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C O N F I D E N T I A L LA PAZ 000436 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/20/2019 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM PREL PINR ENVR BL ECON
SUBJECT: BOLIVIA: WHO CAN CHALLENGE MORALES? (PT 1) 
 
Classified By: CDA Chris Lambert for reasons 1.4 (b, d) 
 
¶1. (C) Summary:  Although presidential elections will not 
occur until December 6, at least ten members of the 
opposition are being mentioned as potential candidates.  This 
is the first in a series of cables that will review the 
possibilities for each.  Part One will focus on the three 
leading candidates: former Vice President Victor Hugo 
Cardenas, Potosi Mayor Rene Joaquino, and entrepreneur Samuel 
Doria Medina.  All of the candidates have significant 
electoral drawbacks.  End summary. 
 
- - - - - - - - - - 
Victor Hugo Cardenas 
- - - - - - - - - - 
 
¶2. (C) Former Vice President Victor Hugo Cardenas is running 
as the "unity" candidate, arguing he is the only person who 
can bring together the east and the west of the country.  In 
his appearances, he regularly skewers President Morales and 
his ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, rejecting 
the new constitution and criticizing the "MAS revolution" as 
divisive and demagogic.  Cardenas bases his support on his 
high level of name recognition, ostensibly high levels of 
support in Santa Cruz, his pledge to unite all Bolivians as 
equals, and his ability to speak Aymara and Quechua fluently 
and Guarani passably well.  Cardenas campaign insiders tell 
us they have devised a plan based on focus groups and advice 
from polling guru Stanley Greenberg to launch extensive radio 
campaigns in all three languages and openly challenge Morales 
to debate Cardenas in either Aymara or Quechua.  Since 
Morales speaks only Spanish, Cardenas' team believes they can 
expose Morales as a "fake indigenous," and then pile on with 
charges of corruption, economic mismanagement, and divisive 
rhetoric.  Cardenas and his backers cite private polls 
showing Morales' support softening to as low as 35 percent in 
the main cities, with Cardenas the leading challenger at up 
to twenty percent nationally and 27 percent in the capital 
cities (and "surging"). 
 
¶3. (C) Outside of Cardenas' inside circle, the news is quite 
different.  Cardenas' opponents regularly cite his reputation 
as a "Gonista" who betrayed his Lake Titicaca roots and sold 
the country's patrimony to the lowest bidder. Although 
Cardenas served as vice president only once, in Sanchez de 
Lozada's first term, he is often incorrectly associated with 
Sanchez de Lozada's role in the Gas Wars and his 
poorly-remembered capitalization programs.  The recent 
takeover of Cardenas' property by his own community, whether 
instigated by MAS agitators or others, has only underlined 
the message of Cardenas as a "traitor to his people."  A 
recent Ipsos poll contained a very different message from 
Cardenas' numbers, showing any number of other potential 
candidates with higher levels of popularity and name 
recognition. 
 
¶4. (C) Comment: While reliable polling numbers are hard to 
come by and privately-commissioned polls sometimes suspect, 
Cardenas' campaign insiders are privately high on his 
prospects.  They dismiss Bolivian polls, and stress the 
Greenberg-led poll-based strategy they are developing.  In a 
meeting with Charge, Cardenas unsurprisingly laughed off the 
idea that he is in any way a "traitor" to his community, and 
his team members have said they are ready to take this charge 
head-on in a blitz of public appearances and radio campaigns. 
 Cardenas told Charge how his father changed his surname from 
Choquehuanca (same as Foreign Minister and cousin David 
Choquehuanca) when he was a boy in order to avoid racism in 
the schooling system.  He previewed other messages stressing 
his indigenous bona fides as well.  Last, Cardenas, like 
other candidates, stresses the need to have a "united front" 
against Morales, so as not to fracture the opposition vote, 
but he believes this process will happen naturally once 
polling numbers settle and Santa Cruz leaders commit to one 
candidate.  In meetings with Santa Cruz business and 
political leaders, Embassy officers have heard Cardenas 
merits serious consideration.  A source from Cardenas' team 
tells us this financial commitment could come as early as 
April.  End comment. 
 
- - - - - - - 
Rene Joaquino 
- - - - - - - 
 
¶5. (C) Potosi Mayor Rene Joaquino styles himself as the only 
"new" leader in the race, and as a moderate-left indigenous 
alternative to Morales.  Joaquino is the leader of the Social 
Alliance (AS) party that has regional prominence in the 
Potosi department.  He is advised by Filemon Escobar, one of 
the founders of the MAS party, who later split with Morales 
over charges the MAS had betrayed its indigenous beginnings 
in favor of a Cuban-style classist revolution.  Escobar and 
Joaquino are now pushing a "softer" version of the original 
indigenous-centric MAS agenda, which valorizes indigenous 
ideology as the basis of Bolivian identity but is careful to 
stress overall unity as well.  In a February 19 meeting with 
Charge, Joaquino predicted a dramatically worsening economy 
and corruption were two issues that would sink the MAS, as 
campesinos come to understand that Morales does not really 
offer change, only "more of the same."  As an example, he 
cited Potosi's famous "Cerro Rico" mine, where he said up to 
60,000 people used to be employed and now only 10,000 have 
work.  He also noted that Morales' recent cabinet "shake up" 
resulted in little indigenous representation and said 
campesinos everywhere were beginning to see Morales was not 
"their representative."  He placed great stock in the recent 
Santos Ramirez corruption scandal, and said awareness of 
corruption would make it harder for the MAS to continue its 
"control" of the campo through graft and pressure tactics. 
Joaquino said he has "done things the right way, unlike 
Santos Ramirez," and said he has long been known for his 
stand against corruption. 
 
