Mabblog

The Fragility of MAS in Congress

2012-01-19T10:52:00.003+01:00

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This is a development that was expected to come, some time, to Bolivian politics. As you may already know, the Bolivian political forces in the Plurinational Assembly are distributed thus. From a total of 166 seats in the assembly (36 in the Senate and 130 in the Deputies Chamber), the MAS controlled, until now, 113 (88 in the Deputies Chamber and 25 in the Senate). So, a fragile 2/3 majority, considering for such a majority 111 seats are needed.

Now, two seats above the needed is anything other than comforting for the government because with such a small margin there is always the danger of losing that majority. This is especially true in the constantly changing political environment in Bolivia.

Well, this is exactly what is about to happen. A group of indigenous congressmen and congresswomen have decided to diverge from MAS and place their "compromise with the change" the government is leading on hold to practice a bit of opposition. These group wants to oppose the central government's efforts to build a road through the natural reserve and indigenous territory TIPNIS. If you followed a bit of Bolivia's politics lately you might know that the government was practically forced by indigenous groups to back down on its plans to build that road. In fact, it was forced to pass a law declaring the whole territory as intangible.

However, the MAS government must be regreting that outcome because it is still trying to somehow build the road. One way in which it wants to do that is by inciting other indigenous groups who are in favor of the road to support the repeal of that law.

That is what the group of indigenous members of congress want to stop.

The group, denominated originary block, is said to be made up by Justino Leaños, Blanca Cartagena, Pedro Nuni, Bienvenido Zacu y Cristina Valeroso. It is also possible that other members will join this effort, such as Julio Cortez, Teresa Nominé, Bertha Ramallo y Sonia Justiniano.

The report can be found in Pagina Siete.

Bloggings by boz: Latin America mentions in new US defense strategy

2012-01-06T15:36:00.000+01:00

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Here is a post from boz about the US' defense strategy. If you read the post you'll see that there is not much mentioned about the region. In fact, it is just about one paragraph. In turn, boz does call on to the fact that the document is only about 8 pages long. I say, that is just about right! The length of both, the paper and the mention of Lat Am, is symptomatic of the attention the US gives to his backyard, where the grass is getting longer and the bushes are growing as they please, to the point that the US government will not be able to set foot into it. :-)

Here is the post, enjoy!
Bloggings by boz: Latin America mentions in new US defense strategy: President Obama visited the Pentagon yesterday to unveil a new National Defense Strategy. The big story was the planned reduction of militar...

Curious Drug Bust Finds Cocaine Paste Labled With the Nazi Symbol, a Swastika

2011-12-13T13:44:00.000+01:00

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A very curious drug bust in Santa Cruz, Bolivia found around 250 kilograms of cocaine paste in the form of bricks. The curious think was that each brick displayed, on one of the flat sides, a swastika. Here is the press article from El Deber.

The bust leaves more questions than answers. Above all, why do all the bricks carry a Nazi symbol?

Bizarre!

The Dangers of Communitarian Justice

2011-12-08T14:53:00.001+01:00

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There is a real danger about relying on communitarian justice when the state is not able to establish its presence in rural areas. That is the problem that has been highlighted by Bolivia's attempts at relying on communitarian justice in order to complement the weak judicial apparatus in the country.

The Bolivian constitution raises communitarian justice to the same rank as ordinary justice. On the back of ethnic, autonomic and indigenous peoples discourse, now rural dwellers around the country (there where the state is not really present) can claim the use of communitarian justice as an equal alternative to ordinary justice.

This, on one side, stems from the insecurity these dwellers feel because of the lack of presence of police forces. In addition, more often than not, people have to travel long in order to come to the nearest judge.

On the other side, these affinity for communitarian justice stems from the traditional forms of justice some Andean groups have had in the past and still have now. This has become the fundamental argument, within this indigenist discourse, to justify uses of what otherwise would be known as mob justice.

The reason for this post is to highlight an example of what has been happening in Bolivia for some time now.

