Monday, October 19, 2020

 

Should Poland buy energy generated at a Russian nuclear plant in Belarus?

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At the beginning of November the first nuclear block in Belarus’s Astravets NPP will be launched. It will take time before it will actually begin commercial operation, but it is a good moment to ask the question that has been pondered over for years: should Poland buy power from that NPP? – 

Mariusz Marszałkowski, editor at BiznesAlert.pl, writes.

A discussion on energy from Belarus

The electricity deficit in north-eastern Poland has been a long standing problem. The discussions on how to solve it have continued for over a decade. The issue persists because the area is located far away from mining sites, e.g. of coal, and sufficient gas transmission infrastructure, which would make it possible to build conventional power plants. When discussions on tackling this issue started to emerge a decade ago, it seemed reasonable to consider working together with Poland’s neighbors, especially Ukraine and Belarus, to handle the problem.

Back in 2008, Member of Parliament Jarosław Matwiejuk officially asked the government whether it was planning any cooperation on the issue of addressing the energy needs of Poland’s north-eastern voivodships and if yes, which neighboring countries were being considered. The then secretary of state at the ministry of the economy, Joanna Strzelec-Łobodzińska replied that “the Polish government puts a high priority on cooperating with Belarus and Ukraine on power-related issues. During the proceedings of the inter-governmental committees on economic cooperation under the patronage of the Ministry of the Economy and during bilateral meetings, the parties discuss new investments in energy generation, modernization and expansion of the existing cross-border connections and the possibility of exchanging electricity. (…) The cooperation with Ukraine and Belarus is becoming especially important due to the possible increase in demand for power in Poland. (…) At the same time we are also seeing a lot of interest in cooperation with regard to the power sector between companies from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. PGE SA is now in extensive negotiations with businesses and administrations of Poland’s eastern neighbors about modernization and construction of new cross-border links, but also on developing new capacities in those states with the participation of Polish capital.”

The interest in purchasing energy from the East started to emerge after 2011 when a few important events took place. The first one was PGE’s decision not to construct a nuclear power plant in Visaginas with the Baltic States. The company also rejected Russia’s offer to buy power from the Baltic NPP planned in Kaliningrad. The second was the contract to build a nuclear power plant in Belarus’s Astravets signed in 2012.

Since the idea to buy power from Kaliningrad was rightly criticized as a move that went against the overarching goal to become independent of energy imports from Russia, for many the purchase of energy from Belarus seemed reasonable. Especially that at that time there was a thaw in relations between Belarus and the EU. However, it quickly ended after the opposition had been brutally pacified after the presidential election in December 2010. The motivation behind transactions with Belarus was driven by the desire to create deeper business ties with Poland, the fact that the planned NPP would generate more electricity than Belarus could consume, the lack of any real possibility of building an NPP in Poland, as well as the piling up of issues caused not only by the energy deficit in eastern voivodships, but also the EU’s increasingly ambitious climate policy, which impacted the future of Poland’s energy sector as a whole, which is mostly based on lignite.

After the protests had been crushed, the EU sanctions against Belarus’s “elites” were reinstated and it quickly turned out that any hopes for an “economic westernization” of Belarus were false. Alexander Lukashenko did not intend to politically reorient from Moscow to the West, but he still counted on acquiring foreign currency by selling energy to the West. The picture was complete, when it was decided that the Belarusian NPP in Astravets would be based on Russian technology and paid for with Russian preferential credit under the control of Russia’s Rosatom.

Why shouldn’t we buy power from Astravets?

Today Poland’s ruling elites are not talking about buying power from Astravets, even though Belarusians are still hoping this will happen. Either way, it is worth explaining why this should not take place.

First, by buying power from Astravets we bolster Lukashenko’s regime in Minsk. The goal of the NPP (contrary to the propaganda claims on limiting energy dependence on Russia) was to create another, next to the petrochemical and fertilizer industries, state-run entity that would strengthen Belarus’s centrally managed economy. By exporting energy to Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States, Lukashenko’s regime wanted to create another opportunity to acquire “hard” currency, without the necessity to introduce the free market in his own country. Moreover, for cooperation to flourish it needs to involve partners that are sensible and strategically stable. How sure could Warsaw be that if its relations with Minsk worsened (which happens regularly every few years), Belarus would not cut off the power? Even without such a tool, the Belarusian ruling class does not act logically. However, if it did have such leverage, Polish consumers would quickly experience “cold and darkness” in relations with Belarus, which is often the main goal of an economic blackmail.
Second, since Rosatom was chosen as the main contractor and provider of technology, and the Russian state is the creditor, the NPP in Astravets, apart from its location, will have little to do with Belarus. According to the credit agreement, whether or not the NPP will generate profits from exports, Russian companies will profit anyway from, among others, providing nuclear fuel, servicing or trainings, while the Russian state will earn on the interest from the USD 10 bn loan. Recently, it has been revealed that even though the facility has not been opened yet, it is already generating losses. Therefore, one cannot exclude that if Belarus defaults on the debt, the NPP will be taken over by some Russian energy company. The NPP in Astravets may be an attractive asset for Russia, but if its EU neighbors are not eager to buy power, Russia will not need to pretend it is a Belarusian investment. On the other hand, Belarus will be forced to set a minimum fixed price on the energy generated in the NPP, which would be paid by Belarusian clients. Poland is one of Europe’s leaders in implementing gas diversification. It would be hard to imagine a situation where under the pressure of short-term and uncertain interests, Warsaw would replace its dependency on Russian gas with reliance on Russian power.

Third, to make it possible to import energy from Astravets without intermediaries (i.e. without paying Lithuania for energy transfers via the LitPol Link), it would be necessary to invest in a power connection with Belarus. In 2018 Poland’s PSE dismantled a 220 KV Białystok-Roś link between the two countries. Therefore, at this point it is physically impossible to import energy from Belarus. It would cost millions to restore this possibility, and that investment would have to be paid for by Poland.

Fourth, the decision on not to import energy from Astravets is a gesture of solidarity with the Baltic States, especially Lithuania. Vilnius, which is located less than 50 km from Astravets, is the biggest opponent of the NPP. Lithuania meticulously recorded every issue that happened during the construction of the nuclear facility. And there were plenty of accidents and incidents to report, including the fall of the reactor core from a few meters above the ground, which happened during installation work. Belarus never commented on these reports, which suggests that the rush and the necessity to cut corners to save money were a direct threat for its safe functioning. Additionally, since the very beginning Vilinus has been outspoken about the real reason behind building an NPP in this location, which is to have another leverage to exert pressure on Poland and the Baltic States. This includes the attempts at undermining the plans to desynchronize Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from the post-Soviet BRELL power system Thus, the NPP may also impact the Baltics’ attempts at finally breaking off with the issue that, despite so many years, has been gluing it to Russia. In Poland we are talking a lot about European solidarity, also in the context of energy security. Lithuania expects Poland to act in solidarity as well. By agreeing to economically doubtful profits, we would undermine the authority of a country that aspires to become a leader in Central Europe. This would enable Russia to pursue the “divide and conquer” policy.

Fifth, importing power from Astravets could impact Poland’s energy transition plans, including the construction of its own nuclear facilities. The Belarusian alternative could distract Poles from pursuing their own project, especially at a time when an economic crisis is possible. However, even without that, the plans to build an NPP in Poland are constantly postponed and time is running out. According to the latest version of the Polish Nuclear Power Programme, the first reactor is to be opened in 2033. This means we have 12 years to complete the investment. Still, the Polish energy sector has seen many plans and strategies, but despite the hype none of those have ever materialized. BiznesAlert.pl learned that this may change in October, when Poland will reportedly sign a contract with the U.S. on building an NPP.

How to get rid of the energy deficit in north-eastern Poland?

There are three ways to handle this issue. The first one is to build a combined cycle unit at the Ostrołęka power plant. Such an investment would provide enough power to cover the demand in northern Masovia, as well as Warmia, Masuria and Podlasie. The second solution is something that was not seriously considered a decade ago – dispersed power generation based on renewable energy sources. The dynamic growth of the PV sector shows that in practice, every household in Poland could add to the national power system electricity generated on its own roof or in its own garden. Additionally, there is PGNiG’s plan for biomethane plants , which may be a driver behind the emergence of micro-power plants that use gas from organic waste. Moreover, the power generated by offshore wind farms, that will be constructed on the Baltic Sea, will be of huge benefit as well. The third, temporary solution is to import power, e.g. via the LitPol Link. The power itself may come from the Swedish-Lithuanian link that runs on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

All of the options have their pros and cons. None is free from drawbacks and imperfections. Despite that, all of them are a lot better than becoming dependant on power from a country that, in the face of a crisis, acts erratically and presents towards Poland an attitude that is unfriendly, to put it mildly. We should remember about this when during the pompous opening of the NPP in November, Lukashenko will be talking about unwise Poles who did not want power “from Belarus”.