¶6. (C) In his meeting with Charge, Joaquino was quick to 
address his perceived shortcomings.  Joaquino admitted his 
party was low on funding and still perceived only as a 
regional player, but said it was rapidly gaining national 
recognition due to its "moral authority."  He said he 
surprised everyone in 1993 when he won the Potosi mayor race 
with hardly a peso to his name, and said one should not 
underestimate the desire for change and new leadership in the 
country.  Joaquino noted anecdotally that wherever he went, 
people "came out to meet" him and "were excited to see" the 
AS party flag.  Last, he said he did not need to win La Paz 
department; he needs only to lower the MAS percentage from 80 
percent to 60 or 70 percent and do well in the rest of the 
country.  "I like to fight," he promised. 
 
¶7. (C) Comment: Despite his promise to 'shock the world' in 
December, Joaquino faces an uphill battle.  When his AS party 
participated in the 2008 Chuquisaca prefect race, they 
garnered only four percent of the vote, which most pundits 
viewed as confirmation of his party's limited stature outside 
Potosi state.  Against the MAS, any candidate will need a 
large war chest of funding, and Joaquino does not appear to 
have this kind of financial backing.  Still, contacts 
generally agree with his analysis that the country is looking 
for new leadership.  Joaquino may be accurate in his judgment 
that the only way to win is to field an indigenous-led, 
centrist party that can take away some MAS support while 
bringing along the rest of the country, but the AS party has 
not impressed at a national level.  In addition, Joaquino, 
while indigenous, has little popularity in El Alto and much 
of La Paz because of his support to move the capital to 
Sucre.  Last, his partnership with Escobar will drive away 
eastern voters, especially in Santa Cruz, where Escobar is 
widely and distastefully remembered as engineering Morales' 
rise to power.  End comment. 
 
- - - - - - - - - - 
Samuel Doria Medina 
- - - - - - - - - - 
 
¶8. (C) In a March 10 meeting with Charge, Samuel Doria 
Medina, head of the moderate UN party and so-called "richest 
man in Bolivia," said he was the only candidate with a 
national-level operation and that his economic reputation 
would be the difference in the race. "Today," he said, "the 
economy and national unity are the two issues.  Because of 
this, we have an interesting advantage."  Doria Medina 
rattled off several reasons for a coming economic crash and 
centered on the importance of "confidence" in both politics 
and economics.  He discussed a number of ways the Bolivian 
economy could falter, ranging from a drop in natural gas 
demand to government cash-flow problems that could lead to 
difficulty in maintaining popular "bono" or entitlement 
payments.  Economically, he said, Morales was not taking note 
of how the global economic crisis was hurting El Alto. 
Saying "Altenos are pragmatic people," he foresaw a potential 
political crisis of confidence that could lead to a "chain 
reaction" against Morales.  Doria Medina noted his prior 
presidential run and how his UN party was "five years in the 
making."  He also cited polling showing sixty percent of the 
country to be either disaffected or non-aligned, and argued 
these voters were up for the taking. 
 
¶9. (C) Regarding Cardenas, Doria Medina's staffers said he 
did not know to what degree the MAS controlled the community 
takeover of his property, but that any benefit that accrued 
to Cardenas from this action was fine with the MAS.  He said 
the MAS was ready to portray Cardenas as "the traitor Indian, 
or the permitted Indian" and Morales as "the savior Indian, 
or the rebel Indian" (i.e. against the hegemonic U.S.). 
Doria Medina said Cardenas would be the MAS' preferred 
opponent, and as such would be a grave mistake.  He echoed 
Cardenas when he said financial commitments would make the 
difference in deciding which candidates stayed and which 
dropped out of the race.  Exuding confidence, Doria Medina 
said his Santa Cruz financial contacts were "very 
straightforward" and that they would make a commitment 
collectively in August.  After this, he said, it would be a 
much smaller "race to the finish." 
 
¶10. (C) Comment: While Doria Medina cites his economic 
reputation and his party's organizational capabilities, 
others discuss his low polling numbers and an apparent lack 
of charisma.  Cardenas laughingly called Doria Medina "a 
leader of cement," referring more to his notorious lack of 
charisma than his successful cement business.   Virtually all 
of our sources agree that Doria Medina would be well-suited 
as finance minister, but no one has suggested he could win 
the presidency.  In addition, the UN party is not united; 
party number two Peter Maldonado has had a significant 
falling out with the party chief, and he has told us Doria 
Medina has "alienated" almost half of the party leadership. 
When told Doria Medina said Santa Cruz financial backers 
would make a decision in August, Cardenas' campaign advisor 
laughed and told Poloff, "Yes, that's what they told him, but 
really they'll make their decision in April, and not for 
him."  Last, Doria Medina is not indigenous and cannot 
compete with Cardenas and Joaquino in this regard.  End 
comment. 
 
- - - - - - - - 
The Bottom Line 
- - - - - - - - 
 
¶11. (C) Comment: In meetings with Charge, each of the three 
discussed their winning formula and the failures of the other 
two.  Unfortunately, while some of their claims may be 
inflated, their criticisms of their rivals were generally on 
the mark.  Cardenas is seen as the darling of the eastern 
states, but despite his aggressive campaign plans, common 
wisdom holds him to be "Goni's servant" or at least part of 
the past.  Joaquino is widely appreciated as a good mayor, 
but lacks national recognition.  Many consider him a 
potential candidate for 2015.  Doria Medina, while respected 
for his economic acumen, may be presiding over a crumbling 
party and an inflated sense of national support.  Of the 
three, only Cardenas seems to have at least the makings of a 
plan to combat his perceived disadvantages, while Joaquino 
and Doria Medina have yet to advance beyond rhetoric.  End 
comment. 
LAMBERT