BARRIENTOS "
ELECTED" IN BOLIVIA
[Lieut. Gen. René Barrientos Ortuno easily won the electoral contest which the military junta in Bolivia decided to stage July 3. According to the figures released by the junta on July 6 before the count was complete, Barrientos was credited with 455, 729 votes .out of a total of 745,299 cast. Charges of fraud were sent to the Organization of American States. The OAS, which is a creature of the U.S.State Department, will. probably file them in the wastebasket.
[The article below, written on the eve of the election, indicates that the electoral show put on by Barrientos and his American advisers will have but little effect on the acuteness of the country's political crisis. ]
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La Paz
In the electoral campaign, the opposition has been very active, hinging its platform on the demand for a general amnesty. The military junta felt compelled to concede this, but imposed a number of limitations. Thus the atmosphere of repression remains unbroken in Bolivia.
Due to the persecution of political and trade-union leaders, intervention in the internal affairs of the unions, prosecution of political: opponents as criminals, etc., the prospect of elections failed to' arouse any enthusiasm among the people. Despite intensive campaigning in the press and over the radio, the military junta and the National Electoral Court have met with poor response. The books closed June 3 with 1,198,000 registered voters. The registration in 1964 was 1,700,000. It is estimated that at least thirty percent of those eligible failed to register.
Not all the political parties are participating in the July 3 elections. Many of them are calling for a boycott, others advocate casting blank ballots.
Barrientos is the candidate of the FRB [Frente de la Revolucién Boliviana]. This is composed of the MPC [Movimiento Popular : Cristiano], a party organized by the military junta; the PRA [Partido Revolucionario Auténtico], which split from the MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario] shortly before the downfall of Paz Estenssoro; the PSD [Partido Social Demédcrata], a grouping of the oligarchy founded by Robert Arce, former manager of the Patino Mines Co.; and the PIR [Partido Izquierda Revolucionaria], which claims to be Marxist and which was the first vehicle of Stalinism in Bolivia. This contradictory conglomeration was put together with a combination of blackmail and handouts; and is designed to pass as a civilian base for the candidacy of the military figure, Barrientos. They are discredited organizations without the least following among the masses.
Up to the middle of May, the FRB was the. only organization participating in the elections. By granting them a handful of seats as. deputies. and senators, the military junta gained the participation of the AID (Alianza Institucionalista Democratica], which is composed of the Partido Liberal, the pro tin-company ex-President Enrique Hertzog's Unién Republicana, and the wing of the MNR headed by Victor Andrade, a friend of the Yankees who served as ambassador to Washington under the former government.
. The. electoral Court denied the wing of the MNR headed by Victor Paz Estenssoro and Hernan Siles: Zuazo a place on the ballot,.certifying Andrade who has an understanding with the military and the Yankees but who lacks any popular support. It also certified the FLIN [Frente de Liberacién Nacional], which is a front organization for the pro-Moscow Communist party, and the FSB [Falange Socialista | Boliviana].
It is common - public knowledge that these parties have an understanding with the military involving seats in parliament and large sums of money. Thé pro-Moscow Communist ‘party is accused of seeking: to serve as an agency of the: ‘government within the labor movement. ae wa
The political parties boycotting the election include the MNR headed by. Paz Estenssoro and:Siles Suazo, the united POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario] headed by Hugo Gonz&lez Moscoso and Guillermo Lora; the PDC [Partido. Demécrata Cristiano] led by. Remo Di Natali; the pro-Peking Partido Comunista Boliviana; the PRIN [Partido Revolucionaria de la Izquierda Nacional] headed by Lechin; the Grupo Espartaco, an old split-off from the MNR which claims to be Marxist. All of these parties, with the exception of the PDC belong to the CODEP [Consejo Democratico del Pueblo], a kind of leftist front. The boycott.called for by these parties is being observed by the working-class and popular organizations. The thirteenth congress of the mine workers decided to boycott the elections as did the Federacion de Trabajadores en Harina [Flour Workers Federation], the COB [Central Obrera Boliviana. and the oppositional peasant organizations.
_ The ‘reasons given for the boycott are as follows:
“€Y) “Absence of guarantees in a climate of terror and persecution. of: the opposition, particularly the left; continuation of. the Ley de Seguridad del Estado (State Security Law] which prohibits any trade-union activity and political opposition and under which political and trade-union leaders have been subjected to criminal trials and imprisonment; absence of the right of assembly, since any meeting of the left is broken up and tear-gassed; absence of freedom of the press, since journalists who report the news truthfully are beaten up and newspapers that print anything against the government are punished, as happened to the newspaperman Sanchez who was beaten up and the evening Jornada whose offices were broken into and tear-gassed, and the trade-union radio stations that were attacked, smashed and then padlocked.. :
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(2) Existence of a powerful apparatus to. put over the military candidate, an apparatus that uses government planes and | vehicles and government money, including funds: to buy a helicopter, which mobilizés state functionaries, * compelling: them to participate actively under threat of losing. their jobs, and which organizes. armed bands.-to intimidate the population. The POR and the PDC have demanded investigation of the sources of money used by the candidate, but their demands have been met with silence.
(3)°The open intervention of all the military, police and administrative authorities in behalf of the military candidate. They. are the: only ones who enjoy civil liberties...
es) The open intervention. of the North American embassy, @ Yankee colonel. supervising Barrientos' electoral campaign.
In view of this situation, the election is only a farce and a fraud aimed at legalizing the military dictatorship.
The parties of. the Marxist left, -the POR and. the ‘pro-Peking PCB, point in addition to the bourgeois parliamentary crisis that. is at the bottom of the indifference and lack of confidence of the masses in the elections. The electoral law does not grant the working-class: districts parliamentary representation and the peasant vote is’a mere fiction due to the intervention of the army and the bureaucracy. In practice the peasants do not vote, the authorities simply load. the ballot boxes with their votes. A parliament formed in this: way can be only completely servile as it was in the days of the MNR. It cannot serve even as a tribune for revolutionists still less as a means for discussing and resolving the problems of. the nation and: ‘the workers. : © The: parties of the. right who are boycotting the: ‘election: call their campaign "democratic resistance"; those of the left. call theirs "nilitant, fighting abstention. "
Their ‘slogans are ‘not to vote; or, where | voting is obligetory, to cast a blank or invalid ballot. bone Pa :
The president of the National Electoral Court, Mario Rolon Anaya, estimated that around 800,000 would vote July 43; that is, less than fifty percent of those on the lists in 1964 and about twothirds of those registered this year. This serves as a gauge of the ‘extent of abstention. Out of the 800,000, however, there will: be a big ‘percentage of blank, invalid or spoiled ballots.. All this” indi cates the overwhelming opposition in Bolivia to the military.
If Rolén's estimate proves correct, and one. adds the 500, felele) unregistered citizens to his estimate of 400, 000 registered voters “who will ‘fail to turn out, this means that about 900,000 will -have rejected’ participating in the. elections, aside from those who. cast ‘blank ballots.
‘As can be seen, under present circumstances ; the elections
do not have a popular basis of support. The insurrectional way out, posed by the POR and the pro-Peking PCB, is gaining ground as the only road. On the eve of the elections a question mark still stood over them and there were persistent rumors that one of the military factions was considering another coup d'état.
June 20, 1966