USA
Covid-19 vaccine company under federal investigation after allegedly misrepresenting its role in government program

19 ოქტომბერი, 2020News In English

California biotech company Vaxart, which is working on a Covid-19 vaccine, is under federal investigation and is being sued by a number of investors for allegedly exaggerating its involvement in the US government's Operation Warp Speed program for developing Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.

Vaxart stated in an October 14 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it's being investigated by the SEC and federal prosecutors, and that it was served with a grand jury subpoena in July from the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

In June, Vaxart issued a press release that said "Vaxart's Covid-19 Vaccine Selected for the US Government's Operation Warp Speed." The news helped propel Vaxart's stock price to nearly $17, up from approximately $3, and hedge fund Armistice Capital, which partly controlled Vaxart, sold shares for a profit of more than $200 million, according to its SEC filings.

A few weeks before the announcement, Vaxart granted amendments to the warrants agreements, which allowed Armistice to sell almost all of their stock, which they did once the stock price skyrocketed.

In July, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told the New York Times that it had not entered into a funding agreement or negotiations with Vaxart. Armistice and HHS did not respond to requests for comment.

Vaxart has not been chosen by Operation Warp Speed to receive research funding, but instead had limited involvement, HHS told the New York Times in July. Vaxart's vaccine, an oral tablet, was only involved in preliminary studies on primates sponsored by Warp Speed.

In a statement to CNN Business Saturday, the company said, "The Vaxart non-human primate challenge study was organized and funded by Operation Warp Speed, as stated in the June 26, 2020 company press release. The statements made in that press release are accurate and any allegation to the contrary is baseless."

In its October SEC filing, Vaxart wrote that it has provided documents called for by the subpoena to demonstrate its role in Operation Warp Speed. "The company has voluntarily provided documents requested by the SEC and is cooperating with this informal inquiry," it stated.

Vaxart and its board have been sued several times by shareholders who accuse the company of allegedly inflating Vaxart's stock price by misrepresenting its role in Operation Warp Speed. Vaxart addressed those lawsuits in its filing, saying that it's seeking to have two of the suits dismissed, while another class-action suit is still proceeding.

On October 14, Vaxart announced encouraging results from its study on hamsters that received oral dosages of its Covid-19 vaccine.

The stock was down 3.5%, to approximately $6, as of Friday evening.

CNN
UK
Outsourced Serco and Sitel test and trace system fails to reach contacts

Outsourced test and trace system fails to reach nearly quarter of a million close contacts of positive case

News18th October By Natasha Meek @journomeekReporter


THE outsourced test and trace system has failed to reach nearly a quarter of a million close contacts of people who have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a new analysis.

Private firms Serco and Sitel failed to contact 245,481 contacts in England either online or from call centres over four months - missing nearly 40% of contacts, the figures show.

Labour said the figures show test and trace is "on the verge of collapse" and highlight the need for a short national lockdown to allow the Government to fix the system.

The Government defended the system, saying test and trace is "breaking chains of transmission" and had told 900,000 people to isolate.

Boris Johnson pledged in May that the system, which has cost £12 billion, would be "world-beating" and a successful tracing programme has long been hailed as a way to ease lockdown measures.

Labour's analysis of official figures released this week showed more than 26,000 people in the week up to October 7 were not contacted in north-west England, where the Liverpool region and Lancashire have been plunged into the severest restrictions.

The Prime Minister has threatened to impose the Tier 3 measures on neighbouring Greater Manchester, even if local leaders do not consent because they are demanding greater financial support.

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves (Labour, Leeds West) said: "We are at a decisive moment in our efforts to tackle coronavirus, and these figures are a new low for a test and trace system on the verge of collapse.

"The Government is wasting hundreds of millions on a system that doesn't seem to function or even use basic common sense.

"The Prime Minister must act now to reverse this trend. That is why Labour is calling for a short, sharp circuit break to fix testing, protect the NHS and save lives."

The figures showed that the private firms did reach 372,458 contacts in the period of the data, May 28 to October 7.

"Complex" cases - which include outbreaks linked to hospitals, care homes, prisons or schools - are handled by local health protection teams, which statistics show have far higher rates of success.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: "We're continuing to drive forward local contact tracing as part of our commitment to being locally led, with more than 100 Local Tracing Partnerships now operating, and more to come."

He added that, when including local teams, 84% of contacts had been traced "where communication details were provided".

Circuit breakers

This week Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for Mr Johnson to implement a two to three-week national circuit-breaker lockdown so test and trace can be improved.

The Prime Minister on Friday continued to resist the move, which has been suggested by the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), but said he "can't rule anything out".

Sage has also said in recently published documents that the system was only having a "marginal impact" on Covid-19 transmission.

The Prime Minister on testing plans

During the Downing Street conference earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "We are backing our brilliant scientists leading the global effort to find a safe and effective vaccine. We have also secured early access to over 350 million vaccine doses through a portfolio of promising new vaccines to ensure we are in the best place, and we are taking every possible step to ensure we can move as quickly as possible to deploy a vaccine if and when one is found to work.

"And we’ve created a huge diagnostics industry from scratch, scaling up the ability to test from 2,000 in February to more than 300,000 today.

"I also want to update on our future approach to testing.

"We are now testing more people than any other country in Europe but we always want to go further.

"One of the most dangerous aspects of this disease is that people without any symptoms can infect many others without realising it. If we can catch more asymptomatic people before they unknowingly pass on the disease to the vulnerable, we can help to stop the virus’ vicious spread.

"So far it has been difficult to do this. But that is changing.

"Scientists and companies in Britain and around the world have been developing new tests which are faster, simpler and cheaper. They have been working hard to discover and evaluate new testing technologies. Though there is work to do, It’s becoming clear over the past few weeks that some of these new tests are highly effective and can help us save lives and jobs over winter.


"We have already bought millions of these tests, some of which are very simple – meaning you simply need to wipe the swab inside your mouth – and can give a result as quickly as in 15 minutes. Some of these fast tests work with saliva and we are already using these in hospitals.

"Over the next few weeks we will start distributing and trialling these tests across the country. This will enable us to do quick turnaround tests on NHS and care home staff much more frequently. By testing more frequently and quickly than ever before, we can hope we can help prevent the virus entering and spreading through care homes.

"And we will be able to test students in universities with outbreaks, as well as children in schools, helping us to keep education open safely through the winter.

"And we will make tests available to local directors of public health to help control localised outbreaks - handing more control from London to all parts of our country so that those on the ground can use the tools we give them as they think best. And I have instructed my team to ensure that Liverpool City Region, Lancashire, and any other areas which enter into the Very High alert level are immediately prioritised for those tests."
Vaccine storage issues could leave 3B people without access
By LORI HINNANT and SAM MEDNICK

1 of 15
A worker moves boxes at Snowman Logistics, India's largest cold storage company in Taloja, on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020. The vaccine cold chain hurdle is just the latest disparity of the pandemic weighted against the poor, who more often live and work in crowded conditions that allow the virus to spread, have little access to medical oxygen vital to COVID-19 treatment, and whose health systems lack labs, supplies or technicians to carry out large-scale testing. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)


GAMPELA, Burkina Faso (AP) — The chain breaks here, in a tiny medical clinic in Burkina Faso that went nearly a year without a working refrigerator.

From factory to syringe, the world’s most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates need non-stop sterile refrigeration to stay potent and safe. But despite enormous strides in equipping developing countries to maintain the vaccine “cold chain,” nearly 3 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people live where temperature-controlled storage is insufficient for an immunization campaign to bring COVID-19 under control.

The result: Poor people around the world who were among the hardest hit by the virus pandemic are also likely to be the last to recover from it.

The vaccine cold chain hurdle is just the latest disparity of the pandemic weighted against the poor, who more often live and work in crowded conditions that allow the virus to spread, have little access to medical oxygen that is vital to COVID-19 treatment, and whose health systems lack labs, supplies or technicians to carry out large-scale testing.

Maintaining the cold chain for coronavirus vaccines won’t be easy even in the richest of countries, especially when it comes to those that require ultracold temperatures of around minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 F). Investment in infrastructure and cooling technology lags behind the high-speed leap that vaccine development has taken this year due to the virus.

A woman waiting in a clinic outside Burkina Faso's capital

With the pandemic now in its eighth month, logistics experts warn that vast parts of the world lack the refrigeration to administer an effective vaccination program. This includes most of Central Asia, much of India and southeast Asia, Latin America except for the largest countries, and all but a tiny corner of Africa.

The medical clinic outside Burkina Faso’s capital, a dirt-streaked building that serves a population of 11,000, is a microcosm of the obstacles.

