What's Up With Bolivia And Kenya? Coup-Coup-Catchoo!

Thank goodness it could never happen here.

Please do not bite the president, General. Photo by realfish on Unsplash

While Americans prepare for tonight’s rousing intellectual contest of ideas between the two candidates best able to lead our nation, things have gotten kind of dicey in some other nominal democracies on other continents in the last few days. Yesterday in Bolivia, members of the military attempted a coup against the government of President Luis Arce, but the coup failed in a matter of hours.

And in Nairobi, Kenya, this week, nearly two dozen people were killed by police who fired on crowds of protesters marching on the Parliament building in opposition to a proposed bill that would have raised taxes. Some demonstrators got inside the Parliament building and tried to burn it down. President William Ruto withdrew the bill, which was aimed at stabilizing the country’s economy.

Just think! Come November, foreign correspondents from the BBC or Reuters may be covering similar scenes in Washington, particularly if Joe Biden wins reelection and Donald Trump calls out his crazies again. Or heck, if Trump wins, the violence may wait until he’s inaugurated and invokes the Insurrection Act to respond to any and all protests.

Briefly, here’s where things stand today:

Bolivia

As the AP reports, the coup attempt in Bolivia barely got underway before it ended, as armored vehicles crashed through the doors of the government palace and the head of the army, Gen. Juan José Zúñiga, declared he would “restore democracy,” which is what coup leaders always say. But within three hours, Arce named a new commander of the Army, who ordered the troops to withdraw, and — always an important factor in ending a coup — they did. Arce supporters then rushed the square outside the palace, waving Bolivian flags, singing the national anthem, and cheering, and that was that.

Zúñiga and a former navy vice admiral, Juan Arnez Salvador, were arrested, and that triggered our memory of the MAD magazine parody of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Redford and Newman are (spoiler warning) confronted by “the entire Bolivian navy” in a rowboat with a cannon, because Bolivia is landlocked and that sort of joke was OK in the early ‘70s before wokeness came along, and also the only thing Americans know about other countries comes from movies.

Bolivia has been in an economic mess, made worse, the AP says, by “months of tensions and political fights between Arce and his one-time ally, former leftist president Evo Morales, over control of the ruling party.”

The clashes have paralyzed the government’s efforts to deal with the economic crisis. For example, Morales’ allies in Congress have consistently thwarted Arce’s attempts to take on debt to relieve some of the pressure.

Hence Zúñiga’s explanation to reporters that the coup would “restore democracy,” although as an outsider, we’re inclined to think a military coup is a lousy way to break a legislative impasse, if only because it sets a bad precedent and perhaps a bad president too.

Also too, as the coup failed to draw popular support and things were fizzling, Zúñiga went with a conspiracy theory to explain it all, insisting to reporters that

Arce himself told the general to storm the palace in a political move. “The president told me: ‘The situation is very screwed up, very critical. It is necessary to prepare something to raise my popularity’,” Zúñiga quoted the Bolivian leader as saying.

Zúñiga said he asked Arce if he should “take out the armored vehicles?” and Arce replied, “Take them out.”

We don’t know Bolivian politics, but we can smell a Very Convenient Story when we hear it. We just hope nobody passes that one on to Donald Trump.

Kenya

The unrest in Kenya has been building up since last month, the New York Times reports (sorry, out of gift links for now), when President William Ruto’s government introduced a bill he said was needed to “pay the country’s enormous debt, avoid defaulting on loans and to cover the costs of roads, rural electrification and farming subsidies.”

Many Kenyans were outraged over the proposed tax increases, which they said would make the cost of living intolerable, and also what the hell is the government doing taking more of our money when Ruto and his cronies in government are living it up? People tend to notice that sort of thing anywhere, even in backwards countries where a wealthy political kingmaker gives away a quarter-million-dollar motorhome to a leading judicial official.

The Times explains that

Young protesters, who observers say largely initiated and guided the demonstrations, were also incensed by the dismissive way in which some leaders had addressed their concerns. Mr. Ruto said his government would engage with the young people and a broad range of groups in the next two weeks to chart a new economic course.

Police and military troops in Nairobi fired tear gas and live ammo into crowds of protesters approaching Parliament yesterday, killing at least 23 protesters and wounding “scores” of people according to Reuters, or “over 300” according to the Times. Protesters returned to the streets of Nairobi and other cities Thursday, although in smaller numbers, and police in Nairobi used tear gas to disperse “several dozen people who had gathered in the centre of the city.”

The focus of the protests has for many demonstrators shifted from defeating the finance bill to calling for Ruto and his administration to leave office and call new elections.

Ruto announced that with the option of raising revenue closed off by withdrawing the bill, he would probably have to launch austerity measures to bring down Kenya’s deficit, and if there’s one thing people in a time of economic instability love, it’s budget cuts.

So yes, everything looks ducky in Kenya, and we assume things ought to calm right down. There’s probably a moral here for Americans too, like maybe something about oligarchy and an economy that benefits a few at the expense of everyone else, huh?

[AP / Reuters / NYT]

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