, is being exploited as a weak attempt to provide a counterweight to the ongoing investigation of Bolivian, and now Venezuelan, designs to play violent dirty tricks during the June 22 autonomy vote in Tarija (septel). The irony that the government does nothing to restrain their own supporters from amassing dynamite and using it openly in demonstrations, including against the U.S. Embassy, is rich indeed. We will, however, plan to cite these arrests to remind the government that it must act against demonstrators who use dynamite sticks against us. End Comment. Opposition Fears (Thankfully) Unrealized -------------- ¶11. (U) Meanwhile, opposition leaders protested the unscrutinized presence by authorities of pro-government coca farmers from Morales' Chapare region and Adolfo "Angel" Cerrudo, a pro-Morales Peruvian national who has attacked journalists on several occasions. About 20 members of a radical and sometimes violent group Movement Without Land (MST) also roamed Sucre and neighboring towns as "election observers." ¶12. (U) The opposition also claimed the government or government supporters deliberately sabotaged power supply to all but one independent television broadcaster June 28 to grant the government channel wide latitude to report on and influence electoral behavior. The government claimed the power outage was caused by a fire lit by unknown perpetrators using branches. (Note: The cause of the power outage remains speculative at this time. In any event, media was back on the air within a couple hours. End Note.) Former Prefect Sounds Off -------------- ¶13. (U) Former MAS Prefect David Sanchez commented on the election from Lima, Peru, where he fled in November in the wake of a violent political standoff, the ransacking of his residence, and alleged threats from both government and opposition supporters. Sanchez won under the MAS banner in 2005 with 42 percent against multiple candidates. Sanchez said the June 29 candidates represented opposite polls in Bolivia's increasingly polarized political climate, which he blamed on the media and "institutions." (Note/Comment: This appears to be a thinly veiled dig at the government. Sanchez feels victimized by this polarization and assigns a good portion of the blame to Evo Morales. End Note/Comment.) Comment: -------------- ¶14. (C) The government's efforts to discount Cuellar's victory ring hollow considering the amount of political capital and resources they expended in Valda's campaign, including a number of Morales cameo appearances. The government should be worried: they lost a key department to a candidate that challenges all their electoral assumptions. Cuellar's victory fundamentally challenges the MAS supposed monopoly as the defender of the country's indigenous poor and disenfranchised. The MAS strategy of exploiting racism as a wedge issue largely backfired against Cuellar, an ethnic Quechua. Although Valda won as expected in Chuquisaca's countryside, Cuellar's rural showing of between 28 and 42 percent (per exit polls) challenges the MAS assumption of complete and uncontested indigenous rural support. Cuellar also provides an successful example for would-be MAS defectors. ¶15. (C) As we mentioned in reftel a, the Chuquisaca election should provide the opposition a boost going into the August 10 recall referendum, but with the caveat that the capital issue so vital in Cuellar's win will not work to split MAS support outside of Chuquisaca. With this fifth consecutive victory in two months (following autonomy referendum victories in Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni, and Tarija Departments),the opposition is again calling on Evo to enter into a meaningful dialogue. But, it remains doubtful that Evo will engage in serious talks despite the de facto divided state of the country. Instead, Morales will now focus all efforts on winning the August 10 recall to be able to assert validation for his mandate. End Comment. URS