After its refrigerator broke last fall, the clinic could no longer keep vaccines against tetanus, yellow fever, tuberculosis and other common diseases on site, nurse Julienne Zoungrana said. Staff instead used motorbikes to fetch vials in insulated carriers from a hospital in Ouagadougou, making a 40-minute round-trip drive on a narrow road that varies between dirt, gravel and pavement.

A mother of two who visits the Gampela clinic says she thinks a coronavirus inoculation program will be challenging in her part of the world. Adama Tapsoba, 24, walks four hours under scorching sun to get her baby his routine immunizations and often waits hours more to see a doctor. A week earlier, her 5-month-old son had missed a scheduled shot because Tapsoba’s daughter was sick and she could only bring one child on foot.

“It will be hard to get a (COIVD-19) vaccine,” Tapsoba said, bouncing her 5-month-old son on her lap outside the clinic. “People will have to wait at the hospital, and they might leave without getting it.”

To uphold the cold chain in developing nations, international organizations have overseen the installation of tens of thousands of solar-powered vaccine refrigerators. Keeping vaccines at stable temperatures from the time they are made until they are given to patients also requires mobile refrigeration, reliable electricity, sound roads and, above all, advance planning.

For poor countries like Burkina Faso, the best chance of receiving a coronavirus vaccine is through the Covax initiative, led by the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance. The goal of Covax is to place orders for multiple promising vaccine candidates and to allocate the successful ones equitably.

The United Nations’ children’s agency, UNICEF, began laying the global distribution groundwork months ago, in Copenhagen. At the world’s largest humanitarian aid warehouse, logistics staff are trying to foresee shortages by learning from the past, especially the spring chaos surrounding global shortages of masks and other protective gear that were commandeered off airport tarmacs or stolen and traded on the black market.

Empty vaccine bottles in a clinic in Burkina Faso

Currently, 42 coronavirus vaccine candidates are in clinical trials and another 151 are in pre-clinical evaluation, according to WHO. The ones most likely to end up in the Covax mix must be stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (25-46 F).

A Pfizer candidate is among the ones in advanced testing requiring storage at ultracold temperatures. The company, which has designed a special carrying case for its vaccine, has expressed interest in Covax and signed contracts with the United States, Europe and Japan.

Medical freezers that go down to minus 70 degrees Celsius are rare even in U.S. and European hospitals. Many experts believe the West African countries that suffered through a 2014-16 Ebola outbreak may be the best positioned, because a vaccine against that virus also requires ultracold storage.

For more than two-thirds of the world, however, the advanced technology is nowhere on the horizon, according to a study by German logistics company DHL. Meanwhile, billions of people are in countries that don’t have the necessary infrastructure to maintain the cold chain for either existing vaccines or more conventional coronavirus candidates, the study said.

Opportunities for vaccines to be lost expand the farther a vaccine travels. DHL estimated that 15,000 cargo flights would be required to vaccinate the entire planet against COVID-19, stretching global capacity for aircraft and potentially supplies of materials such as dry ice.

“We need to find a bridge” for every gap in the cold chain, DHL chief commercial officer Katja Busch said. “We’re talking about investments ... as a society, this is something we have to do.”

Gavi and UNICEF worked before the pandemic to supply much of Africa and Asia with refrigeration for vaccines, fitting out 40,000 facilities since 2017. UNICEF is now offering governments a checklist of what they will need to maintain a vaccine supply chain and asking them to develop a plan.

“The governments are in charge of what needs to happen in the end,” said Benjamin Schreiber, who is among the directors of UNICEF’s vaccination program.

Cracks in the global cold chain start once vaccines leave the factory. Container ships are not equipped to refrigerate pharmaceutical products with a limited shelf life. Shipping vaccines by air costs a lot more, and air cargo traffic is only now rebounding from pandemic-related border closures.

Even when flights are cold and frequent enough, air freight carries other potential hazards. WHO estimates that as much as half of vaccines globally are lost to wastage, sometimes due to heat exposure or vials breaking while in transit. With coronavirus vaccines, which will be one of the world’s most sought-after products, theft is also a danger.

“They can’t be left on a tarmac and fought over because they would actually be spoiled and they would have no value — or worse still, people would still be trying to distribute them,” said Glyn Hughes, the global head of cargo for the International Air Transport Association.

Tinglong Dai, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who specializes in health care logistics, said creativity will be needed to keep the cold chain intact while coronavirus vaccines are distributed on a global scale. Gavi and UNICEF have experimented with delivering vaccines by drone. Indian officials have floated the idea of setting aside part of the country’s vast food storage network for the coronavirus vaccines.

UNICEF's giant humanitarian warehouse in Copenhagen

“If people can figure out how to transport ice cream, they can transport vaccines,” Dai said.

Temperature-sensitive labels that change color when a vaccine is exposed to heat too long and no longer safe to use, and live delivery tracking to ensure vaccines reach their destinations as intended also have allowed for progress in delivering safe shots.

Yet chances for something to go wrong multiply on the ground as vaccines are prepped to leave national depots. Since the cold chain is so fragile, logistics planning is crucial; syringes and disposal boxes must be available as soon as vaccine shipments arrive.

By the end of the year, UNICEF expects to have 520 million syringes pre-positioned for coronavirus vaccines in the developing world and maps of where the refrigeration needs are greatest “to ensure that these supplies arrive in countries by the time the vaccines do,” Executive Director Henrietta Fore said.

The last vaccine requiring cold storage that India’s national program adopted was for rotavirus, a stomach bug that typically affects babies and young children. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who led the research for that vaccine, estimated that India has about 30% less storage capacity than it would need for a coronavirus vaccine.

In countries such as India and Burkina Faso, a lack of public transportation presents another obstacle to getting citizens inoculated before vaccines go bad.

Dr. Aquinas Edassery, who runs two clinics in one of India’s poorest and least developed regions, said patients must walk for hours to receive health care. The trip on a single road that winds 86 kilometers (53 miles) over steep hills and washes out for months at a time will pose an insurmountable barrier for many residents of the eastern district of Rayagada, Edassery said.

As with most logistics, the last kilometer (mile) is the hardest part of delivering a coronavirus vaccine to the people who need it. In Latin America, perhaps nowhere more than Venezuela provides a glimpse into how the vaccine cold chain could go dramatically off course.

When a blackout last year left much of the nation in the dark for a week, doctors in several parts of Venezuela reported losing stocks of vaccines. The country’s largest children’s hospital had to discard thousands of doses of vaccines for illnesses like diphtheria, according to Dr. Huníades Urbina, head of the Venezuelan Society of Childcare and Pediatrics.

“We won’t be able to halt either the coronavirus or measles,” Urbina said.

Preserving the cold chain has only grown more difficult since then. Gas shortages limit the ability to move vaccines quickly from one part of Venezuela to another. Dry ice to keep vaccines cool during transport is harder to find. And after years of economic decline, there also are fewer doctors and other professionals trained to keep the chain intact.

“I’m not optimistic on how the vaccine would be distributed in the inner states because there is no infrastructure of any kind to guarantee delivery — or if it gets delivered, guarantees the adequate preservation under cold conditions,” Dr. Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi, a Venezuelan pathologist, said.

Venezuela presents an extreme example, but a coronavirus vaccine also is likely to test parts of Latin America with more robust health care systems. In Peru, private businesses that typically transport fish and beef have offered their trucks, though it remains unclear whether the Health Ministry will accept.

Waiting for a vaccination in Burkina Faso

Back in Burkina Faso, vaccination days became an ordeal at the Gampela clinic when the refrigerator went out, said Zoungrana, the nurse. Staff members on hospital courier runs must buy fuel they often can’t afford and make a second trip to and from the capital to return any unused doses.

“We’re suffering,” said Zoungrana, who was run off the road on her motorbike just a few weeks ago.

Days after journalists from The Associated Press visited the clinic this month, a long-awaited solar refrigerator arrived. With technicians in short supply, the clinic was waiting to be sure the appliance would function properly before stocking it with vaccines.

Nationwide, Burkina Faso is about 1,000 clinical refrigerators short, and less than 40% of the health facilities that conduct vaccinations have reliable fridges, national vaccination director Issa Ouedraogo said.

Multi-dose vials — the equivalent of bulk storage for vaccines — can drastically reduce global transportation costs. But once a vial is opened, its shelf life counts down even faster; if too few people show up for their jabs in time, whatever remains in the larger vials must be discarded.

“It’s really upsetting to have wastage like that. It’ll result in loss of lives and pain and suffering. It’s a waste of resources, ” said University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Anna Nagurney, who studies supply chain logistics.

For now, UNICEF is betting on 20-dose vials of coronavirus vaccine and hoping that the amount wasted will stay below 3% for closed vials and 15% for open multi-dose vials that do not get used up, according to Michelle Siedel, one of the U.N. agency’s cold chain experts.

If Burkina Faso were given 1 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine today, the country wouldn’t be able to handle it, Jean-Claude Mubalama, UNICEF’s head of health and nutrition for the African nation.

