BOLIVIA TEETERS BETWEEN DEMOCRATIC LAW AND FRATRICIDAL WAR

Bolivia today is split as much by geography as by psychology. Radical groups on both sides are driving the country towards a solution that solves nothing but rather encourages a general conflagration of passions and hatred that eclipses reason and threatens to destroy the hard-won democratic peace, writes Guillermo Bedregal Gutierrez, an ex-parliamentarian and ex-foreign minister of Bolivia. In this analysis, the author writes that the logic of this polarisation could drag the country into an irrational battle of inflamed factions whose only method is \'\'resolution through disaster\'\'. President Evo Morales, an auto-didact mestizo union leader from Cochabamba who defeated the political establishment with over 50 percent of the popular vote, is inspired by a \'\'revolutionary\'\' radical and iconoclastic idea and reads history through a lens of spite and resentment. On August 10 a recall referendum will be held to revoke or reaffirm the mandate of the current government and the Bolivian congress. This foolish vote will only further divide the country and fan radical passions, which could lead to the secessionist division of Bolivia. The country is passing through a moment -often unremarked- of confrontation and irrationality in which the valour of Democratic Peace is ever more absent.