In the last weeks, the Bolivian statistical institute has been sending people to the rural areas to gather survey data to measure poverty, health, and other things. In the last days, eight of those people were thought to be thieves, kept captured, and almost lynched by the skeptical people in a small town in Cochabamba. The people could be freed after long negotiations with the police and other security forces.

What does this latest example says is that this form of "justice" is not adequate to be a legitimate form of justice. At the most, if anything, it should be incorporated into a conflict solution mechanism.

2011-11-18T11:47:00.001+01:00

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I am posting this time some links I found intersting.

This first link is an article strongly criticizing the Morales governmet written by Roberto Laserna (a Bolivian academic).

The second link leads to a picture of the swearing ceremony for the elected judges, that is those who won the judicial elections in Bolivia. With this, the electoral act is confirmed. It did not really matter that the spoiled vote won, did it?

The third link to a youtube video where former Government Minister, Quintana, accuses the DEA of being involved in drug trafficking and protecting the TIPNIS region for this purpose.

The Results of the Judicial Elections in Bolivia

2011-11-12T01:23:00.001+01:00

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The results of the vote to fill judge posts in the four judicial sub-branches in Bolivia have been published by the Plurinacional Electoral Organ (the electoral court). Although, I have to say, since Evo is in government, the website does not work as well as it should. However, I was still able to get the final and official results.

First, I have to clarify that when I wanted to access the official results I had problems accessing the right results. For example, as I selected Santa Cruz or Pando, I got the Chuquisaca or Beni results. Only after 20 or 30 times trying to access the data by clicking on the same selection from the drop down menue I was able to access these results. Just to clarify further, I never had such a problem when I tried to access this kind of data before. I think the quality of data access has gone down.

Regardless of my petty problems by accessing the data, I was finally able to access it and from that data I created the following graph.

The graph shows the results of the judicial elections (valid, blank and spoiled votes) by tribunal or court. These results show a clear victory for the green bar or spoiled vote in the Supreme Justice Tribunal. This court is in the nine departments present and what the results say to me is that the majority of the departments did not support this court nor the vote for justices for this court. This is supposed to be the highest instance in the land.

More over, the spoiled votes show a close outcome together with the valid votes (the blue bar). How close it is, I think is irrelevant in this case. What counts for the governmet in this case is that the distance between one bar and the other is not significant or not visible. For the government that should signal a solid support for the voting exercise and the judges elected for the rest of the courts.

However, were we to add the blank votes to the spoiled votes, thereby assuming that those who voted blank protested against the vote, the result would be overwhelming for the government and clear for the rest of the world. No one will know if these votes were protest votes or the people who issued these votes did not know how to vote, were overwhelmed by the complexity of the ballot, or if they just did not care about it.

The opposition, in turn, can interpret this vote as if they did win the election. In the end, it is very remakable that the percentage of spoiled votes was so large in such elections. In fact, that is what they did. The opposition has been saying for weeks now that the spoile vote won and the elections were not legitimate.

In the end, however, the government has began to appoint the judges in their posts as the results mandate and has been able to say that the election results were not that bad. That is the success the Morales government has been able to gain from this electoral exercise. And, that seems like a good result, doesn't it?

TIPNIS Environmental Report

2011-10-31T11:34:00.000+01:00

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I found an environment report on the TIPNIS region in PDF format for those who are interested and can read Spanish. I am sorry I cannot translate it, I wish I had the time.

It provides information on which indigenous peoples live around the area and which other groups of settlements are there. Especially it talks about the colonizers.

Of course, it talks about the importance of the region for the ecological well being of the areas in and around the park.

The Problem Around the TIPNIS Seems to Take a Turn Downwards

2011-10-30T16:41:00.002+01:00

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The TIPNIS "problem", I have been writing about in the last weeks, seems to develop more and more. In my last post I wrote about a "headache" developing for the government due to the actions some congressmen from MAS were about to take. Now, it seems that the weakening of the MAS majority in Congress is not the only worry. The government is looking at potential disruptions in some important roads as well as more marches or demonstrations (mobilizations, as people like to call them).

