For the past month and a half, one topic has dominated Bolivia’s newspaper headlines: since January 2006, governing party MAS leaders have been giving out government jobs to every friend, brother-in-law, cousin, and nephew possible. And in some cases, they have been selling public administration posts to the highest bidder.

On February 22, the Bolivian newspaper La Prensa ran a story exposing that MAS leaders had sold state positions for $300 a pop. The scandal now involves over 100 bought-jobs with at least 20 MAS leaders accused.

Two members of Parliament, Senator Lino Villca Delgado (MAS ex-mayor from the Yungas region and member of the Bolivian Farmer’s Federation) and Deputy Nemesia Achacollo Tola (ex-President of the National Women’s Federations of Farmers Bartolina Sisa), have been formally implicated and asked to renounce their parliamentary immunity so that they can be put under investigation—which they have yet to do. (Achacollo has said she is willing to, Villca said he is not.) Recently, accusations have reached as high up as President Evo Morales himself.

Most of the incidents involve $300 one-time payments, but then there’s Alejandro Rodríguez (aide to MAS heavyweight Senator Santos Ramírez) who earned over $1,000 for giving assigning one single government post. And this past Thursday, it was reported that Gustavo and Claudia Veizaga Rosales earned $15,000 by portioning out 41 public administration spots.

The scandal’s exposure has rocked the MAS party, and heads have rolled. A March 19th pre-dawn party caucus expelled several of the implicated members—almost all of them low on the party’s hierarchical ladder. Two close collaborators and friends of President Morales, Senator Leonilda Zurita (founder of the Women’s Federation of Coca Producers of the Tropic of Cochabamba) and Senator Ramirez, were accused but charges have been dropped, despite significant evidence of their involvement. Morales has since initiated “an executive branch cleansing,” but the accusations keep coming. According to Nardy Suxo, Vice Minister of Transparency, new job trafficking claims are filed daily.

These types of political pay-offs are perhaps par for the course in Bolivia—a country that was once considered to have one of the world’s highest levels of governmental corruption. Yet, never before has the extent of the patronage been so publicized.

Few or none of the MAS’s predecessors operated so flagrantly: the MAS signed and stamped pay-off letters; one party leader even opened a bank account so that those for whom he arranged jobs could make the required payments.

But it’s not just the paper trail that has lead to the scandal coming to light. The commercial press has shown unparalleled zeal in investigating the depths of current political corruption. Curious, since it’s a system the media had before treated with tempered interest, exposing extreme cases but always characterizing it as an unfortunate part of the battles between political factions. This time, the same infractions are treated as if the MAS´s supposed union mafioso mentality is corrupting the state, rather than the other way around.

Morales claims it’s a media conspiracy against him—an exaggeration perhaps. But the press’ recent feeding frenzy certainly demonstrates its inclination to put unlimited resources behind anything that discredits MAS rule.

From March 19th through March 23rd, when accusations reached their height and the MAS imposed expulsion, the two major newspapers in La Paz—La Razón and La Prensa—printed at least 25 articles including features, editorials and columns just on this topic.

During those same five days it was discovered that Petrobras exaggerated its investments in its Bolivian operations, the government declined to formally request that the UN remove coca from its banned narcotic list and the MAS announced its intention to hold general elections in 2008, rather than as schedule in 2010. Each of these issues received scant attention because the commercial press was focused almost exclusively on the patronage story.

“The President’s surprise announcement [concerning new elections] last Friday caused an uproar and is still being debated,” wrote Antonio Martínez in an article published in Los Tiempos, the largest newspaper in Bolivia’s third biggest city of Cochabamba, on March 21st. “But the press’ major headlines still center on… the denouncements against political leaders and parliament members who bribed those aspiring to political posts.”

The scandal, however, raises issues beyond the media’s anti-MAS tendency and deeper than what government spokesman Alex Contreras claims to simply be “old neo-liberal practices” in a state apparatus still characterized by corruption, bureaucracy and nepotism.

Throughout its job-selling coverage, the press started anew its investigation into the MAS’ penchant for assigning government positions based on political history, party militancy and close relationships to its own leaders, rather than on professional experience. Several articles in March and April address both the selling of posts and the handing-out of posts to those “unqualified” in the same breath, creating the impression that the two actions are evidence of the same abuse of power.

Everyone can agree that accepting money in exchange for a public administration post is an egregious violation, but what about the MAS using its power to employ those with a shared political perspective over those who hold “higher qualifications”?

Take the example of Morales’ first Minister of Justice, Casimira Rodríguez, an ex-indentured servant and leader of the domestic workers’ union. The country’s professionals—specifically the Bolivian Bar Association—cried out in rage at her appointment because Rodríguez is neither a lawyer nor said to have the “appropriate legal experience” to hold such a post. The left celebrated: finally, someone like Rodríguez is in a position of power; better her than a lawyer with the wrong politics.

Rodríguez is one of thousands. Given Bolivia’s centuries-long racial discrimination, those “qualified” (i.e. in education or professional experience) are almost entirely upper class whites who share none of the current government’s political values and who enforced this country’s racist and repressive systems for decades.

To be honest, some of those people do walk palace halls or sit in high ministry offices. But often, the MAS gives opportunities to people like Rodríguez with a wealth of life experience, wisdom and political history. And in a country where unemployment hovers around 45% and poverty around 60%, the new government’s ability give out well-paying and steady government jobs in and of itself could have far reaching socio-economic effects.

After all, if taking state power brings with it the chance to empower—and employ—why not make use of government structures and systems of political patronage to benefit those traditionally marginalized?

After one year in office, Rodríguez was fired in a cabinet cleansing that expunged almost half of the President’s first picks. There was no official explanation other than her performance had been less than satisfactory. Her and the expulsion of several others begs the question: What is the right strategy for building a government? When forced to choose between political allegiance and professional experience, what do you do?

The MAS has yet to find a coherent answer.