Bolivia’s Crisis Lacks a By-the-Books Solution

In his 13-plus years in office, Bolivian President Evo Morales was often heralded as the good Bolivarian. He tempered his unapologetic socialist rhetoric with mostly pragmatic economics. He ran budget surpluses for many years, contained inflation and presided over an export boom. True, the seller’s market for natural gas helped top up government coffers and vote-trawling social programs, while expanding coca production kept the off-books economy humming. Yet while he was no friend to capitalism, Morales was astute enough not to smother private initiative. On his watch, jobs multiplied and inequality fell.

That’s a record any Latin American leader would envy, never mind the hapless companeros from the ebbing socialist Pink Tide inspired by the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. And yet in the Andes, where power is cocaine, he wanted more — Bolivia’s constitution and voters be damned. Even as he packed off Monday to Mexico for safe haven, his country careening toward chaos over his scandalously rigged reelection, Morales showed no sign of letting go, much less repentance. “The coup-mongers are destroying the rule of law,” Morales tweeted on the eve of his farewell, vowing to soon return “with more force and energy.”