First of all, it is necessary to say that as a result of the indigenous march that arrived in La Paz on October 19, demanding the government stop its plans to build a road through the TIPNIS, the below law was passed. This law is called the Law to Protect the TIPNIS. The law basically repeats what can be read in the 2009 Constitution, that is the idigenous peoples have claims and rights over these protected areas and those areas designated as "originary" (meaning indigenous territories).

The discussion however has been over a word included in the law to protect it against destruction, dissappearence or damage. The word in Spanish is "intangible", which can translated into English as intangible or impalpable. However, I am not sure the meaning is the same. In Spanish, the dictionary says that "intangible" is that something SHOUL NOT or CANNOT be touched. In English the meaning of intangible is incapable of being perceived and of impalpable is that it cannot be touched or perceived. In any case, not a clear cut translation. That is what I think. But, what is meant in the law is that the territory cannot be touched and must be preserved as it is.

And there is the problem. On the one side, the indigenous group that struggled for the passing of this law, interpret it as applying only to third parties and not to indigenous peoples. This much is clear, otherwise they would not have gone into such lengths to make the government pass the law. On the other side, the government (that seems to be upset over the whole conflict and the defeat) interprets the law as applying to everyone, including the indigenous peoples.

This, once again, prolongues the conflict because the indigenous in TIPNIS think the government will prevent them from benefiting from the natural resources in the park. The various resources are wood, agriculture, and tourism.

To make things even more complicated, the government has been complaining that the organizations in and around the conflict and the territory, such as the six confederations of coca growers, have not done anything to support the government's efforts.

The road would have provided for a way to communicate and transport products from the Chapare region, where the coca growers live, to Brazil, for example. This will not be possible anymore because the construction of the road is now prohibited.

In addition, another group that also has interest on the road is the colonizadores group. This group is made up of people who migrated from the Andes to the tropical region in and around TIPNIS to colonize the region and now find themselves in conflict with the indigenous "originary" peoples of the region. Many of these colonizadores are engaged in wood logging and other commercial activities.

Now these people have heard the government's reproach and have decided to enter in the conflict by blocking roads to demand the repeal of the law or the application of it to all. As such, these groups have issued threats to the various companies operating in the TIPNIS the if they do not leave the region by themselves the groups will make them leave by force.

How is that for a mess!

LEY Nº 180

LEY DE 24 DE OCTUBRE DE 2011

EVO MORALES AYMA

PRESIDENTE CONSTITUCIONAL DEL ESTADO PLURINACIONAL DE BOLIVIA

Por cuanto, la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional, ha sancionado la siguiente Ley:

LA ASAMBLEA LEGISLATIVA PLURINACIONAL,

DECRETA:

LEY DE PROTECCIÓN DEL TERRITORIO INDÍGENA

Y PARQUE NACIONAL ISIBORO SÉCURE - TIPNIS

Artículo 1. (DECLARATORIA DE PATRIMONIO DEL TIPNIS).

I. Se declara al Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure - TIPNIS patrimonio sociocultural y natural, zona de preservación ecológica, reproducción histórica y hábitat de los pueblos indígenas Chimán, Yuracaré y Mojeño-trinitario cuya protección y conservación son de interés primordial del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.

II. En el marco de los artículos 30, 385, 394 y 403 de la Constitución Política del Estado y otras normas vigentes, se ratifica al Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure – TIPNIS como territorio indígena de los pueblos Chimán, Yuracaré y Mojeño-trinitario, de carácter indivisible, imprescriptible, inembargable, inalienable e irreversible y como área protegida de interés nacional.

III. Asimismo, adicionalmente se declara al Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure – TIPNIS, como zona intangible.

