Bolivia’s Acting President Has Toxic Ambitions

Bolivia’s caretaker President Jeanine Anez had one job. Sworn in last year as interim leader when President Evo Morales fled the country after trying to steal an election, the legislative backbencher promised to shepherd a country inflamed by street turmoil, ethnic strife and combustible politics to new and cleansing elections in May.

Had she stuck to the plan, Anez, who had been set to retire from public office, might have gone down as that rarest of Latin American public figures, a peacemaker dedicated to parsimony and conciliation. Yet as with another Andean intoxicant of choice, a whiff of power rises fast. Anez quickly pivoted from caretaker to heiress apparent. She flaunted her Christian credentials, brandishing a Bible in a theatrical stroll through the presidential palace, a thinly coded slight to Bolivia’s indigenous majority. She broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela and Cuba, both close allies of the Morales government – hardly within the brief of a placeholder.

Going back on her word to step aside after the May 3 vote, she announced she would stand for president, claiming to be the best candidate to unite Bolivia’s democratic opposition. The about-face drew sharp criticism from opposition candidates and drove her communications minister to quit. Sure, she then made the perfunctory nod to transparency and avoiding conflict of interest by asking her cabinet to resign (only to rehire most of them days later) and vowing to campaign only on weekends. That’s the sort of doublespeak Bolivians had grown used to hearing from Morales as he bent the rules to extend his presidency indefinitely. “Anez has warmed to the job,” said John Walsh, of the Washington Office on Latin America. “Apparently she’s convinced she’s the figure that Bolivia needs.”