Más MAS? Bolivia’s election

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. As more and more people go to university, competition gets tougher. That academic arms race has driven a boom in private tutoring for those who can afford it. A tutor to the rich and anxious tells us about the dark sides of all that pressure. And a notable character pops up in Christopher Smart's famed and sprawling poem "Jubilate Agno": his feline companion Geoffrey. Now a new book reimagines Geoffrey's life, giving readers a cat's-eye view of 18th-century London. But first— On Sunday, Bolivians will vote in a twice-postponed presidential election. Political tensions have been high since a chaotic poll last year. Evo Morales, a socialist and the country's first indigenous president, had been in power since 2005. His time should have been up, but he ignored a 2016 referendum that denied him the right to run again. The vote was marred by accusations that the count was rigged, and protests erupted. The Organization of American States conducted an audit and appeared to confirm that Mr. Morales had attempted fraud. When the commander of the armed forces called on him to resign, he complied. Jeanine Áñez, a right-wing senator, then became president.

Vamos a recuperar la democracia.

We will bring back democracy with democracy.

But she didn't keep her promises just to be a caretaker president. And as more recent analyses have cast doubt on claims of fraud, those questions of whether last year's election was free and fair were never really resolved. All this has split the electorate. Many of those Bolivians who protested still want a future very different from from what Mr. Morales supported. But his party, the Movement to Socialism, or MAS, has a fighting chance on Sunday.

So on Sunday, a week before the election, the candidate for the Movement to Socialism, Luis Arce, who is a former finance minister, he started the day early at the Feria 16 de Julio.

Mapa de la feria. Mapa de la feria.

A huge street market in El Alto on the plain above La Paz.

Our correspondent Sarah Maslin has been following the candidates in the Bolivian capital.

He was there to learn to make chicharrones, a kind of a pork dish, and really to connect with his base. The market is full of thousands and thousands of mostly poor and indigenous vendors, and he was there to tell them that they should vote for him and that after a really tumultuous year, he's the candidate who has has their best interests at heart. And I interviewed him in a cable car coming down from El Alto back to La Paz. [Speaker:ARCE] [SPEAKING SPANISH] [Speaker:GROSS] He told me that the MAS party is the only one which can calm the country. According to Arce, and also the majority of the vendors at the feria, The election last year was stolen from Evo Morales, and they see the polls that show that Arce could win in the first round and say that they think that, you know, the only way that there'd be a second round is if there's some kind of fraud.

And who is it that Mr. Arce is up against?

So his main competition comes from a centrist former president named Carlos Mesa, who also ran against Evo Morales last year. And his platform is really based on denouncing what he says was a blatant fraud last year by Evo Morales against him and against Bolivia's democracy. He told me that his goal was to prevent the return of authoritarianism and corruption and a party that stayed in power for 14 years.

So with all of these claims of fraud and the tumult that came afterwards, what has the year since then been like for Bolivians?

It has been a really difficult year. 36 people died in last year's protests. Many of them died at the hands of the army and the police. And Yanine Áñez, the new president who came in, said that her only goal was to steer Bolivia toward fresh elections that would start to heal these wounds. But instead, just a couple of months into her presidency, She launched her own campaign, and since then she really seems to have been using her seat as president to go after all of her rivals. And then the government postponed the election twice, citing fears of the virus. But that really stoked suspicion among supporters of Evo Morales that the election would be stolen from them. In the end, she dropped out of the race and said that the anti-Morales parties needed to unite, but it was really too little, too late. And of course, the pandemic has brought real economic hardship for Bolivians, and the government's help has been really minimal. I spoke to some of the people in the market about this. One indigenous Aymara woman told me that the government really hasn't helped enough. She said that she and her family ran out of food. They couldn't pay the internet bill for her kids who are studying in college, and they felt totally abandoned.

And with all that having gone on, what's the feeling on the ground? Is there one candidate who's clearly ahead for this election?

Well, this election's going to be really close. And to get a sense of why people in Bolivia are so divided, I went to a part of La Paz that is actually called Villa Armonía, which means Harmony. And at first it really seemed like a scene of harmony. People were bringing their dogs and cats to get free rabies shots from the government. But I spoke to a young man named Juan Fernandez, a college student, who told me that he's disillusioned because he joined the demonstrations against Evo Morales last year and said that he and other young people risked their lives to go to the city center and convince the police to mutiny against Morales, which ended up contributing to him resigning. But that then he was really disappointed with the government of Jeanine Áñez. He'd now vote for the Socialist Party again. Then I crossed the plaza and spoke to Carla Fernández. Who said that even though her mom is "de pollera," which means she wears a traditional skirt, and she comes from really humble origins in the countryside, that doesn't mean she'll support the Movement to Socialism party. She says she's sick of all of the cronyism in Evo Morales's government, and she's going to vote for the centrist candidate, Carlos Mesa.