Artículo 2. (TERRITORIO INDÍGENA Y ÁREA PROTEGIDA). Teniendo el Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure – TIPNIS, además de la categoría de territorio indígena, la categoría de área protegida, se constituye, en garantía de conservación, sostenibilidad e integridad de los sistemas de vida, la funcionalidad de los ciclos ecológicos y los procesos naturales en convivencia armónica con la Madre Tierra y sus derechos.

Artículo 3. (CARRETERAS POR EL TIPNIS). Se dispone que la carretera Villa Tunari - San Ignacio de Moxos, como cualquier otra, no atravesará el Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure – TIPNIS.

Artículo 4. (PROTECCIÓN). Dado el carácter intangible del Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure – TIPNIS se deberán adoptar las medidas legales correspondientes que permitan revertir, anular o dejar sin efecto los actos que contravengan a esta naturaleza jurídica.

Artículo 5. (PROHIBICIÓN DE ASENTAMIENTOS HUMANOS ILEGALES EN EL TERRITORIO INDÍGENA Y PARQUE NACIONAL ISIBORO SÉCURE - TIPNIS). De conformidad al Artículo Primero de la presente Ley al ser declarado territorio intangible, los asentamientos y ocupaciones de hecho promovidas o protagonizadas por personas ajenas a los titulares del Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure – TIPNIS, son ilegales y serán pasibles de desalojo con intervención de la fuerza pública si fuera necesario a requerimiento de autoridad administrativa o judicial competente.

Remítase al Órgano Ejecutivo, para fines constitucionales.

Es dada en la Sala de Sesiones de la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional, a los veinticuatro días del mes de octubre del año dos mil once.

FDO. ÁLVARO GARCÍA LINERA, Zonia Guardia Melgar, Esteban Ramírez Torrico.

Por tanto, la promulgo para que se tenga y cumpla como Ley del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.

Palacio de Gobierno de la ciudad de La Paz, a los veinticuatro días del mes de octubre de dos mil once años.

FDO. EVO MORALES AYMA, Carlos Romero Bonifaz, Walter Juvenal Delgadillo Terceros, Julieta Mabel Monje Villa, Nemesia Achacollo Tola.

The Biginning of a Political Headache?

2011-10-20T15:20:00.003+02:00

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The TIPNIS conflict has become a real headache for the Morales government. In fact, it has the potential to turn into a chronic desease, if the government and its party, the MAS, does not take care of its alliances.

The Senator for MAS, Pedro Nuni, has told Erbol that he will leave the MAS congressional faction to start another indigenous faction within Congress. He said he was tired to "raise his hands like a stupid". He complained that MAS and Evo only had the interests of the highland indigenous groups in mind and that the lowland indigenous groups were not important for Evo.

Nuni is a representative of the lowland indigenous groups and as such is bounded in his actions to the scrutiny of his constituency. He was asked by the representative organization to serve as a deputy.

This ought to be a warning signal for a government who is dependent on the support of the indigenous population. The break up of some indigenous groups might rest on the legitimacy that up to now the government has claimed for itself. It, for sure, will rest on the support in Congress that the government might need in order to pass some legislation.

In my opinion, this break up is unavoidable. As the different groups in Congress face the government's agenda and weight this agenda against the interests of their own constituencies, some dissagreement is bound to show up. Instead, the government should be concentrating more on compromise and communication than on setting up a system of party discipline.

TIPNIS Arrives in La Paz

2011-10-20T14:07:00.003+02:00

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Source of the photo.

The political activity is starting to make headlines again in Bolivia. The Morales government has been entangled in a confrontation with a group of indigenous people over the construction of a road that would cut right through their territory. What makes the problem even more complicated is that the territory is a natural reserve called, by its accronym, simply TIPNIS (in English is roughly translated to Isiboro Serure Indigenous Territory National Park). The territory lies between two rivers with the names Isiboro and Secure. Here is the wikipedia article in English and here, what seems to be the website of a group of people in opposition to the government in Spanish, but it has some useful information on the park itself.

