theplatypus wrote:Mickey wrote:96583UP wrote:Evo Morales: the latest in a seemingly endless line of far-left South American leaders to take office in a parade of righteousness and leave office in a flaming clown car of corruption
Unbelievably fucking wrong on this one, bub.
Bumping for Mickey's take on this
It's not a particularly hot one. I don't think you have to be a supporter of Morales or the pink tide more broadly to think that what happened in Bolivia is disturbing. You don't even have to dispute the neutrality of the OAS and their allegations of inconsistencies (the majority of which are explained entirely by the difference between the quick count and the official count insofar as it pertains to rural areas, which both overwhelmingly support Morales and are historically slower to report their votes). Leaving that aside and
accepting that the elections were fraudulent and that Morales should never have been allowed to run for a fourth term (this means disputing the sovereignty of the Bolivian Supreme Court, but okay), there's still the fact that Morales was run out of office by the military, that protest leaders called for his
arrest even after he abdicated the Presidency, that his house was ransacked, and that the new interim regime is explicitly racist and anti-indigenous (burning the Wiphala, bringing the Bible back to the Presidential palace, etc.). We should also note that no one disputes the idea that Morales got more of the vote--only that he didn't get the sufficient 10% lead necessary to win outright--and that he had already agreed to hold new elections. This isn't to say that Morales is not, to a lesser or greater extent, corrupt or authoritarian, or that his presidency was the right move for the Bolivian people--we don't need to go down the Telesur rabbit hole. But the idea that he was run out in a "flaming clown car of corruption"--as if this is a populist and ethical response to the abuse of executive power rather than, say, a violently racist right-wing backlash supported by international business and with chilling similarities to Bolsonaro's rise in Brasil--suggests that you might not have a clear idea of what's happening in Latin America.