“If we had to vaccinate against the coronavirus now, at this moment, it would be impossible,” he said.

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This story corrects the spelling of professor’s last name to Nagurney.

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Hinnant reported from Paris. Aniruddha Ghosal in Delhi, Christine Armario in Bogota, Colombia, and Linda A. Johnson in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, also contributed.

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Follow all of AP’s coronavirus pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
'Our house is on fire': Suburban women lead charge vs. Trump


By CLAIRE GALOFARO  

TROY, Mich. (AP) — She walks with the determination of a person who believes the very fate of democracy might depend on the next door she knocks on, head down, shoulders forward. She wears nothing fussy, the battle fatigues of her troupe: yoga pants and sneakers. She left her Lincoln Aviator idling in the driveway, the driver door open -- if this house wasn’t the one to save the nation, she can move quickly to the next.

For most of her life, until 2016, Lori Goldman had been politically apathetic. Had you offered her $1 million, she says, she could not have described the branches of government in any depth. She voted, sometimes.

Now every moment she spends not trying to rid America of President Donald Trump feels like wasted time.

“We take nothing for granted,” she tells her canvassing partner. “They say Joe Biden is ahead. Nope. We work like Biden is behind 20 points in every state.”

Lori Goldman, talks with a voter while canvassing in Troy, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Goldman spends every day door knocking for Democrats in Oakland County, Michigan, an affluent Detroit suburb. She feels responsible for the country’s future: Trump won Michigan in 2016 by 10,700 votes and that helped usher him into the White House. Goldman believes people like her -- suburban white women -- could deliver the country from another four years of chaos.

For many of those women, the past four years have meant frustration, anger and activism — a political awakening that powered women’s marches, the #MeToo movement and the victories of record numbers of female candidates in 2018. That energy has helped create the widest gender gap — the political divide between men and women — in recent history. And it has started to show up in early voting as women are casting their ballots earlier than men. In Michigan, women have cast nearly 56% of the early vote so far, and 68% of those were Democrats, according to the voting data firm L2.

“I hate the saying, 'when they go low, we go high.' That’s loser talk. You can be right all day, but if you’re not winning, what’s the point?”
LORI GOLDMAN

That could mean trouble for Trump, not just in Oakland County but also in suburban battlegrounds outside Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Phoenix.

Trump has tried to appeal to “the suburban housewives of America,” as he called them. Embracing fear and deploying dog whistles, he has argued that Black Lives Matter protesters will bring crime, low-income housing will ruin property values, suburbs will be abolished. Campaigning in Pennsylvania last week, he begged: “Suburban women, will you please like me?”

There’s no sign all this is working. Some recent polls show Biden winning support from about 60% of suburban women. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won 52%, according to an estimate by the Pew Research Center.


Talk to women across suburban Michigan, and you’ll find ample confirmation: the lifelong Republican who says her party has been commandeered by cowards. The Black executive who fears for the safety of her sons. The Democrat who voted for Trump in 2016 but now describes him as “a terrible person.”

Together, they create a powerful political force.

Goldman started her group, Fems for Dems, in early 2016 by sending an email to a few hundred friends that said she planned to help elect the first female president and asked if they’d like to join her. Four years later, their ranks have swelled to nearly 9,000.

There is one thing Goldman gives Trump credit for. He stormed into the White House on pure guts and bombast, unwilling to acknowledge failure, averse to saying sorry. Those are not natural traits for most women who’ve absorbed societal expectations to please and be polite, she says. But she dug deep within herself to find some hint of them.

Lori Goldman poses for a portrait next to campaign signs outside her home in Bloomfield Village, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

A married real estate agent with 12-year-old triplets and a 23-year-old daughter, she became simultaneously the stereotype of a suburban woman and its antithesis: She lives in a 6,000-square-foot home with seven bathrooms, and drinks Aperol spritzers. She also peppers almost every sentence with curse words and no longer gives one damn what people think.

“I hate the saying, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ That’s loser talk,” she says. “You can be right all day, but if you’re not winning, what’s the point?”

And it’s worked: She described her coalition to a newspaper once as “a bunch of dumpy, middle-aged housewives,” and a few got mad at her, but far more joined.

But she is terrified that the constant cycle of crises has left many women exhausted and that could stall this leftward lurch. The nation is reeling from a pandemic and protests, the death of a revered Supreme Court justice, the hospitalization of the president, a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor.

“Our house is on fire,” Goldman says, and so she steers her SUV to the next door on the cul de sac.
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Oakland County stretches from the edge of Detroit more than 30 miles, through moneyed subdivisions, quaint small towns and swanky shopping districts, into rural stretches with dirt roads and horse pastures. Goldman has covered nearly every inch of it.

Although Clinton won here in 2016, she won fewer votes than Barack Obama four years earlier, while the third-party vote soared. If Clinton had matched Obama’s total, Oakland County alone might have cut Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan by more than half.

But in 2018, some political scientists described it as the epicenter of a major political shift as women turned on Republicans.

“Women are pragmatic voters,” said Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. “We care about our kids. We care about our parents. We care about economic security. And so candidates who stand up for those values and show that they can be good, decent human beings is something I know resonates. And I think this moment, with this White House, that is more acute than ever.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer campaigns with Dan O'Neil, a Democratic candidate for the Michigan House in Traverse City, Mich., Oct. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/John Flesher)

Whitmer nearly doubled Clinton’s margin in Oakland County in 2018. That same year, Democrat Elissa Slotkin flipped a congressional seat that was under Republican control for almost 20 years.

Some of Slotkin’s strongest supporters were Republican women.

Nancy Strole, a longtime elected township clerk in the rural northern part of the county, had not been able to bring herself to vote for Trump. She considers herself an “old-fashioned kind of Republican.” She hasn’t changed, she said — her party was “hijacked.”

“It’s not just Trump,” she said. “It wouldn’t happen unless there are others who acquiesced and were willing to go along with it either by their silence, by their lack of will, by their lack of courage.”

When Trump began his presidency by undermining international alliances and routinely denigrating people, she grew frustrated that Republicans did nothing about it.

Strole said she called her congressman, Mike Bishop, and never heard back. Meanwhile, Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, announced her bid against Bishop. Her reason for running jibed with Strole’s growing consternation: She had watched Bishop stand by at the White House, smiling, as Republicans worked to gut the Affordable Care Act.

Nancy Strole poses for a portrait in Springfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

In a lifetime as a Republican, Strole had never volunteered for a congressional campaign. But she knocked on 1,000 doors for Slotkin.

Andrea Moore, by contrast, was raised in a Democratic family. But she voted for Trump because she was fed up with career politicians who seemed interested only in money and power.

“He was an unknown quantity, but now we know,” said Moore, 45, who lives in a suburban community in Wayne County.

She can’t remember the precise moment she decided she’d made a mistake. It felt like a toxic relationship: You can make excuses for a while, but eventually disgust settles in.

“A million little things,” she said — the rapid-fire attacks on people, divisiveness, fear mongering. “They just kind of piled up.”

She can’t understand how anyone could support Trump after his response to his own bout with COVID-19 — how he flouted masks and held rallies, downplayed the threat, failed to acknowledge that he had access to treatments that others don’t, she said. All this when more than 219,000 Americans have died.

Moore, a stay-at-home mom who home-schools her 9-year-old son, doesn’t love Biden. But if the choice is between Trump and anyone else, she said, anyone else will do. She hopes the administration will be driven by Kamala Harris — a Black woman, the child of immigrants, young, sharp.

“It’s been an old white guy’s game for way too long,” Moore said.

___

President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at MBS International Airport, Sept. 10, 2020 in Freeland, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event with steelworkers in the backyard of a home in Detroit, Sept. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)


Trump’s pitch to try to reclaim suburban female voters relies on an airbrushed version of America’s past. He has warned that “Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American dream.” He revoked an Obama-era housing initiative meant to curtail racial segregation, claiming that property values would diminish, crime would rise and suburbs would “go to hell.”

“I think if this were 1950, his message would be perfect,” said Karyn Lacy, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. “The problem is it’s not 1950.”

Trump’s description of the suburbs seems to Alison Jones like nostalgia for “a `Leave it to Beaver’ time” when people who look like her could not have lived in her subdivision, where no house costs less than $1 million.

Now when Jones, a Black woman, sees Trump lawn signs, she wonders: Do her neighbors really want her here?

“I think 2020 has opened the wounds, pulled back the curtain so we can see what’s really here.”
ALISON JONES

Suburbs like this were once exclusively white by design: The federal government long underwrote segregationist policies that kept Black families out. Even now, Oakland County remains very white, but not as white as it once was. In 1990, the county was 88% white. By 2019, that dropped to 71.5%.

Jones watched as Trump stood on a debate stage and declined to condemn white supremacy, telling a hate group to “stand back and stand by.” She was a child in the South in the 1960s, when schools were integrating, and the message felt very familiar: It’s us against them.

