Virgil
09-18-2008, 11:21 AM
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18850
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By Roger Burbach
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As Bolivia teeters on the brink of civil war, President Evo Morales staunchly maintains his commitment to constructing a popular democracy by working within the state institutions that brought him to power. The show down with the right wing is taking place against the backdrop of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the heroic if tragic president of Chile who believed that the formal democratic state he inherited could be peacefully transformed to usher in a socialist society.
Like Allende, Morales faces a powerful economic and political elite aligned with the United States that is bent on reversing the limited reforms he has been able to implement during his nearly three years in power. Early on, Morales--Bolivia's first indigenous president--moved assertively to exert greater control over the natural gas and oil resources of the country, sharply increasing the hydro-carbon tax, and then using a large portion of this revenue to provide a universal pension to all those over sixty years old, most of whom live in poverty and are indigenous.
The self-proclaimed Civic Committees in Media Luna (Half Moon)--Bolivia's four eastern departments--have orchestrated a rebellion against these changes, demanding departmental autonomy and control of the hydro-carbon revenues, as well as an end to agrarian reform and even control of the police forces. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee, dominated by agro-industrial interests, is supporting the Cruceno Youth Union (UJC), an affiliated group that acts as a para-military organization, seizing and fire bombing government offices, and attacking Indian and peasant organizations that dare to support the national government.
Morales' efforts to transform the institutions of the country have focused on the popularly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. The assembly was convened in mid 2006 with representatives from Morales' political party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) holding 54 percent of the seats. In the drafting of the new constitution, the right wing political parties, led by Podemos (We Can), insisted that a two-thirds vote was needed even for the working committees to approve the different sections of the constitution. When they were overruled and a new constitution was close to being approved in November, 2007, members of the assembly, including its indigenous president, Silvia Lazarte, were assaulted in the streets of Sucre, the old nineteenth century capital where the assembly was being held.
Using words that evoked Allende's last stand in the Chilean presidential palace, Evo Morales declared "dead or alive, I will have a new constitution for the country." He quartered the assembly in an old castle under military protection where it adopted a constitution that has to be approved in a national referendum. Labeling Morales a "dictator," the civic committees and the departmental prefects (governors) of Media Luna were able to stall the vote on the referendum, and instead organized departmental referendums for autonomy in May of this year that were ruled unconstitutional by the National Electoral Council.
Taking recourse in democracy rather than force, and searching for a national consensus, Morales then held up the vote on the new constitution, and instead put his presidency on the line in a recall referendum in which his mandate as well as that of the prefects of the departments could be revoked. On August 10, voters went to the polls and Morales won a resounding 67 percent of the vote, receiving a majority of the ballots in 95 of the country's 112 districts with even the Media Luna department of Pando voting in his favor.
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By Roger Burbach
Roger Burbach's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace
As Bolivia teeters on the brink of civil war, President Evo Morales staunchly maintains his commitment to constructing a popular democracy by working within the state institutions that brought him to power. The show down with the right wing is taking place against the backdrop of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the heroic if tragic president of Chile who believed that the formal democratic state he inherited could be peacefully transformed to usher in a socialist society.
Like Allende, Morales faces a powerful economic and political elite aligned with the United States that is bent on reversing the limited reforms he has been able to implement during his nearly three years in power. Early on, Morales--Bolivia's first indigenous president--moved assertively to exert greater control over the natural gas and oil resources of the country, sharply increasing the hydro-carbon tax, and then using a large portion of this revenue to provide a universal pension to all those over sixty years old, most of whom live in poverty and are indigenous.
The self-proclaimed Civic Committees in Media Luna (Half Moon)--Bolivia's four eastern departments--have orchestrated a rebellion against these changes, demanding departmental autonomy and control of the hydro-carbon revenues, as well as an end to agrarian reform and even control of the police forces. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee, dominated by agro-industrial interests, is supporting the Cruceno Youth Union (UJC), an affiliated group that acts as a para-military organization, seizing and fire bombing government offices, and attacking Indian and peasant organizations that dare to support the national government.
Morales' efforts to transform the institutions of the country have focused on the popularly elected Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. The assembly was convened in mid 2006 with representatives from Morales' political party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) holding 54 percent of the seats. In the drafting of the new constitution, the right wing political parties, led by Podemos (We Can), insisted that a two-thirds vote was needed even for the working committees to approve the different sections of the constitution. When they were overruled and a new constitution was close to being approved in November, 2007, members of the assembly, including its indigenous president, Silvia Lazarte, were assaulted in the streets of Sucre, the old nineteenth century capital where the assembly was being held.
Using words that evoked Allende's last stand in the Chilean presidential palace, Evo Morales declared "dead or alive, I will have a new constitution for the country." He quartered the assembly in an old castle under military protection where it adopted a constitution that has to be approved in a national referendum. Labeling Morales a "dictator," the civic committees and the departmental prefects (governors) of Media Luna were able to stall the vote on the referendum, and instead organized departmental referendums for autonomy in May of this year that were ruled unconstitutional by the National Electoral Council.
Taking recourse in democracy rather than force, and searching for a national consensus, Morales then held up the vote on the new constitution, and instead put his presidency on the line in a recall referendum in which his mandate as well as that of the prefects of the departments could be revoked. On August 10, voters went to the polls and Morales won a resounding 67 percent of the vote, receiving a majority of the ballots in 95 of the country's 112 districts with even the Media Luna department of Pando voting in his favor.
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