Tuesday Links
- Still think the War on Drugs is a good idea, or that it’s working? Decreases in cocaine production in Colombia have been almost fully offset by increases in Peru and Bolivia.
- Why is nobody talking about the right of Wisconsin taxpayers to not deal with unions?
- “If you’re the rare bird who favors limited government at home and abroad, you can hardly expect good news from a poll of this generation’s Tracy Flicks.” (Maybe not.)
- NPR and PBS are using taxpayer dollars to lobby for… more taxpayer dollars. But that’s hardly a new game in Washington.
- Afghanistan: nation-building on crack.
- Saying no to a no-fly zone over Libya should be a no-brainer:
Evo Morales’ Soccer Behavior Mirrors His Governing Style
The video speaks volumes: During a “friendly” game played in La Paz, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales (wearing green jersey number 10) approaches a rival player to confront him for a previous foul. Suddenly, Morales takes justice into his own hands and savagely knees the player in the groin. The referee sees the action but doesn’t red card Morales. Even the teammates of the assaulted player don’t complain. Instead, the referee expels the attacked player. The game goes on and Morales scores the tying goal for a 4-4 match. It was later reported that Morales’ security detail tried to arrest the player.
Evo Morales’ thuggish attitude towards his soccer rivals mirrors his attitude towards political opponents (actually, the team he was playing against was led by the mayor of La Paz, a political foe of the president). Before and since becoming president in 2006, Morales has repeatedly resorted to violence in order to advance his socialist agenda. A couple of other episodes are indicative of Morales’ governing style:
In November 2007, after months of impasse in the Constitutional Assembly in which the text of a new constitution could not be approved because of a lack of an absolute majority, the government called for a session of the Assembly to be held at a military base. When the opposition delegates tried to enter the premises, they were prevented from doing so by the military, the police and Morales’ supporters. The text of Bolivia’s new constitution was thus approved by the unrepresentative Assembly.
To become the law of the land, the new constitution had to be approved by a national referendum. However, the opposition-controlled Senate refused to call a referendum on a constitutional text that was rightly viewed as illegitimate. In February 2008 Morales called the leaders of the opposition to his official residence for a negotiation. Upon arrival, they were told that the president wasn’t there and that the bill to call for a referendum was about to be submitted for a vote on the Senate floor. When the legislators tried to return to the Congress, they were prevented doing so by Morales’ supporters and the police. The Senate passed the bill and Morales went on to win the referendum by a wide margin.
A couple of years ago, Evo Morales candidly recounted his attitude to following the rules: “When some lawyer tells me ‘Evo, you’re making a judicial mistake; what you’re doing is illegal,’ well, I keep going even though it’s illegal. I then tell the lawyers: ‘If it’s illegal, go ahead and make it legal. That’s what you went to school for.’”
Nobody should be surprised by Evo’s soccer antics. They are just a metaphor for his governing style.
More Censorship in Venezuela
More than 16,000 murders occurred in Venezuela in 2009. That compares with 4,550 homicides reported in 1998, the year Hugo Chavez was elected president. The fact that Venezuela now has one of the world’s highest violent crime rates underscores the Chavez revolution’s utter neglect of the basic and proper functions of government.
Yet the problem is downplayed by the government, which inexplicably blames capitalism and poverty even though official figures show a fall in poverty rates. As if to highlight the government’s insensitivity, the president of state-run TeleSUR TV station recently laughed off the problem in a widely-seen CNN interview.
Last week, El Nacional newspaper published this graphic front-page photo of crime victims in a morgue. The official response from a government-controlled court has been to ban media from publishing violent images for one month. Thus, today El Nacional ran the front-page photo below, which reads “Censored” in the space where photos should be. The way the Bolivarian Revolution is going, Venezuelans can expect the government to continue resolving social problems in the same way.
The Importance of Institutions: A Bolivian Perspective
Following what has become an ominous tradition during his presidency, Evo Morales celebrated Labor Day (May 1st in most of the world) by expropriating energy companies. Early Saturday, Bolivian troops occupied the facilities of four private electrical utilities, which were owned until then by local and foreign companies.
In explaining his tough-handed modus operandi, Morales shared his views [in Spanish] on the importance of government institutions in solving legal disagreements in Bolivia:
“We made every effort to reach an agreement with the private multinational companies, and if there’s no will to reach an agreement through dialogue, then we have government institutions such as the army and the national police.”
Evo Morales’ Biometric Identity System
It was with interest and concern that I read about the new election law recently signed by Bolivian President Evo Morales. The AP reports that it “sets stricter standards for voter authentication, introducing a $30 million system of biometric identification, based on voters’ fingerprints.”
It is important to secure voting systems against fraud, but be careful how you do it. Identity systems are powerful administrative tools which historically haven’t mixed well with authoritarian governments.
A biometric voter identification system was apparently a demand of Morales’ right-wing opposition. Don’t be surprised if he uses it to consolidate power or do far worse than that to his political rivals.
Some advocates have dabbled in supporting a national ID in the United States for election administration, but that would be error. I wrote about the many risks of uniform identity systems in my book Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
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