She fears for her two sons, maybe even more in this predominantly white community than she would in a city, she said. In 2018, a Black 14-year-old boy got lost not far from where she lives and knocked on a door to ask for directions. The white homeowner shot at him.

Alison Jones poses for a portrait outside her home in Rochester, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Jones believes the United States has reached a critical point. Police killings have exposed systemic racism, COVID-19 has disproportionally killed Black people, and they have borne the brunt of the economic fallout, too. “I think 2020 has opened the wounds, pulled back the curtain so we can see what’s really here.”

An executive at a Fortune 500 company, Jones moved here for the same reason as everybody else: good schools, secure property values, safety.

And like Jones, many women here work outside the home. Households aren’t all as they were depicted when Beaver and Wally lived in the fictional town of Mayfield.

Linda Northcraft moved to Oakland County in 1997 for a job as a rector of an Episcopal church, and bought a home with her partner, Ellen Ehrlich.

Ellen Ehrlich and Linda Northcraft pose for a portrait in Southfield, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Some in the congregation left. “Gay priest splits parish,” the headline read. Skinheads protested in the parking lot. It was devastating, and some from their old church suggested maybe they should move back to Baltimore.

But they stayed, times changed, and they got married. Ehrlich said “my wife” recently to a stranger and reported back to Northcraft: “They didn’t even blink an eye,” she said. “It’s become normal.”

They became active in Democratic politics when Whitmer was running for governor. Before dinner, they pray for people sick from COVID-19, for Biden and Harris and, until recently, for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ehrlich had been in a “mini state of depression.” She’s an extrovert and the shutdown to curtail the spread of the coronavirus had left her demoralized. But Ginsburg’s death energized her. Without even speaking of it, they both understood the stakes: A stronger conservative majority on the Supreme Court could undo years of expanding protections for civil rights — including their own right to be married.

They sat down the next morning and made campaign donations to every Democrat they could think of.

___

Lori Goldman poses for a portrait in Bloomfield Village, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Lori Goldman doesn’t enjoy knocking on strangers’ doors, asking them to vote for Democrats.

She’s hungry because she often doesn’t take the time to eat. Her knee aches from a replacement surgery six months ago. Often the houses have Trump flags hanging from the porch rails.

“But this is war,” she says, and she considers herself a street fighter.

People look at her and make assumptions, she said: a $2 million house, fancy car, American Express black card that she always loses because she keeps it in her bra. But she grew up in a steel town not far away, one of six kids raised by a single mother, poor, dependent on government cheese.

Most of her family and childhood friends are Trump supporters, so she knows there are many whose minds she won’t change.

Like Ally Scully, 27, who hesitantly voted for him in 2016. She believes in traditional small-government Republican ideals like tax cuts and supporting small business. She prayed over her decision and walked into the booth still unsure. Now she thinks he earned her vote again.

“I’m surprised to be saying that because I didn’t think he would,” she said. “I think it’s just his willingness to go out on a limb, even if it was unpopular, that boldness has been remarkable.”

Ally Scully poses for a portrait outside her apartment building in Rochester, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

She believes he’s empowered women in his administration — including his own daughter — and thinks claims of his racism and sexism are overblown by the media. Scully, who now leads the county’s young Republican club, acknowledges that many women have fled the GOP under Trump. But she also believes another, quieter contingent is going the other way.

Goldman worries that she’s right.

But then again, some things have happened to spur more women to battle Trump.

Earlier this month, her phone started ringing one morning with call after call from women asking to knock on doors with her. The catalyst: Six men were charged with conspiring to kidnap Gov. Whitmer because of her “uncontrolled power.”

Whitmer has been a persistent target of right-wing vitriol since she implemented a strict lockdown to try to contain the coronavirus. Thousands of men stormed into the Capitol with guns. Trump egged them on: “Liberate Michigan,” he tweeted, dismissing Whitmer as “the woman from Michigan.”

Whitmer felt it was her duty to publicly blame Trump. Most women, she said, have been on the receiving end of belittling comments.

“I’m at a point in my life where I’m going to take it on every time,” she said. “There’s no room for it. I don’t have time to waste. I have a job to do.”

Women approached her at events to thank her, she said. Some said they were Republicans, tired of the divisiveness and determined to make a change.

Lori Goldman walks between houses as she canvasses in Troy, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Goldman heard the same thing. “It’s because she’s a woman who dared to speak up and so now a bunch of men are going to teach her a lesson,” she said. “This is the violent version of mansplaining, and it’s happened since Adam and Eve.”

So Goldman conjures her Trumpian bluster. Sometimes she stands up in the middle of Starbucks and bellows, “Who here can’t take it anymore? Who wants this guy out of office?”

Some fraction of the room will be furious, but that’s OK with her, because some fraction will ask how they can help. Fems for Dems swells.

Her group has about 8,900 members. But that’s not what Trump would say, so it’s not what she does, either.

“Over 9,000,” she says. “And growing.”

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Associated Press journalists David Eggert, Hannah Fingerhut, Emily Swanson and Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report.
AP-NORC/SAP poll: 
1 in 4 US workers have weighed quitting

By ALEXANDRA OLSON

FILE - In this Aug. 4, 2020 file photo, a staffer wears a mask while taking orders at a small restaurant in Grand Lake, Colo., amid the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic has put millions of Americans out of work. But many of those still working are fearful, distressed and stretched thin, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)


New York (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic has put millions of Americans out of work. But many of those still working are fearful, distressed and stretched thin.

A quarter of U.S. workers say they have even considered quitting their jobs as worries related to the pandemic weigh on them, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in collaboration with the software company SAP. A fifth say they have taken leave.

About 7 in 10 workers cited juggling their jobs and other responsibilities as a source of stress. Fears of contracting the virus also was a top concern for those working outside the home.

The good news is that employers are responding. The poll finds 57% of workers saying their employer is doing “about the right amount” in responding to the pandemic; 24% say they are “going above and beyond.” Just 18% say their employer is “falling short.”

That satisfaction seems largely related to physical protections from the virus, which overwhelming majorities of workers considered very important. Still, at least half also say it is very important for their employers to expand sick leave, provide flexibility for caregivers and support mental health, and workers report less satisfaction with efforts in these areas.

Lower income workers were especially likely to have considered quitting — 39% of workers in households earning less than $30,000 annually versus just 23% in higher income households.

John Roman, a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, said those findings likely reflect fears of exposure of the virus among those who can’t work from home. Hourly wage workers are also less likely to feel attachment to a job, making them more likely to search for safer work, he said.

“This is perhaps the most surprising finding,” Roman said. “The people who can least afford to lose their jobs are leaving jobs in higher numbers. But it fits with the story that they feel unsafe health-wise.”

While 65% of remote workers say their employers are doing a good job protecting their health, just 50% of those working outside the home say that.

The pandemic is weighing heavily on women and people of color, who are most likely to work in essential jobs they can’t do remotely.

Fifty percent of women call the pandemic a major source of stress in their lives, compared to 36% of men. Sixty-two percent of Black workers and 47% of Hispanic workers say it is, compared to 39% of white workers.

FILE - In this July 2, 2020 file photo, a service technician wears a protective suit while using an electrostatic gun to clean a surface area during the coronavirus pandemic in Tyler, Texas. The coronavirus pandemic has put millions of Americans out of work. But many of those still working are fearful, distressed and stretched thin, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph via AP, File)

Jamelia Fairley, a single mother who works at a McDonald’s in Florida, said managers initially told her to make masks out of coffee filters and hairnets. Although she now gets protective gear, she said workers often have to serve customers who refuse to wear masks.

“I feel like they should provide us with better protection by having the masks be mandatory, not just for us but for customers,” said Fairley, who has seen her weekly hours cut nearly in half and has joined a strike to support raising Florida’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Federal labor figures point to a trend of working-age women, particularly Black and Hispanic women, increasingly dropping out of the labor force amid a child care crisis caused by school and daycare closures.

Many top companies have responded with an array of programs, from increased leave to stipends for child care or tutors, but those benefits are not reaching the vast majority of America’s workers.

Only about 1 in 10 say their employers are providing child care facilities, stipends or tutoring services. Only 26% say employers are providing extended family leave.

Nearly 7 in 10 workers consider flexibility for caregivers very important. Fewer than half — 44% — said their employers were doing a good job of that, though just 18% rated employers poorly; another 37% called the response neither good nor bad.

Sarah Blas, a single mother of six in New York, said she has dropped a third of her projects at a non-profit since her children started going to school remotely because some of them have severe asthma.

“It’s soul crushing,” said Blas, though she is grateful that her employer has allowed her to scale back. “There’s even more work to do now, and I literally have to say no because I’m home-schooling.”

