Death Knell of Dictatorship?  Bolivia Riots Against Election Fraud--Argentina & Uruguay Vote On Sunday

There have been a lot of astroturf riots of late against legitimate conservative presidents in the Americas.  Today there is a real revolt against a tyrannical dictator clinging to power in Bolivia.  This landlocked Andean nation is a bastion of socialism, second in notoriety only to Venezuela as a failed case of the "pink tide".   Dictator Evo Morales is claiming a first-round victory, but his raving constituents object to the tally AND his insistence on a fourth term when the constitutional limit is two.  The OAS (which is controlled by conservatives) has been invited to investigate the count from Sunday's vote and the controversy is expected to continue for some time, as a 10% margin of victory is required to avoid a runoff election.  This is happening days ahead of two more hotly contested and historically fraud-ridden South American elections scheduled this weekend in neighboring Argentina and little Uruguay to the East. 

In a fair count, Luis Lacalle Pou, should easily win in Uruguay (he was last polling at 53%).  A win by Lacalle will swing this historically leftist nation to center-right, a painful loss for the remnants of the "pink tide" socialist surge (With the loss of Bolivia and Uruguay, only Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua would remain as relics of this experiment).  Lacalle is famous for a televised fistfight on the floor of congress, and may just represent the grit necessary to make Uruguay great again and save their peso, which is perhaps of the weakest in South America.  Uruguayan OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has been a loud critic of socialist policies in his homeland, even being declared persona non grata there for his defiant stand.  It appears that, at last, his voice is being heard and his countrymen are ready to turn over a new leaf.  This nation of three million (and the highest African-American population sector of any non-island American nation) has plenty going for it, with a strong and diverse agricultural sector, the famed port capital of Montevideo, and a burgeoning technology sector (Uruguay is South America's leading exporter of computer software).

Argentina's future also hangs in the balance, and it is a nation of over forty million.  A swing back to the left in Sunday's election may collapse the market...the currency...maybe the whole world!  Conservative incumbent Mauricio Macri has not been able to imprison his nemesis Cristina Fernandez throughout his four-year administration despite her numerous and well-known crimes.  He will simply have to defeat the Fernandez-Fernandez ticket at the polls, and that in a nation steeped in socialism and tired of the austerity measures Macri has used to prevent the total collapse of their peso.  Today "nazi" has changed meaning (the more it is bantered about), but Cristina Fernandez  is a literal nazi of the old school, an adherent to the Peronist policies of Dictator Juan Peron (a close personal friend of Adolf Hitler) and was first lady to President Nestor Kirchner, a son of nazi German migrants after WWII.  Her own presidency was tyrannical and warmongering, leaving Macri with a runaway train of government spending (and miles and miles of wasteful battleship-grey Soviet-style housing projects in Buenos Aires).  Her retaking power even as vice president would mean Chinese and Iranian alliance and total abandonment of US/western policy.

A lot of cocaine comes from Bolivia; President (Dictator) Morales grew up in the jungles as a boy, harvesting baskets of the coca leaves from which the narcotic is extracted.  Surely he dreamed of growing up to be tin-horn dictator, free to rape the environment and citizenry, make shady, unaccountable international deals, including for controlled substances prohibited by international law and the community of civilized nations.  Dictatorship is, by definition,  being above the law, above all sensibility and civility, beyond all code of conduct except brute ruthlessness.  Eventually people will suffer it no longer, at least in the Americas, where every nation has tasted freedom at some point in its history.  Maybe the bells of liberty will ring from La Paz, the top of the Americas, the highest capital city in the world at over 10,000 feet elevation.  The Bolivians are a strong people and austere.  I think they can win their freedom...with some help from their cousins in the OAS and a tiny push from Uncle Sam.