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C O N F I D E N T I A L LA PAZ 001454 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/01/2018 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER EAID BL
SUBJECT: CHUQUISACA DEALS EVO ANOTHER BLOW 
 
REF: A. LA PAZ 1441 
     ¶B. LA PAZ 1258 
     ¶C. LA PAZ 1243 
 
Classified By: EcoPol Chief Mike Hammer for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
¶1. (C) Summary. Savina Cuellar won June 29's election for 
Prefect of Chuquisaca Department (state governor) with 
between 56 and 62 percent, according to exit polling.  As 
expected, the government accepted the results and voting was 
generally peaceful (reftel a).  Three students have been 
detained by the police for allegedly planning to attack the 
Regional Electoral Court in Sucre.  Opposition leaders 
demanded their immediate release.  Cuellar's victory puts 
many government electoral assumptions in doubt and provides 
the opposition a significant bounce heading into the August 
10 recall referendum on the rule of President Evo Morales and 
all nine department prefects.  End Summary. 
 
Cuellar Wins by a "Bolivian" Landslide 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (U) Various exit polls of the June 29 Chuquisaca 
Department Prefect (state governor) election show 
opposition-aligned candidate Savina Cuellar winning by 
between 55 and 65 percent.  Cuellar is the only female 
prefect, won with a higher percentage than any other prefect 
(or President Evo Morales), and is the first former Movement 
Toward Socialism (MAS) official to defect and win a major 
election.  Turnout was high, with an abstention rate of only 
about 23 percent. 
 
¶3. (U) The same polling data tracks ruling MAS party 
candidate Walter Valda between 30 and 41 percent and Social 
Alliance (AS) party hopeful Felipe Cruz at three to five 
percent.  Voting appears consistent with pre-election polls 
discounted by the government, with Valda winning in seven 
rural provinces and Cuellar winning big in three more 
urbanized provinces.  Official results are expected by July 2. 
 
Government: We Won (In Rural Areas) 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶4. (C) The government appears to be following through on 
their word to accept the results, albeit unenthusiastically, 
as they simultaneous attempted to diminish the importance of 
the vote: 
 
--Minister of the Presidency Juan Ramon Quintana, speaking on 
behalf of the government, said the government accepted 
Cuellar's victory and looked forward to working with her.  He 
discounted the Chuquisaca election as a "waiting room" for 
the August 10 recall referendum. 
 
--Influential MAS Congressman Gustavo Torrico expressed hopes 
Cuellar would work for her constituents in a "non-political" 
way.  Torrico opined organizing a recall referendum would be 
illegal and thus "political." 
 
--Ex-Government Spokesman Alex Contreras admitted the results 
were "a big defeat" for the MAS, but also opined that "racist 
oligarchs" had cynically engineered the election of an 
indigenous candidate to split the MAS vote. 
 
--Official news agency ABI offered no new coverage of the 
election since June 29, when they headlined: "Cuellar is 
Prefect, but Valda Wins in Rural Areas."  ABI quoted Isaac 
Avalos, President of the Confederation of Bolivian Peasant 
Farmers (CSUTCB), to undermine the results and apply 
MAS-friendly math.  "It isn't true that the people of 
Chuquisaca voted for Savina Cuellar, only that an elite few 
are resisting the loss of their political and economic 
privileges." 
 
Opposition Sells Cuellar Win 
---------------------------- 
¶5. (U) Opposition leaders wasted no time using Cuellar as a 
symbol of opposition inclusiveness and characterizing her 
success as a bad omen for Morales' August 10 prospects: 
 
--PODEMOS party chief and ex-President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga 
asserted the election of a female, indigenous prefect, with 
possibly the most electoral support of any national or 
regional candidate was a clear sign of "democracy and 
liberty" defeating the "authoritarian" project of the MAS 
party in Chuquisaca, where it had won in 2005. 
 
--National Unity party leader Samuel Doria Medina claimed 
Cuellar's victory demonstrates the potential of a united 
opposition to defeat the MAS. "This victory changed the 
regional equilibrium, giving departments in favor of autonomy 
the majority, defeating racism, and making Morales' loss of 
majority support undeniable." 
 
--Santa Cruz's Secretary of Autonomy Carlos Dabdoub viewed 
Cuellar's victory as symbolic of national support for the 
social inclusion of ethnic groups and department autonomy. 
He emphasized that Morales can now only count on the support 
of two out of nine prefects. 
 
--The cover of Santa Cruz daily El Deber ran: "A (indigenous) 
Quechua Defeats the MAS." 
 
Cuellar Pleads for Unity; Scolds Evo as Bad "Father" 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
 
¶6. (U) In her June 29 victory speech, Cuellar emphasized a 
need for national unity and to "heal wounds."  She accused 
Morales of exacerbating polarization along ethnic, class, and 
urban/rural lines in dereliction of his presidential duties. 
"You have to always keep in mind all nine departments, all of 
Bolivia.  He (Morales) is a father (of the country), he has 
to recognize all of his children and shouldn't discriminate 
between them." 
 
¶7. (U) As expected, Cuellar said her first priority would be 
to organize an autonomy referendum for Chuquisaca.  Sucre's 
Inter-institutional Committee President Jamie Barron said 
plans for a referendum budget will be approved during 
Cuellar's first meeting of departmental advisors.  Cuellar 
also promised to press for a full-capital status for Sucre 
and a return of all three branches of national government, a 
major campaign issue over which Cuellar broke with the MAS 
party last year.  Sucre is currently the symbolic national 
capital and seat of Bolivia's judiciary. 
 