The poll finds 28% of workers report working fewer hours since the pandemic hit, which could be because they are juggling responsibilities or because employers have cut back their hours. Among Black workers, the number rises to 38%.

Jeff Huffman, who works as a water infrastructure inspector in Ohio, said his company cut all his overtime hours because they have stopped sending workers out to cut water from households behind on their bills. That has left him struggling to pay child support and worried about giving a proper Christmas to his school-age sons, who live with him every other weekend.

Huffman, who has asthma and worried about virus exposure, said he has applied for other jobs “out of anxiety and stress.” Huffman said he is disappointed that the company has failed to reach out to give “a little gratitude for the hard work we are doing under all this stress.”

“They really just haven’t check in to see how we are doing. I just feel like like it’s all about money,” Huffman said.

The poll shows pandemic-related support varies by company size. Workers at companies with fewer than 100 employees were less likely than those at larger companies to praise how their employers have handled many responsibilities during the pandemic.

Juan Mercado, truck driver for a company that employs more than 1,000 people, said his employer has offered counselling, protective equipment, expanded sick leave and paid time off to care for sick relatives.

“That gave us the confidence to continue working because otherwise, I would probably say I don’t want to go,” said Mercado, 67, of Corpus Christie, Texas.

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The AP-NORC survey of 1,015 full- and part-time employees was conducted Sept. 11-16 with funding from SAP. It uses a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

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Online:

AP-NORC Center: http://www.apnorc.org.

Evo Morales Was the Americas’ Greatest President

BY OLIVIA ARIGHO-STILES

On the day of Bolivia's presidential election, we look at the legacy of Evo Morales — who won power in South America's poorest country, tripled its GDP, and lifted millions out of extreme poverty.

Evo Morales on January 11, 2015 in Bolivia. (Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images)

In October 2003, Bolivia was in the grips of revolutionary insurrection. Residents in El Alto, the neighboring city of La Paz, were blocking the supply of fuel to the capital in protest at a deal to sell off Bolivian gas to Chile on unfavorable terms. To quash the protest, the government ordered the military to fire on the unarmed civilians, killing dozens.

This was the peak of the Bolivian gas war, a spate of struggles over popular control of natural resources that forced the resignation of neoliberal president Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada. These uprisings between 2000 and 2004 saw the mobilization of peasants, miners, and indigenous groups against the privatization of the country’s resources and other neoliberal policies. This groundswell also led to the election of ex-president Evo Morales and the social movement-backed party Movement Toward Socialismo (MAS) in 2005.

MAS had emerged during the mid-nineties as the organized political wing of CSUTCB, the landworkers’ union, and played a key role in the uprisings of the early 2000s. Its core bases of support have historically been with Bolivia’s peasantry and coca growers, and is conditionally supported by the COB, the powerful miner-led trade union federation which led the struggle for democracy during the dictatorships of the seventies and eighties. And during the mid-2000s “Pink Tide,” when left-socialist governments swept to power across the continent, MAS became internationally known for their ambitious attempts at implementing socialist reforms.

But fifteen years later, with Morales ousted in a right-wing coup, Bolivia is once again paralyzed by mass social unrest. This current juncture therefore offers a poignant moment for the Left to reflect on the challenges, achievements, and limitations of thirteen years of socialist government in Bolivia.
Taking Power

When Morales assumed office in January 2006, he was the first indigenous president of Bolivia — a country historically structured around racism. The son of impoverished llama herders in Oruru, Morales cut his teeth in the semitropical Chapare region as a coca grower, quickly rising through the ranks of the powerful coca growers’ union federation to become a nationally prominent figure.

Under his presidency, MAS won successive elections with unprecedented margins in 2009 and 2014, running on an economic agenda of modest wealth redistribution and partial hydrocarbon nationalization coupled with an evocative discourse of decolonization.

This mattered intensely in a country that has thirty-six recognized indigenous languages, and 42 percent of the population self-identifying as indigenous in the latest census. “For the first time in Bolivian history,” Morales declared at his 2006 inauguration ceremony in the symbolic location of Tiwanaku, the ancient Aymara ruins outside La Paz, “Aymaras, Quechuas, and Mojeños, we are presidents.” For many, his election was nothing less than the culmination of five hundred years of anti-colonial resistance in the Americas.


In 2010, Bolivia was reconfigured by the government as a plurinational state, giving political autonomy to indigenous nations. The 2010 Law of Mother Earth enshrined the rights of nature in the Constitution. “Either capitalism dies or else planet Earth dies,” he exclaimed at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010. Morales also broke with US-backed policies toward coca, replacing the militarized eradication of coca crops with a successful community-based coca control program.

The newfound visibility and prominence of indigenous peoples in Bolivia have been the undisputed success of MAS in power. They are now represented as political actors at the state level and across society. For the first time, cholitas — women who wear urban-indigenous dress — can now be seen presenting the news or taking up various public office roles.

In economic terms, the government — buoyed by the commodity boom of the 2000s — embarked on ambitious social spending programs while presiding over strong economic growth in Latin America’s poorest country. As a result of their actions, GDP tripled while income inequality went down by two-thirds and extreme poverty dropped from 38 percent to 17 percent.

Yet tensions and contradictions soon became apparent as Morales’s indigenous-liberationist agenda was accompanied by an economic model of resource extraction and development. In 2011, this brought Morales into open conflict with a large sector of peasant and indigenous communities when the government attempted to build a highway through the protected Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS) in order to connect Villa Tunari in Cochabamba with San Ignacio de Moxos in Beni. Ostensibly, the hope was that this would link the Amazonian and Andean regions and bring crucial infrastructure and access to services to the area’s communities. Coca growers in the Chapare region — a bastion of MAS support — especially stood to benefit from access to the road.

The plans sparked protests from indigenous communities living in the area, who alongside NGOs and environmental groups, feared that the development would invite environmental degradation and encroachment on their lands. When communities marched to defend their territorial autonomy and right to prior consultation, the march was repressed by police and at least seventy people were wounded; Morales later conceded that the plans were a “mistake.”

Morales also struggled to curtail the power of big agribusiness. The tropical lowland departments of Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni, and Tarija, known as the “media luna” region, have historically been the nexus of ruling-class antagonism to Morales and MAS. Elites in the east of the country have always rejected Morales’s syndicalist, anti-neoliberal, and indigenous-oriented politics, calling for a civic strike in 2008. This came alongside a wave of violence from local fascist groups and intimidation of peasant activists orchestrated by authorities in the area of Pando.

However, MAS politicians began to see advantages in a pragmatic rapprochement with eastern agricultural capitalists. Santa Cruz is dominated by major latifundistas, with around five million hectares of the area’s most fertile agricultural land in the hands of large landowners, and much of this land accumulated during Bolivia’s twentieth-century dictatorships. In 2013, Morales announced a plan to triple Bolivia’s farmland to thirteen million hectares by 2025. The MAS mayor of Beni tabled a law that would have opened large swathes of lowland territory to ranching, thereby contributing to environmental degradation. The national legislature also approved laws that expanded biofuel production and increased beef exports to China, both of which entailed vast deforestation.
The Coup

So, what finally went wrong for Morales and MAS? By 2019, it was clear his position was becoming perilous. The devastating fires in Chiquitania garnered widespread criticism and allowed the Santa Cruz–based right to go on the political offensive. His decision to run for a fourth term also proved controversial, since the 2009 Bolivian Constitution limited presidential terms to only two terms, and Morales had only been able to serve for three because his first election in 2006 preceded this constitutional change.

In February 2016, Morales held a plebiscite to allow him to run for a fourth term. It resulted in a narrow “no” vote, but in 2017 the constitutional court, packed with MAS adherents, ruled that preventing him from standing for reelection would violate his human rights. This generated significant discontent from many Bolivians, particularly among urban middle classes who saw it as a betrayal of representative democracy.

After the first round of voting in the October 2019 elections, it was these same urban middle classes who marched in the cities to denounce “fraud” and demand the resignation of the so-called dictator Morales. An army of pititas — comprising anti-MAS youth and the middle classes — erected blockades in the street, while a wave of right-wing violence saw the torching of electoral buildings and the houses of prominent MAS politicians. Ultra-right figures rapidly seized the initiative, notably Luis Fernando Camacho, a wealthy businessman from Santa Cruz with ties to fascist youth group Union Juvenil Cruceñista.


The cry of fraud was spurred on by the premature release of a report by the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), which suggested that there had been “manipulation” in the vote count. No firm evidence was offered by the OAS, and its claims have since been debunked by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), an American research organization.

On November 10, in the face of insurmountable protest and after the “suggestion” by the military that he resign, Morales was forced to flee to Mexico. In the power vacuum, the Senate’s second vice president Jeanine Áñez became interim president, representing a right-wing party that had received just 4 percent of the vote. A brutal clampdown against anti-coup protesters swiftly followed: in scenes reminiscent of 2003, nine people were shot dead by state forces during a peaceful blockade at the Senkata gas plant in El Alto on November 19. Eight coca growers were massacred by state security forces as they protested against the new government in Sacaba, Cochabamba. According to research by the anthropologist Carwil Bjork-James, the Bolivian military killed more protesters and bystanders in this period than in the previous decade.