The conflict began with the government deciding to go ahead with the construction of the road, which would cut through the national park. One problem is that the park was declared indigenous territory and thus it (at least in the heads of the indigenous who live there) belongs to the indigenous who live there. Another problem is that the government itself was the one who promoted this movement towards indigenous territories. Obviously, not thinking enough on what that would mean. An additional problem was that the indigenous felt they were not consulted on the decision, since there is a process in such cases. At least, there is one when it comes to natural resources.

So, in open disagreement with the government and in a confrontational strategy, the indigenous groups decided to march from Trinidad (the capital of the Beni department) to La Paz (the seat of government); a march that would last 66 days and would cover more than 600 kilometers. Here in Erbol there is a chronology of the march in Spanish.

Yesterday, Wednesday, October 19, at 1500 hours the march arrived at the doors of the government building. This was surprising because generally these types of marches are not allowed to reach the government palace. But, they did, and after that they proceeded to concentrate in the traditional place, the San Francisco plaza, which is some minutes walk from the government palace.

The march was received by the paceno population with enthusiasm and significant support. The video above, sourced from the Youtube channel from Boliviaenvideos, shows how the people lined up along the streets to show their support for the march. The Boliviaenvideos channel also has the 15 minute video of the main speech in San Francisco. But, it is all in Spanish.

But, what is the significance of all this? In my opinion, the government is being confronted with the realities of government now. In contrast to the times when Evo Morales was a maverick union leader who struggled against governments from the opposition, now the government of Morales has to govern, and that is the price it is paying. These are just the realities of government. In every decision a government makes, there are many who are in favor and there are many who are against. The problem is that the decisions a government takes almost always directly affects the lives of the people. In many cases, there are really winners and losers.

The significance for the government is that, as we have just seen, this problem with the TIPNIS group, has turned out to be a defeat in the ballot box. Arguably, this conflict has been the most prominent cause Evo Morales, who up to now had won every election, lost in last sunday's judicial elections. In addition to that, the loss of legitimacy in the eyes of many is a problem that has slowly been growing. The government came to power using, among many, a discourse in favor of "taking care of the mother earth". What does this conflict show, is its disregard for the mother earth. That is, regardless of whether the road is necessary for the development of the country or for the incorporation of many villages along the way or to create employment along its path, the message sent is that the government does not care about mother earth and it is selling out its principles.

This is a real dilemma for the Morales government. I can hardly think of a way in which the government can come out winning or even even from this conflict.

The Judicial Elections in Bolivia

2011-10-17T11:52:00.001+02:00

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Yesterday, Sunday, October 16, 2011, Bolivia went yet again to the ballot box. This time they elected judges for the highest courts. It was an experimental election, because it was the first time in the region (pls correct me if I am wrong) that judges were elected by popular vote. They usually are appointed by, either the executive or the legislative branches.

Today, Monday, one day later, the headlines are catching the interest of many. In almost every newspaper the headline reads: The Spoiled Vote Marks the First Defeat of Morales.

Indeed, the exit polls are predicting a significant defeat for the Morales government. El Diario, reports (sorry this is not a permalink) the defeat is 60% to 38%, with the former representing the spoiled and blank votes and the latter being the valid votes. This marks a difference of 22%. Pagina 7, however makes a more differentiated report and highlights also exit poll results as: Spoiled 45,7%, blank 16,7%, and valid 37,6%.

This is important because, if we consider Evo Morales has won elections in 2005 with a 54%, in 2009 with 64%, in a 2008 referendum with 67% and another referendum to approve the new Constitution with 62%, the defeat yesterday marks a significant event. The defeat might mean that the support for his government is dwindling.