And what about the case that the election goes to a second round?

If there is a second round, which will be in November, it's pretty likely that Carlos Mesa will win. If Mesa loses, it's partly because the anti-socialist vote is somewhat split between him and a far-right candidate named Luis Fernando Camacho, who led the protests against Mr. Morales last year.

And either way, how likely is it that the claims of fraud, for example, could devolve into chaos and or even violence, as with last time around?

Yeah, people are certainly worried about that. International organizations like the UN and the EU have released statements urging people to stay peaceful and encouraging the candidates to tell their supporters to wait for the final result and to accept it. Less than half of Bolivians say they trust the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. And even while the tribunal has undergone serious reforms and there really is no reason to question the result, the Movement to Socialism candidate Luis Arce has made some worrying remarks. And there are worries that his supporters could take to the streets if he loses, or that the supporters of Luis Fernando Camacho, the far-right candidate, could do the same.

Sarah, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

For millions of pupils all over the world, the end of the school day doesn't mean the end of lessons. Instead, in bedrooms and studies from Beijing to Brussels, an army of tutors steps in to provide additional teaching and support. The industry of private tutoring is worth nearly $200 billion globally, and it's growing fast. Much of its work is geared at giving children an edge in what their parents see as an increasingly competitive world. But those pressures can take a heavy toll on both the tutors and the students.

I recently flew to Italy with one family where I was working with a 10-year-old. The Leg Group is applying for 11+, which is the selective application process for secondary school in Britain.

Emma Irving works as a private tutor and has written about her experiences in the latest edition of 1843, our sister magazine.

And we boarded a first-class flight. I ended up staying with the family in Rome in this very beautiful townhouse. Lots of security around everywhere. And I was working with Allegra on English, maths, but within that as well looking at things like how she could come across well in an interview, sort of honing her extracurricular activities. And in the background was her mother, who was a very sort of dominant personality, very keen that she had to get into sort of the absolute top schools in Britain or she would somehow fall off this tightrope process that she saw as ultimately leading to a successful career, getting into a good university, despite the fact that she was only 10 years old.

And, and do you see a lot of that? Is Allegra's mother representative of, uh, of your clients?

So I would say that high-pressure parenting styles are increasingly common. Most parents that I work with demonstrate some sort of anxiety about their child's future. The preconception is that It's an incredibly competitive world and that these children need to be educated rigorously from multiple avenues, not just a top fee-paying school, but also different tutors for different subjects if they're going to stand any chance of getting into a top university, which will then lead them on to hopefully a very good career.

But education is getting more competitive. I mean, do you, do you think those fears are justified?

So 20 years ago, about a quarter of applicants would get into Ivy League universities in the US, and this year Harvard accepted just 5% of applicants. So this pressure is, is very real. Nearly half of all 25 to 37-year-olds in the OECD now have a degree. So more people are going through the degree process, which means that obviously there are more people going for the top jobs afterwards. In Britain, we're now looking at about a quarter of children being tutored. In London, that goes up to over 40%. In Europe, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Germany all have at least sort of 40% of students receiving some kind of private tuition. It's also increasingly normal in Asia. So it really is a global phenomenon.

And so the rise in the number of tutors too is a global phenomenon. I mean, what do you have to do in order to become one?

Most tutors that I've come across don't have any formal training. If you want to become a teacher in the UK, you have to go through quite a significant training process. You have to have a qualification, and we don't have any of that. Tutors are generally recent graduates who went to very good academic institutions themselves, who sign up to work with tutoring agencies, some of, some of which don't even really have a rigorous selection process. It's really just you say you want to do it and they put you in touch with families. And it can be a very challenging situation to be in, particularly because I'm increasingly seeing that a lot of families are asking for tutors to help with emotional problems as well. One tutor that I know of, Arthur, was flown out to Beijing to work with a student called Chen who was trying to get into the same boarding school that Arthur himself had gone to, and it was an incredibly uncomfortable situation on the whole for Arthur because he found himself very much under pressure from the parents to educate Chen not just on academic work, but also to educate him on sort of how to be an English public schoolboy, essentially.

But in a way, that obliges the tutor to know how to teach that, right? I mean, what are the demographics of tutors?

Most of the tutors I know themselves come from privileged backgrounds. Often it's a real draw for the parents if they want their child to attend a certain secondary school or go to a certain university if the tutor has themselves been part of that system and successfully come through it. And that's really detrimental because it means you're perpetuating issues with social mobility, not just among the students but also among these recent graduates. Some of whom really rely on their privilege in a way to make a significant amount of money. You know, there aren't that many roles that you can take on as a sort of side hustle in your 20s that mean you could be earning £50 to £100 an hour.