The coup was promptly celebrated by the Trump administration. Relations between the United States and Bolivia had been factious ever since Morales expelled the United States Agency for International Development Aid (USAID) from the country in 2013 over its interference in state affairs. Some have additionally speculated that Bolivia’s lithium deposits — the largest in the world — may have motivated foreign interest in destabilizing the government.

The coup also saw old racial fears of a “malón” — an attack by Indians — resurface. Well-heeled paceños formed makeshift barricades in the streets in fear of reprisals by the indigenous peoples of neighboring El Alto after Morales’s resignation. A darker, fascistic current emerged in these protests; after Morales was gone, “Indians out of UMSA” could be seen daubed on the walls of UMSA, La Paz’s public university. Protesters were filmed burning the wiphala, the flag representing Andean indigenous peoples. As the Aymara writer Jesus Oscuri observed at the time, “it seemed as if the Indian was expelled from power.”

The regime went on to bring charges against its opponents — journalists, trade unionists, and students, among many others — accusing them of sedition and terrorism. In January 2020, Patricia Hermosa, who legally represented Morales, was detained and imprisoned as she tried to file Morales’s paperwork to register as a congressional candidate while she was pregnant. She lost her baby in prison. Corruption and nepotism were also quick to rear its head. In May, health minister Marcelo Navajas was arrested after a multimillion-dollar fraud case over ventilators being imported from Spain to deal with the coronavirus pandemic when Bolivia’s beleaguered health system needed them urgently.
Where Next?

Elections were initially scheduled for May but were postponed to this weekend by the Electoral Tribunal on the grounds of the COVID-19 pandemic. Polls have consistently predicted a victory for MAS, which is running Luis Arce Catacora — the ex-economy minister who presided over the impressive economic growth of the 2000s — as their candidate.

Elections may be one way to unite a dangerously fractured Bolivia. The country has been paralyzed by general strikes and blockades, as peasants, miners, and indigenous groups mobilized to demand that elections are held and Áñez resigns. Just as in the 2000s, MAS is not leading these uprisings but is one of many political actors in the fray.

As the left base in Bolivia and internationally reflects on MAS’s tenure, it is important to avoid Manichean characterizations of Morales. He presided over the progressive economic transformation of the country, helping the poorest and reasserting indigenous power. However, Morales had alienated many of his key supporters by the time he was forced to resign by the military. The MAS bureaucracy had begun to stifle the autonomy of the social movements which initially formed its base. Even Juan Huarachi, ex-miner, MAS ally, and executive secretary of the COB, asked Morales to resign by the very end.

Yet it is true that Morales was confronted with emboldened right-wing urban elites who had the support of the police and acquired critical mass in the streets. It is obvious that Evo was an exceptional leader of a popular party, elected four times in a political culture suspicious of presidential reelection. But he also stretched the limits of the permissible. In the end, this only benefited the likes of Áñez and her ilk, the enemies of social progress who want what veteran journalist Fernando Molina has called the “Bolsonarization” of Bolivia.
Morales aide claims victory in Bolivia’s presidential vote
By CARLOS VALDEZ and JOSHUA GOODMAN

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Luis Arce, center, Bolivian presidential candidate for the Movement Towards Socialism Party, MAS, and running mate David Choquehuanca, second right, celebrate during a press conference where they claim victory after general elections in La Paz, Bolivia, Monday, Oct. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)


LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Evo Morales’ party claimed victory in a presidential election that appeared to reject the right-wing policies of the interim government that took power in Bolivia after the leftist leader resigned and fled the country a year ago.

Officials released no formal, comprehensive quick count of results from Sunday’s vote, but two independent surveys of selected polling places showed Morales’ handpicked successor, Luis Arce, with a lead of roughly 20 percentage points over his closest rival — far more than needed to avoid a runoff.

“We still have no official count, but according to the data we have, Mr. Arce (and his running mate) have won the election,” interim President Jeanine Áñez — an archrival of Morales — said on Twitter. “I congratulate the winners and I ask them to govern with Bolivia and democracy in mind.”

Arce, meanwhile, appealed for calm in the bitterly divided nation saying he would seek to form a government of national unity under his Movement Toward Socialism party.

“I think the Bolivian people want to retake the path we were on,” Arce declared around midnight surrounded by a small group of supporters, some of them in traditional Andean dress in honor of the country’s Indigenous roots.

Pre-election polls had showed Arce ahead but lacking enough votes to avoid a November runoff, likely against centrist former President Carlos Mesa. To win in the first round, a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote, or 40% with a lead of at least 10 percentage points over the second-place candidate.

The independent counts showed Arce with a little over 50% of the vote and a roughly 20 point advantage over Mesa.

Even so, early returns — with 16% counted — from the formal official count had Mesa with a 44% to 35% lead over Arce on Monday. Those votes appeared to be largely from urban areas rather than the rural heartlands that have been the base of Morales’ support.

Arce, who oversaw a surge in growth and a sharp reduction in poverty as Morales’ economy minister for more than a decade, will face an uphill battle trying to reignite that growth.

The boom in prices for Bolivia’s mineral exports that helped feed that progress has faded, and the new coronavirus has hit the impoverished, landlocked Bolivia harder than almost any other country on a per capita basis. Nearly 8,400 of its 11.6 million people have died of COVID-19.

Arce also faces the challenge of emerging from the long shadow of his former boss, who remains polarizing but whose support enabled the low-key, UK-educated economist to mount a strong campaign.

Áñez.s government tried to overturn many of Morales’ policies and wrench the country away from its leftist alliances. Newly installed electoral authorities barred Morales from running in Sunday’s election, even for a seat in congress, and he faces prosecution on what are seen as trumped-up charges of terrorism if he returns home.

Few expect the sometimes-irascible politician to sit by idly in a future Arce government.

Bolivia, once one of the most politically volatile countries in Latin America, experienced a rare period of stability for 14 years under Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president.

A boyhood llama herder who became prominent leading a coca grower’s union, Morales had been immensely popular while overseeing an export-led economic surge. But support was eroding due to his reluctance to leave power, increasing authoritarian impulses and a series of corruption scandals.

He shrugged aside a public vote that had set term limits, and competed in the October 2019 presidential vote, which he claimed to have narrowly won outright. But a lengthy pause in reporting results fed suspicions of fraud and nationwide protests followed, leading to the deaths of at least 36 people.

When police and military leaders suggested he leave, Morales resigned and fled the country, along with several key aides. Morales called his ouster a coup.

Hoping to avoid similar confusion this time, electoral authorities said they would not release a quick count of results — merely the slow-moving official tally that they said could take five days.

All seats in the 136-member Legislative Assembly also were also being contested, with results expected to echo the presidential race.

“Bolivia’s new executive and legislative leaders will face daunting challenges in a polarized country, ravaged by COVID-19, and hampered by endemically weak institutions,” said the Washington Office on Latin America, a Washington-based human rights advocacy organization.

Morales led Bolivia from 2006 until 2019 and was the last survivor of the so-called “pink wave” of leftist leaders that swept into power across South America, including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Although outrage with corruption fueled a resurgence in right-wing politics, notably in Brazil, Arce’s victory is bound to reenergize the left, whose anthem of economic justice has broad appeal in a region where poverty is expected to surge to 37% this year, according to the United Nations.

Arce may have benefited from overreach and errors by Morales’ enemies. Áñez, a conservative senator, proclaimed herself interim president amid last year’s tumult and was accepted by the courts. Her administration, despite lacking a majority in congress, set about trying to prosecute Morales and key aides while undoing his policies, prompting more unrest and polarization.

“A lot of people said if this is the alternative being offered, I prefer to go back to the way things were,” said Andres Gomez, a political scientist based in La Paz.

Áñez dropped out at as a candidate for Sunday’s presidential election while trailing badly in polls. That boosted Mesa, who governed Bolivia following the resignation in 2003 of former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada amid widespread protests.

The Trump administration, which celebrated Morales’ departure as a watershed moment for democracy in Latin America, has been more cautious as Morales’ handpicked successor surged in the polls. A senior State Department official this week said the U.S. is ready to work with whomever Bolivians select in a free and fair vote.

___

Goodman reported from Medellin, Colombia. AP writer Paola Flores contributed to this report from La Paz.

Bolivian socialist candidate Arce set to win election outright, exit poll shows


Issued on: 19/10/2020 - 

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by: Alexander AUCOTT



Bolivia's socialist candidate Luis Arce looks set to win the country's presidential election without the need for a run-off, an unofficial count indicated on Monday, putting the leftwing party of Evo Morales on the brink of a return to power.

