Evo Morales, as he ruined himself (and Bolivia) in three simple steps

"Let's start with good news: we won at the first round …". This he had said Evo Morales last 24 October opening a press conference called shortly before the Tse (Tribunal supremo electoral) communicated the "final" outcome of the Presidential Elections. And it is very probable that his words – pronounced with triumphant accents in front of a country that, for four days, was in a very skeptical and effervescent expectation – intended to appease, if not every doubt (something impossible given the bumps and inconsistencies scrutiny), at least every tumult and every protest.

Game over. Evo had won again. He had, again, won without needing any second round, despite the usual "coup attempts". And, again – after fourteen years of uninterrupted presidency – he was preparing to govern the Bolivia "At least" until the year of the Lord 2025. He was wrong, Evo Morales. And he was wrong all along the line. Because that "news", which he too hastily presented as "good", was really nothing else but the prelude of a series of bad new ones – bad for him and, what is worse, very bad for Bolivia – culminating yesterday with what appears to be his definitive and in many ways humiliating exit from the political scene.

It was his – if indeed this is what it is – a sad farewell, sadly announced, in very rapid sequence, with two successive and "inevitable" decisions. That (very responsible and, in its own way, courageous, but probably belated) to call new elections in the face of the numerous and serious irregularities found in the "hearing" of the vote conducted by theOrganization of American States. And immediately after – responding to a very peremptory invitation from the general Williams Kaliman, head of the Armed Forces – to resign, "for the good and for the peace of Bolivia", his resignation as president, denouncing a "civic, political and police coup".

All against the backdrop of an angry and divided country, torn by a violence that is now darkly evoking – in a series of manifestations, bloody clashes, fires, manhunts and roadblocks – ancient and horrifying ghosts. The same ghosts – those of the military dictatorships, of the racism, of oligarchic arrogance, of discrimination and hatred – that his presidency, the first won by a indigenous in the name of a new democracy finally founded on rights denied of the original populations it seemed to have, if not completely exorcised, at least attenuated.

Bolivia in which, now, they should – it is not clear in what terms – to hold new presidential elections under the leadership of a totally renewed TSE, is a country that seems to have returned back in time, as if swallowed up in a vortex of oblivion. Almost that i 14 years presidency of Evo Morales – 14 years they have seen, with the launch of the Constitution of 2007, the birth of the "Multinational state" and extraordinary economic successes that, although consumed in the name of "socialism of the 21st century", have been exalted for their unquestionable effectiveness even from the International Monetary Fund – they had been erased with the proverbial sponge stroke.

Four years ago, when the first native president had, for the third time consecutive, conquered with a large majority the Palacio Quemado, the terms of his triumph had appeared clearer than ever. Despite the reiteration of a very old anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist rhetoric, Morales – largely thanks to the vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera, the true strategic and intellectual strength of his government – he had succeeded (as opposed to what happened in Venezuela) to define a perfectly functioning economic model (the one that Garcia Linera calls, precisely, a model of "Andean capitalism"), Able to guarantee the highest growth rates and, together, levels of redistribution of wealth from Bolivia never before known. And it was on this basis that Morales had, in nine years, accomplished a sort of political-social miracle.

In 2005, Evo had won only thanks to the almost plebiscitario support of indigenous peoples. But there was one half of the country – the richest and most productive – where Morales was, by a majority, considered an intruder (or a "macaque", As the most racist right loves to define the natives). Nine years later, the distribution of the vote indicated that the consent for him and his government had healed, at least statistically, the persistent, ferocious split among the Andean regions – where Evo has always enjoyed Bulgarian majorities – and the so-called "Crescent moon"(Pando, Beni, Tarija and Santa Cruz), the true economic engine of the country. Not everything was flawless, democratically speaking, in his "multinational state".

But no one could at that point doubt that, in less than a decade, against the backdrop of the most favorable economic situation ever, Morales had transformed a historically marked "non-nation" from theapartheid anti-indigenous, from a proverbial political-economic instability and a chronic poverty, in a united country, much more prosperous and less unequal. No one – not the marshal Andres de Santa Cruz, el gran ciudadano restaurador de la Patria, who was president between 1829 and 1839, and not Victor Paz Estensoro, protagonist of the Revolution of 1952 – he had ruled before him for so long and with such a unifying effectiveness.

Obvious question: how did Morales fall from these ethereal heights to the abyss of farewell yesterday sanctioned by his resignation? The great fall has unfolded in 3 simple moves, all driven by a wind – the overbearing one of the caudillism – which has always been an organic part, or the dark side if you like, of the "Evo-thought". First move: call (and lose) a referendum intended to change the 2007 Constitution ("his" Constitution), to give himself a quarter (and possibly a fifth and a sixth) mandate.

Second move: do not accept the defeat – a defeat which, paradoxically, was precisely the reflection of the democratic evolution he promoted – and asking a supreme Tribunal de justicia subservient to him to rule his right (ahuman right"How, challenging the ridicule, he would then sanctioned the TSJ) to participate in new elections.

Third move: participate in the elections and win them for a 0.5%, in a context – that of a count marked by a long and unjustified blackout – plagued by the foul smell of fraud.

It was at this point that Bolivia exploded in his hands. Exploded to the point that – in an atmosphere from civil war – it is impossible now to understand where the fragments of the "multinational state" created by Morales will end up. Also Carlos Mesa, the candidate of the greatest formation ofopposition – a centrist with more than respectable democratic credentials – has now obviously lost the control of the square. And more and more ominous shadows emerge from the ashes of the explosion. The ancient gods military. And that of Luis Fernando Camacho, leader of civic committees and representative of right more extreme and violent.

If it were a fairy tale it could be concluded that way. Once upon a time there was a great president, the largest that Bolivia had ever known. Then that president tried to make yourself king. And now all that remains of him is the image of a small caudillo self-destructed from one's anxiety to power. On the other hand, Bolivia remains only a burning country. A country where no one will be able to live happily ever after tomorrow.

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