Lessons from South America

Not a single election candidate appears to have either brains or will to emulate Morales, resist US intervention.

Accolade where accolade is due and hats off to Bolivian President Juan Evo Morales Ayma who has single-mindedly created a positive revolution for change and prosperity on a model that Pakistan would do well to emulate.

Morales was born into a subsistence farming family of indigenous Aymara Indians. A real son of the soil, this admirer of legendary Argentinean Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara clawed, quite literally, his way up to the presidency in 2006 and is now serving his second term in office. Flamboyant and ferociously outspoken for the rights of his country and his people and awarded the title ‘World Hero of Mother Earth’ by the General Assembly of the United Nations, Morales is, among many other achievements, responsible for introducing a new constitution, implementing land reforms, nationalising large industries and reducing poverty. He strongly opposed American interference in Bolivian politics and the politics of other South American nations and, for the icing on an eminently sensible cake, is firmly opposed to any form of manipulation by transnational corporations which, along with America, he appears to view as the devil incarnate.

This staunch defence of foreign interference on any level, combined with active protection of his people, their rights and the environmental rights of the planet as a whole will, no doubt, and very sadly, indeed, bring this ‘Hero’ to grief if and when, he pushes the ‘Big Bully Boys’ (BBB) much further than he already has. As has been proven more than once in the recent past, when the head of another country thumbs his nose at the BBBs once too often, the BBBs retaliate on massive scale: think Libya, Syria and Iraq, for instance.

Not that Pakistan wants to find itself on the receiving end of foreign outrage and intervention any more than it already is but it must be said that a president who unreservedly protects the rights of his country and his people — over those of profiteering, warmongering interventionists — is the need of the hour. However, not a single candidate in the motley line-up, presenting for the election, appears to have either the brains or the will — let alone the guts — to take the kind of stand that Morales has taken and promised to see right through to the bitter end.

BBB interference, in what should be Pakistan’s internal political and economic affairs, is costing the country far more than it can ever afford to pay. The price is already being paid in drone deaths, growing restlessness and lawlessness in Balochistan, Talibanisation, sectarian strife, civil unrest in Karachi, skyrocketing unemployment, poverty and the list goes on — right through to the fact that the BBB’s meddling comes with an astronomical interest rate attached. Hence, the country’s debt will never be stamped ‘paid in full’ unless a miracle occurs.

According to Morales though, such a miracle on a global scale and not just a Pakistani scale is due to begin on December 21^st when, as the Mayan calendar that Morales consulted claims: “It is the end of selfishness and the beginning of brotherhood and the beginning of collectivism. It is the end of division and the beginning of unity.” If such does come to pass, then it will, as always, live here in very interesting times, indeed.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2012.