But, why would that be? There are many people who attribute this result to two things. The first thing points us to the most recent conflict between indigenous groups against the construction of a highway though what they consider a protected by law and their territory. This conflict is know as the TIPNIS conflict. The most recent and most relevant event was a September 25, 2011, police repression against the march of these indigenous groups to La Paz to protest against the plans of the government. There were even some casualties. The second problem conducing to this result is the disbelief that elected judges are a better form of justice. The argument is, while they might have legitimacy because they are elected directly, the politization of the justice is a serious concern. In particular, it is widely believed now that Morales is trying to consolidate its control of the state and power by positioning people close to his party into high judicial posts. An additional, more subtil, motive is the highly questionable manner in which the government finances this elections. For example, Erbol reported that several people who work on ministries and other governmental agencies and companies are obligated to give a "voluntary" contribution for those puroposes. That is, in one ministry it is said people are ordered to give 500 bolivianos (bs). In other ministry, there is a scale where people contribute with 100 bs., 350 bs., to 600 bs., and the higher officials with 10% of their salary, which can be around 1300 bs. Read here. In addition, they are obligated to attend marches in support of the government. Some people are even transported accross departments. Read here and here. So much for voluntary support!

As for the elections, it was reported that there were various irregularities but nothing serious. Some problems were that some candidates were still campaigning, even though they were prohibited from doing so. There were even reports that some brochures were inserted in the bibles in some churches.

In the lighter side of the event, there was a campaign (to which I pointed in a previous post) to show how to spoil the vore. People were very creative. Here are some links: La Razon,

The Judicial Elections in Bolivia and the Spoil Vote Campaign

2011-10-07T17:37:00.000+02:00

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Here is a post, for a change, after a long time (talking about understatements, but that is another story).

As you know, in Bolivia there will be a new round of elections on October 16. This time voters will elect judges for four judicial entities. These entities were created as well as adopted in the newest version of the Bolivian Constitution of 2009. The entities are The Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Magistrate Council (a control institution) and the Agro-Environment Court. If you visit the newly refurbished website of the electoral organism, renamed Organo Electoral Plurinacional or Plurinational Electoral Organ, you can get all this information and more.Of course, you can also like the Facebook page of the elections. That way you can get updated more often.

The reason for my post is to call attention to a not so often seen development in Bolivian elections. Some people in the oposition (and please do not qutomatically equate oposition with Santa Cruz or the media luna), by this I mean people who are opposed to these elections, have engaged in the promotion of the spoiled vote as a form of a protest vote. A good example is this document which spells out how exactly one is to spoil the vote in order to protest against this kind of elections.

Cheers!

Updates: As I find info I post it here.

Here is a critical text.

On the Gasolinazo!

2011-01-13T10:20:00.005+01:00

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Pukara is a magazine that is published once a month (in paper) and also electronically. This time they've published a special issue on the Gasolinazo, that I think is worth a read.

Here is the link.

Gasolinazo y Tarifazo!

2010-12-30T18:11:00.002+01:00

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What seemed to be the beginning of the end for the Mesa presidency, the removal of fuel subsidies in December 31, 2004, could turn into the beginning of the end of the Morales era?

This FB album shows what is going on in the ground.

The First Serious Test for Morales?

2010-08-13T11:17:00.005+02:00

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Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, has had a relatively peaceful first term in office (2006 - 2010). Eight months into his second term, which for him is just his first term because of the new constitution, he has his first serious challenge in his hands. Civic organizations in the department of Potosi are into their 16th day of hunger strike, street blockades and general strike. These actions have stranded many international tourists, to the point that some had to be taken out due to health reasons, and the citizens are starting to suffer shortages of food.

The Comité Civico Potosinista (Comcipo - Potosi Civic Committee), an umbrella organization comprising of 28 other organizations and six provinces in Potosi, has been leading the actions. These organization are demanding the government meet their demands for:

- a satisfactory solution to the border problem between Oruro and Potosi. Both dispute a piece of territory named Coroma (northern Potosi).
- the construction of a cement factory in Coroma.
- the construction of an international airport.
- the opening of Karachipampa plant.
- the preservation of the Cerro Rico de Potosi.
- the construction of roads.

