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BOLIVIA: Congress Approves Date for Vote on New Constitution
By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Oct 21 , 2008 (IPS) - The Bolivian Congress ratified on Tuesday the new constitution drafted by a constituent assembly, as demanded by 100,000 government supporters who converged on the capital to demand that it be sent to a Jan. 25 referendum.
On Monday, Bolivian President Evo Morales had agreed to cut short his term by one year and stand for election only once again, on Dec. 6, 2009, when the vice president, 157 legislators, 327 mayors and nine provincial governors will also run for reelection.
The agreement containing this and other points emerged from complex negotiations between the governing Movement to Socialism (MAS) and three opposition parties and was announced Monday by Morales himself to a huge crowd of government supporters at the end of their week-long march from Oruro to La Paz.
Tens of thousands of indigenous people, small farmers, trade unionists and members of social organisations had joined the 200-km march, which the leftist president led at the beginning and final stretches, from Caracollo in the western highlands province of Oruro to the country’s administrative capital.
Morales’s concession on the reelection issue was the last condition demanded by the rightwing opposition to allow the referendum on the new constitution to go ahead.
The president’s plan was to run for election in 2009 and, if he won - as expected -, to stand for reelection in 2014. Although he has been in office since January 2006, under the new constitution, the five-year term that would begin in 2010 would have been counted as his first. He was thus hoping to remain in office for 13 years, in order to push through his programme of in-depth democratic and cultural reforms.
But according to Monday’s agreement, he will not seek reelection in 2014.
The intense talks held Monday by visibly tired negotiators were observed by representatives of the Organisation of American States (OAS), the United Nations, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Catholic and Protestant churches.
At the same time, the negotiators felt the pressure from the tens of thousands of government supporters who made the long trek to La Paz to demand a referendum on the new constitution, which will grant official recognition and greater political participation to Bolivia’s impoverished indigenous majority and put an end to the heavy concentration of land under the system of unproductive large landholdings.
Vice president Álvaro García Linera reported that in the talks, the negotiators reviewed around 100 of the 411 articles approved by the constituent assembly in December 2007 - in a session boycotted by the rightwing opposition - in order to address the concerns of the rural sector, the business community and workers.
The MAS backed down from its initial refusal to review the draft constitution, in order to facilitate talks and create an atmosphere of calm after the wave of violent protests by rightwing "civic committees" and radical youth groups in September in the lowlands provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija, known as the "eastern crescent."
These provinces, which are wealthier and more ethnically mixed than the predominantly indigenous western highlands provinces, and account for most of the country's natural gas production, industry, agribusiness and gross domestic product, are demanding autonomy.
The "adjustments and corrections of contradictions" in the draft constitution eased the fears and concerns of the opposition and different sectors, and the revised document that emerged from the negotiations with the nine governors is an "improved version," said the vice president.
The modifications introduced include clearer definitions of the different kinds of autonomy sought by the provinces and indigenous groups, said García Linera.
Roughly 100,000 demonstrators converged on La Paz Monday afternoon, approaching the city along main highways, secondary routes and rural roads, to pressure Congress to approve the call for a referendum.
Protest marches are a tactic long used in Bolivia by groups like miners, indigenous people and coca farmers.
Morales, who often led such marches as the leader of the country’s coca producers before he became president, headed up the march during the last 30-km stretch, alongside the head of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) central trade union, miner Pedro Montes.
The media reported that the march was the longest ever. The sea of humanity, which stretched 15 kilometres, began to arrive in La Paz at 4:00 PM and was still streaming in from the surrounding mountains by nightfall.
Showing no signs of fatigue, despite long hours walking under the beating sun and the thousands of hands he shook along the way, Morales gave a speech and sang and danced with his followers.
The public support expressed for him Monday, coming on top of the 67 percent vote of confidence he was given in the Aug. 10 recall referendum, make it clear that he is the most popular president in the last 26 years of democracy in Bolivia.
The march, which brought together impoverished indigenous people from the altiplano and the tropical valleys of South America’s poorest country, demonstrated their determination to put an end to centuries of discrimination, isolation and neglect, and to challenge the traditional political elites allied with powerful landowners and business and economic groups that were strengthened by the free-market economic policies of previous administrations.
(END)
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