Posted on 09/01/2006 3:24:53 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
There is something about Bolivian President Evo Morales that doesn't inspire confidence in a prosperous, democratic future for his country. And it's not only the fashion statement he makes with the striped sweater he wears like a uniform.
For a good many Bolivians it's the erosion of civil liberties under his leadership. Just ask Marcela Nogales, a 47-year-old mother of two pre-teens who holds a master's degree in auditing and financial control from Bolivian Catholic University in a joint program with Harvard University.
Mrs. Nogales, who was the general manager of the Central Bank of Bolivia for five years until May, has been detained in a Bolivian prison for the past six weeks at the behest of the Morales government. She has yet to be charged.
This detention, a flagrant violation of Bolivian law, appears to be part of a broader campaign against anyone connected with modernization efforts in the past decade. As such, it has further ignited the fears of Bolivian democrats who are deeply concerned that their country is heading toward an authoritarian police state under Mr. Morales.
Evo has already badly mishandled the economy. Exhibit A is his decision on May 1, amidst the biggest energy boom in the history of humankind, to nationalize the investments of foreign energy companies in his gas-rich country. Perhaps such bravado felt good to the country's first indigenous leader in modern times. But if he was making a political calculation, he left out one important variable: Bolivia is poor. So poor, it seems, that it hasn't the funding or expertise to exploit the gas itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yet like any self-respecting demagogue, Evo isn't about to rely on his competency to determine his fate. The best defense is a good offense and Evo is on the offensive, using his office to interrogate, investigate and even jail those who represent an alternative to his vision for a Maoist Bolivia.
Morales's ultra-socialist politics speak for themselves.
This is the guy who is a pagan too. He has taken up some indigenous pagan religion and is starting to persecute Christianity. More bad news from South America. Seems like the world is exploding with enemies everwhere.
You guys lay off my Homeboy Evo, awright!
It's like a south American whack a mole game these days.
Dig that center part in his hair. Yikes!
Nah. Alfalfa was a stylin' dude. Evo looks like he ought to be wearing a condom over his head, the way his hair's standing up.
You're so right.
The resurgence of wacky South American popularism is very disturbing and it will bring only pain and misery to this long suffering continent and to it's poor and impoverished inhabitants.
He looks a "little" feminine there.
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