Bolivia’s scandal goes beyond sex

(Photo: Juan Karita – AP)

The scandal over Bolivia’s populist President Evo Morales’ secret love affair, with a young woman with whom he had a child who the president says has died, but the woman says is alive, is making headlines throughout Latin America. But that’s the least outrageous part of this story.

What’s really scandalous about this real-life soap opera is what it is revealing about Morales’ near absolute powers, and the fact that he is awarding almost all government contracts — 99 percent of them, according to a soon-to-be-published book — through no-bid contracts. That’s a recipe for massive corruption.

The scandal broke out last month, when a journalist revealed that Morales had a love child with Gabriela Zapata, and that Zapata had served for the past three years as commercial manager of a Chinese firm that had received more than $500 million in Morales government contracts to build roads, railroads and other public works.

The Chinese firm, CAMC Engineering, got most of these contracts without public biddings, according to Carlos Valverde, the journalist who broke the Morales-Zapata story.

At first, Morales did what he always does when accused of any wrongdoing: He blamed the U.S. Embassy for carrying out an alleged plot to discredit him. He conceded that he used to have a romantic relationship with Zapata, and that the couple had a child — named Ernesto Fidel, presumably after Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Fidel Castro — but claimed that the child is dead, and that he had not seen Zapata in about five years.

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