And those kinds of numbers suggest a real push, a real wish for, for parents to, to do everything they can. But from your perspective, what are the effects of piling that pressure onto all these students?

I think the biggest issue with tutoring is the fact that the children really can lose out on their childhood. If you are spending all of your time after school, after these really long intensive days, then working on extra work with these tutors who are drafted in, it means that there's no real space for you as a child to, to develop on your own or to discover a sense of self, discover your own personal interests. I try really hard with my students to reignite a sense of curiosity that sometimes has been quashed by this very high-pressure situation. But the irony being that obviously the system that I'm a part of is the one that is contributing to that sense of pressure in the first place.

Emma, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

Christopher Smart, an 18th-century poet, is most famous for his poem "Jubilate Agno," or "Rejoice in the Lamb." Benjamin Britten even set it to music in the 1940s.

With elegant quickness.

Smart wrote the poem while in confinement at a London mental asylum. Over the course of more than 1,000 lines, he explores Christianity, the natural world, and cats. Nearly 74 lines are devoted to Geoffrey, a cat who was probably Smart's only companion in isolation.

For I am possessed of a cat surpassing in beauty.

While authors and literary experts have explored the life of Smart for decades, none has written about the life of the poet's feline friend. Until now.

Meow. Geoffrey is the subject of a new biography by Oliver Soden.

Laura Freeman writes about culture for The Economist.

And this is a very slight and slinky but enjoyable biography of a cat.

Not of the poet owner.

No, I mean, Christopher Smart in some ways is almost periphery. He's actually only there in a couple of chapters. So what Soden does very brilliantly is imagine Geoffrey's life before and after his time with Smart. At a launch event to publicise the book, Soden explained a little bit what had inspired him to write a biography of Geoffrey.

My partner, who together we look after a cat Geoffrey at home, and his sister Maud, and she said, well, what about Geoffrey? What about the Geoffrey of the poem. And by the time I'd finished being driven by her back to London, the whole book was suddenly in my head, and I suddenly realized that this would be a way in to thinking about the story of Christopher Smart, but also of thinking about the whole genre of biography and how one might write the life of a cat.

But I mean, how to separate the fact from the fiction? How much do we actually know about Geoffrey?

We don't know a huge amount, only really what Smart writes in his poem. And Soden's line is that The life is imaginary, but that seems to me no reason for it not to be true. What we do know is that Christopher Smart was admitted to an asylum in London, and then we know that he was kept company for some of this time by a cat who he immortalizes in verse. What Soden imagines is that there's a kindly woman who's ministering to Smart in his captivity and who senses his need for companionship, and she delivers Geoffrey to him. And the book really is a romp through the 18th century with cameos from various celebrities, from the actor David Garrick to Handel to the King himself. So he makes a joke about the idea of a cat may look at a king, and what he mostly sees is rolls of enormously fat stomach. And it's sort of the Bow Street bordello and it's Drury Lane theaters. And I think it's London in all its seediness and literary glory during that period.

And so would you say this is the start of a new pet biography genre?

Well, it's not entirely new because Virginia Woolf wrote a biography of Flush, who was the spaniel that belonged to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I think what's very charming about the book is it plays with fact and fiction, and Soden is occasionally rather arch in how he describes the process of writing a biography of an individual about whom we cannot possibly know very much, and he's drawing on all sorts of ideas and influences, so He sort of imagines Geoffrey being the cat in Hogarth's Harlot's Progress, sitting beneath her bed as she's doing her makeup and so on. So it's a slightly wider look at a life.

So in a sense, this book is best viewed as a look at 18th-century London rather than the perspective of a cat.

I think that's right. Where Soden perhaps fails and say Virginia Woolf succeeds is I think Woolf really kind of becomes a dog, and I'm not sure Soden quite achieves that. But there are some lovely notes about the nature of cats, really. So, for example, that they have 3 sets of eyelids, that they're lactose intolerant. The whore at the beginning of the story tries to feed Geoffrey milk, and it earns him the nickname Squit because the milk has such a bad effect on his digestive system.

So this slim volume then seems to be serving lots of purposes. It is one for history lovers, cat lovers, trivia lovers.

Yes, I would also say it just is a complete pleasure to read as a novel. I think you get Geoffrey's sex life and this kind of joke about there being litters of tortoiseshell cats all over London. And it has great momentum. And I do think it would make a really nice stocking filler if you were looking for something joyful to read on Christmas Day.

Laura, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. And you can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/intelligenceoffer. The link is in the show notes. See you back here on Monday.