IPS-English BOLIVIA: Governors Accept President's Referendum Challenge
 
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:40:32 -0800

 
Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Dec 6   (IPS)  - Bolivian President Evo Morales said he would
send a proposal to Congress Thursday for a referendum in which voters
would decide whether or not he should stay in office, and the country's
governors accepted his challenge to also submit themselves to a vote.

Five of the governors have been heading the fierce opposition to
the changes promoted by the government since the leftist president
took office in January 2006, and observers have even warned of the
risk of civil war.

The president's announcement interrupted the evening news and football
games late Wednesday.

Three conservative governors were just leaving the United States
after lodging a complaint with the Organisation of American States
(OAS) against Morales for the approval of a draft constitution by
just the governing party majority in the constituent assembly. (Delegates
of right-wing parties had boycotted the session). 

The complaint also focused on the deaths of three protesters in clashes
between anti-government demonstrators and the police in the south-central
city of Sucre after the draft constitution was approved in a preliminary
vote on Nov. 24.

Among the conservative opposition, concentrated in the country's
relatively wealthy southeastern lowlands, the initial reaction to
Morales' announcement was silence, which gave way to surprise and
later incredulity.

Opposition leaders are holding a hunger strike in the central city
of Santa Cruz, where 150 people have joined the fast. Last week, the
opposition held a one-day strike that closed businesses, public transport
and schools in the six provinces governed by conservative forces.

”It's a democratic and peaceful way of resolving the conflict,” said
analyst Carlos Cordero, referring to the referendum.

Morales, the country's first indigenous president, is backed by the
country's coca growers, the mainly indigenous rural poor and portions
of the urban working and middle classes, which see him as holding
out hope for change after a string of right-wing governments that
failed to improve living standards for ordinary Bolivians.

South America's poorest country is roughly divided along ethnic and
socioeconomic lines, with the eastern lowlands concentrating the country's
good farmland and natural gas reserves and populated by Bolivians
of European or mixed (European and indigenous) descent, and the impoverished
western highlands, which are home to the country's indigenous majority.

The draft constitution, which has a Dec. 14 deadline for completion,
after which it goes to a popular referendum, is aimed at increasing
the participation of Bolivia's historically marginalised indigenous
people in running the country.

One of Morales's chief moves was to re-nationalise the country's
natural gas reserves. 

The government has also accelerated land reform, and in the east,
large landowners, ranchers and conservative sectors are defending
their vast agribusiness interests and calling for greater autonomy.
They also want more control over the natural gas resources found in
their provinces.

In the face of the refusal by five governors to engage in dialogue
with the Morales administration and the heavy pressure by the opposition
to revoke the approval of the draft constitution, Morales got the
jump on their strategy aimed at discrediting his administration and
said he would invite voters to decide on whether or not he should
complete his term.

Because the opposition has made it impossible for the constituent
assembly to meet safely in Sucre, it is seeking a new meeting-place,
perhaps in the region of Chapare, in the department (province) of
Cochabamba, where the government enjoys strong support.

Morales chose the democratic route of a constituent assembly, to
rewrite the constitution with the aim of empowering indigenous people
and strengthening respect for their rights and their ancestral territories.

The opposition claims the intention is to confiscate private property.
But Morales has clarified that private ownership will be respected,
and that only unproductive or illegally owned land will be confiscated
and redistributed, while community-owned and collective property ownership
will be incorporated in the new constitution.

”If the people say ‘Evo's got to go', no problem,” the president
said Wednesday, confident that his popularity and the measures taken
in his nearly two years in office will ensure that voters will come
out in favour of him serving his entire five-year term.

The president successfully pressured the foreign oil companies operating
in Bolivia to renegotiate their contracts, thus increasing state revenues
from 150 million to nearly two billion dollars a year, in a country
where gross domestic product stands at 11 billion dollars and exports
bring in just seven billion dollars a year.

The increased earnings have directly benefited the provinces that
are now the bastion of the conservative opposition -- Santa Cruz,
Tarija, Beni and Pando -- where people voted for greater autonomy
in a July 2006 referendum. The other five provinces voted against
autonomy.

Morales's social policies, which have the strong support of Venezuela
and Cuba, have included health campaigns targeting the poor, free
cataract operations, a literacy drive, and the creation of a 26-dollar
a month stipend per child who stays in stays in school for poor families
-- popular measures in a country where 67 percent of the population
lives below the poverty line.

The president says his responsibility is to govern for equality and
social justice. His aim is to reduce the income gap between poor and
wealthier Bolivian families; between the western highlands and the
eastern lowlands; and between poor countries and the industrialised
world, whose governments he criticises for their free trade policies.

Morales, who has accused the opposition of paying people to incite
social unrest and confront his supporters and has expressed worries
of clashes between anti- and pro-government demonstrators, said the
referendum on his and the governors' leadership provides a democratic
solution to the current crisis.

The opposition to Morales is led by the governors of Santa Cruz,
Rubén Costas; of Tarija, Mario Cossío; of Beni, Ernesto Suárez; and
of Pando, Leopoldo Fernández, who have been joined by the governor
of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa, a former army captain. 

Analysts say that in the referendum, the five governors will be hard
put to hold on to their voters, who are now sharply divided.

In the department of Chuquisaca, where Sucre is located, Governor
David Sánchez, an ally of the Morales administration, has been in
hiding since the late November incidents, because of threats from
opposition groups that accuse him of fomenting the violence. Observers
say he is unlikely to win the referendum vote.

In the west, governors Alberto Aguilar of Oruro and Mario Virreira
of Potosí, both of whom belong to Morales's Movement to Socialism
(MAS) party, enjoy strong popular support.

Governor José Luis Paredes of La Paz, meanwhile, heads a political
current that fluctuates between opposition to Morales and occasional
support for his measures.

The draft constitution includes the creation of a recall referendum
in which voters could remove an unpopular president or governors from
office. Morales's announcement is in line with that proposal. 



(END/IPS/LA IP CS IN/TRASP-SW/FCH/DM/07)


 
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