The quick-count from pollster Ciesmori, released by Bolivian TV channel Unitel around midnight on Sunday, showed Arce had 52.4 percent of valid votes, more than 20 percentage points above the second-place centrist rival Carlos Mesa, who had 31.5 percent.

The official count had reached just five percent of votes cast, and exit polls had been delayed hours after polls closed, leaving Bolivians in the dark about the election result. A candidate needs 40 percent of the votes and a 10-point lead to win outright.

"All the data known so far indicate that there has been a victory for the Movement towards Socialism," Morales, who handpicked Arce and has been closely advising the campaign, said in a press conference in Buenos Aires.

Arce, a former economy minister under Morales, sounded confident of victory without explicitly claiming the win at his own press conference shortly after midnight in the Bolivian capital La Paz.

"We are going to work, and we will resume the process of change without hate," Arce told reporters. "We will learn and we will overcome the mistakes we've made (before) as the Movement Toward Socialism party."

Muy agradecidos con el apoyo y confianza del pueblo boliviano. Recuperamos la democracia y retomaremos la estabilidad y la paz social. Unidos, con dignidad y soberanía #VamosASalirAdelante pic.twitter.com/vFO9Mr1o44— Luis Arce Catacora (Lucho Arce) (@LuchoXBolivia) October 19, 2020

"Very grateful for the support and trust of the Bolivian people," Arce posted to Twitter on Monday. "We have recovered democracy and we will regain stability and social peace. United, with dignity and sovereignty."

Conducted amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Sunday's poll was regarded as a test of democracy in the Andean nation after last year's election was annulled following allegations of vote rigging, which sparked bloody protests and led to Morales quitting after almost 14 years in power.

Jeanine Anez, the conservative interim president who took over in a power vacuum last year, said that it appeared Arce was the election winner and offered her congratulations.

The election outcome, if confirmed, is chastening for the country's conservatives and will likely bolster the image of Morales, the socialist indigenous leader whose shadow still looms large over the country despite him living in exile in Argentina since last year's disputed election.

Morales returns?

Morales was an iconic and long-lasting figure in a wave of leftist presidents in the region over the last two decades, and the Bolivian election is a litmus test of the left's abiding clout in Latin America.

"The vote is set to be the most important since Bolivia returned to democracy in 1982," Carlos Valverde, a political analyst, said earlier in the day.

On Sunday, residents of La Paz, a city starkly divided by class and race, had voted peacefully but faced long lines meant to avoid overcrowding inside voting locations. Many had said they worried the election result could lead to more violence.

"I hope everything turns out peacefully and that the next government can also provide the solutions that all Bolivians are hoping for," said David Villarroel, voting in La Paz.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

Bolivians elect new president after year of post-Morales upheaval

Issued on: 16/10/2020 - 
People wear protective masks as they line up to cast their vote at a polling station in La Paz, Bolivia's capital, on October 18, 2020. © David Mercado, REUTERS

Text by:Tom WHEELDON|

Video by:FRANCE 24Follow

Bolivia votes in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday – 12 months after disputed polls sparked mass protests and the downfall of the country’s controversial leftist leader Evo Morales. FRANCE 24 takes a look back at the Latin American country’s year of turbulence.

The frontrunners are centrist ex-president Carlos Mesa and Luis Arce, Morales’ anointed successor and candidate for his left-wing MAS party. Polling data predicts that Arce will come out on top in the October 18 first round – but without the 40 percent vote share and 10 point lead required to avoid a runoff on November 29.

Analysts forecast Mesa triumphing in the second round, propelled over the line by the “anyone but MAS” slogan popular among much of Bolivia’s middle class. The five other candidates, lagging in the polls, are all expected to back Mesa.

“While the margin will be close, we remain of the view that Mesa will take the race to a 29 November runoff, which he would be favoured to win,” Filipe Gruppelli Carvalho, Bolivia analyst at consulting firm Eurasia Group, told Agence France-Presse.

‘Clear manipulation’ of last year’s vote

These presidential elections come one year after Morales claimed a fourth term in October 2019. Fears of a stolen vote emerged when officials suddenly stopped releasing results hours after polls closed. The tally was putting Morales ahead of Mesa, his closest challenger, but well short of the lead he needed to avoid a second round. A day later, the electoral commission abruptly sent out new figures showing Morales just 0.7 points shy of the threshold to win on the first round.

Mesa accused Morales of engaging in “monumental fraud”. Morales accused Mesa of using foreign support to wage a coup d’état. Nationwide protests broke out, with anti-government protesters storming two state-run media outlets, accusing them of being in Morales’ pocket. An audit by the Organisation of American States on November 9 uncovered “clear manipulation” of the count.

Morales resigned the next day, claiming political asylum in Mexico as clashes between his supporters and opponents continued to rage on the streets of the capital La Paz. Now living in Argentina, the former president continues to accuse “putschists” of illegitimately kyboshing his re-election.

The ex-president is no stranger to controversy. In a 2016 plebiscite, Bolivians narrowly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have enabled him to run for a fourth term. The Supreme Court overturned that vote in a fiercely disputed decision, ruling that the constitution violated Morales’ human rights in blocking him from seeking another term. “Morales had firm control over the state’s main institutions, and it was pretty clear that manipulation was going on,” said Colin Harding, director of specialist publication Latinform.

The referendum affair tarnished the considerable international reputation Morales had built since becoming Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2006. The country’s GDP expanded at more than 4 percent per year during his thirteen-year reign, as the resource-rich nation reaped a global commodity boom.

“Morales really benefitted from beneficial economic circumstances; high commodity prices helped very much,” Harding noted. At the same time, he continued, Maduro’s “economic policies were not nearly as radical as his rhetoric, and he did well to attract a lot of foreign investment”.

‘Anez really didn’t help’

Soon after Morales’ ouster, it was his right-wing opponents who stood accused of an illicit power-grab. Jeanine Anez, a conservative vice-president of the Senate, declared herself acting president on November 13. Anez was fifth in the line of succession, but those above her had stood down – although some Morales loyalists then tried to annul their resignations. She took office despite the lack of parliamentary quorum, caused by MAS parliamentarians’ boycott of the vote to appoint her.

The day after taking office, Anez announced that elections were forthcoming, without specifying a date. She added that Morales would be barred due to his unconstitutional decision to stand for a fourth term. Demonstrations rumbled on over the following weeks, this time as Morales supporters rallied to demand Anez’s resignation. The deadly protests prompted Bolivia’s influential Catholic Church to demand that the two sides meet for negotiations.

In December, Bolivian prosecutors brought charges against the exiled Morales on grounds of “sedition” and “terrorism”, accusing him of ordering his supporters to engage in street violence. Later the same month, Morales’ then host Mexico accused Bolivia of “intimidating” embassy staff working in La Paz after the Mexican government gave diplomatic protection to nine of Morales’ former ministers who faced criminal charges.

Ex-colonial power Spain was caught up in the imbroglio when its diplomats visited the Mexican ambassador’s residence in La Paz, accompanied by masked men. The Bolivian government expelled two Spanish diplomats and the Mexican ambassador after accusing Spain of trying to help the nine ex-ministers flee the country.

Upon taking office in November, Anez said she was uninterested in standing for president in the upcoming elections. In early January, she named a date for the polls: May 3. Later the same month, she reneged on her earlier statement and announced her candidacy. Anez’s communications minister Roxana Lizarraga resigned, saying that she had “lost sight of her objectives” and had “started to fall into the same evils” as her predecessor Morales. Hours later, Anez asked all of her ministers to resign.

“Anez really didn’t help matters,” Harding said. “She was an obscure politician who quickly emerged at the height of government, who found that she rather liked it there and didn’t want to return to obscurity.”

‘Extreme polarisation’

Then the coronavirus struck. Anez imposed a two-week lockdown on March 21 – and announced the postponement of the May elections to September 6. Covid-19 hit Bolivia relatively hard. The countries has recorded more than 8,000 deaths and some 137,000 cases out of a population of 11.6 million people – facing shortages of tests, protective equipment and intensive care beds, with what has been a rickety health system since Morales’ tenure.

Anez announced that she had tested positive along with seven of her ministers in early July. Two weeks later, her government announced a second election delay, this time until October 18. This provoked a further round of protests, with Morales supporters blocking roads across Bolivia. The government said this caused the deaths of at least 30 people by obstructing oxygen supplies to hospitals. Anez failed to improve her popularity ratings in the polls during this period. Consequently, she announced her withdrawal from the presidential race on September 18.

Sunday’s polls will be watched closely for any sign of impropriety. On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet implored all actors involved in the elections to ensure a fair and peaceful vote – adding that the elections “represent an opportunity to really move forward on social and economic fronts, and to defuse the extreme polarisation that has been plaguing Bolivia over the past few years”.