Smooth Election; Violence Averted 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (U) Voting was generally peaceful with no serious 
incidents of violence, accusations of fraud, or technical 
complaints.  There were, however, some isolated incidents 
including reports of MAS distributing money in Sucre, a 
disturbance in Tarabuco over an annulled vote, and the arrest 
of three students were arrested in the morning for carrying 
28 sticks of dynamite in Chuquisaca's capital of Sucre. 
 
Tuto Rejects Rada's Big Bang Theory 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (U) By the evening of May 29, Government Minister Alfredo 
Rada confirmed the students were being held pending an 
investigation and said the students were planning an attack 
on the Regional Electoral Court, located near the site of the 
arrest.  All three belong to a student group associated with 
the opposition-aligned Sucre Civic Committee.  One student 
denied any knowledge of the dynamite and another accused the 
MAS of planting the explosives in his backpack.  Opposition 
and student leaders accompanied Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, head of 
PODEMOS, Bolivia's largest opposition party, to the Sucre 
investigative police department headquarters to demand the 
release of the students.  Vice Minister of Government Ruben 
Gamarra criticized the move as misguided political inference 
in a police investigation.  "How could they defend people who 
want to generate violence and death in our country," said 
Gamarra.  An anonymous witness to the arrest allegedly told 
media it was a setup by the police who planted the dynamite, 
adding the government designed the incident as a media 
"show." 
 
¶10. (C) Comment: Government Minister Rada's linkage of the 
students to an alleged dynamite attack on the electoral 
court, regardless of the facts in the case, is being 
exploited as a weak attempt to provide a counterweight to the 
ongoing investigation of Bolivian, and now Venezuelan, 
designs to play violent dirty tricks during the June 22 
autonomy vote in Tarija (septel).  The irony that the 
government does nothing to restrain their own supporters from 
amassing dynamite and using it openly in demonstrations, 
including against the U.S. Embassy, is rich indeed.  We will, 
however, plan to cite these arrests to remind the government 
that it must act against demonstrators who use dynamite 
sticks against us.  End Comment. 
 
Opposition Fears (Thankfully) Unrealized 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶11. (U) Meanwhile, opposition leaders protested the 
unscrutinized presence by authorities of pro-government coca 
farmers from Morales' Chapare region and Adolfo "Angel" 
Cerrudo, a pro-Morales Peruvian national who has attacked 
journalists on several occasions.  About 20 members of a 
radical and sometimes violent group Movement Without Land 
(MST) also roamed Sucre and neighboring towns as "election 
observers." 
 
¶12. (U) The opposition also claimed the government or 
government supporters deliberately sabotaged power supply to 
all but one independent television broadcaster June 28 to 
grant the government channel wide latitude to report on and 
influence electoral behavior.  The government claimed the 
power outage was caused by a fire lit by unknown perpetrators 
using branches.  (Note: The cause of the power outage remains 
speculative at this time.  In any event, media was back on 
the air within a couple hours.  End Note.) 
 
Former Prefect Sounds Off 
------------------------- 
 
¶13. (U) Former MAS Prefect David Sanchez commented on the 
election from Lima, Peru, where he fled in November in the 
wake of a violent political standoff, the ransacking of his 
residence, and alleged threats from both government and 
opposition supporters.  Sanchez won under the MAS banner in 
2005 with 42 percent against multiple candidates.  Sanchez 
said the June 29 candidates represented opposite polls in 
Bolivia's increasingly polarized political climate, which he 
blamed on the media and "institutions."  (Note/Comment: This 
appears to be a thinly veiled dig at the government.  Sanchez 
feels victimized by this polarization and assigns a good 
portion of the blame to Evo Morales.  End Note/Comment.) 
 
Comment: 
-------- 
 
¶14. (C) The government's efforts to discount Cuellar's 
victory ring hollow considering the amount of political 
capital and resources they expended in Valda's campaign, 
including a number of Morales cameo appearances.  The 
government should be worried: they lost a key department to a 
candidate that challenges all their electoral assumptions. 
Cuellar's victory fundamentally challenges the MAS supposed 
monopoly as the defender of the country's indigenous poor and 
disenfranchised.  The MAS strategy of exploiting racism as a 
wedge issue largely backfired against Cuellar, an ethnic 
Quechua.  Although Valda won as expected in Chuquisaca's 
countryside, Cuellar's rural showing of between 28 and 42 
percent (per exit polls) challenges the MAS assumption of 
complete and uncontested indigenous rural support.  Cuellar 
also provides an successful example for would-be MAS 
defectors. 
 
¶15. (C) As we mentioned in reftel a, the Chuquisaca election 
should provide the opposition a boost going into the August 
10 recall referendum, but with the caveat that the capital 
issue so vital in Cuellar's win will not work to split MAS 
support outside of Chuquisaca.  With this fifth consecutive 
victory in two months (following autonomy referendum 
victories in Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni, and Tarija 
Departments), the opposition is again calling on Evo to enter 
into a meaningful dialogue.  But, it remains doubtful that 
Evo will engage in serious talks despite the de facto divided 
state of the country.  Instead, Morales will now focus all 
efforts on winning the August 10 recall to be able to assert 
validation for his mandate.  End Comment. 
URS