The strikes are into their 16th day and, according to the Comcipo, there are no plans to give up. In fact, the discussions are shifting towards taking even more radical actions, such as taking over public offices or buildings, marching to La Paz and other undefined by the leaders.

The government has been challenged to negotiations in Potosi. It has responded by demanding the measures be stopped before any negotiation can take place. For its part, the Comcipo relaxed its demands by asking Evo Morales to the table in Sucre. The Comcipo considers Morales the only person whom they can talk because they elected him. In the process there has been several attempts to create a negotiating table by some ministers, but without success.

The problem for the government can become even larger due to the unwillingness of Evo Morales to sit and negotiate. Also, the longer it takes for the two parties to sit and talk, the worst the conditions will get in Potosi and the support for Morales will dwindle even more. Another problem for Morales is that the once pillar of MAS, the mining workers, are involved in this problem supporting the Comcipo. The Cooperativistas or independent miners, who have been critical of the government, are already criticizing the government again. The mine workers of companies operating in Potosi have also hinted their disapproval at Morales' unwillingness to talk directly with the Comcipo representatives. This situation could turn even more problematic for the government because some miners are asking the nationalization of some private mines. For example, the miners in San Cristobal, a mine operated by the Japanese Sumitomo, have asked the government for the nationalization of this company.

So the question remains, will the Morales government be able to deflate this latest conflict with the Potosi region? or will new extreme situations arise?

Municipal and Departmental Election Preliminary Results

2010-04-05T10:42:00.005+02:00

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These are the preliminary results, based on exit polls and estimates, of yesterday's (April 4) municipal and departmental (+ autonomy) elections in Bolivia. You can find this information in 24 Hours, and much more. It goes without saying, these results are not yet official. Official results will be published by the electoral court on April 24.

First of all, just to remind us, in these elections Bolivians voted to elect departmental and municipal governments, including heads of governments and legislatures. In the case of departments, a governor and a departmental council were elected. In municipalities, a mayor and a municipal council were elected. All in all, around 2511 officials were elected in 9 departments and 337 municipalities as well as indigenous territories.

After the overwhelming win of Evo Morales and his party, MAS, in last december (2009) elections, when they gained the control of the executive and the legislative branches of government, these elections were about the consolidation of power for the governing party.

As you can already perceive from the graphs above, the government is pretty sure to have gained the control of at least 5 departmental governments in La Paz, Oruro, Potosi, Cochabamba, and Sucre. Meanwhile, the opposition is pretty sure to have gained Santa Cruz, Tarija and Beni. As I write this post, Pando is in a tie, thus no one knows if it will join the opposition or the government sides. However, there are two things to observe. First, the MAS wins are pretty comfortable. In La Paz, the MAS incumbent might have won with at least 20 to 25 per centage points of advantage. Similarly, in Cochabamba and Oruro, the advantage for MAS was 30 plus or minus percentage points. In Potosi the advantage borders 45 percentage points. Second, and contrasting the aforementioned, if we observe the wins of the opposition, we conclude these are not so solid. In Tarija and Beni, for example, the opposition incumbent's advantages lie between 5 and 9 percentage points. The only clear win (absolute majority) and thus avoiding a second round of elections is that of Ruben Costas in Santa Cruz with around 15 percentage points.

At the municipal level, the picture is somewhat sobering for MAS and Evo Morales. It is predicted that 7 out of the 10 largest cities in the country went for the opposition. These cities are significant in political terms. Worth mentioning is the win of Movimiento Sin Miedo (MSM) in MAS territories such as the cities of La Paz and Oruro, of PAIS in Sucre and AS in Potosi. These results are being handled as the surprises of the elections. No surprise were the wins of the opposition in the cities of Santa Cruz, Tarija and Trinidad.

What does this all mean?

In my opinion it means the confirmation of the status quo with a small, yet significant defeat for MAS at the municipal level. The prospect that MAS might be controlling 6 out of the 9 departmental governments means that, at this level of government, Evo Morales and his national government have indeed significantly weakened (if not destroyed) the media luna. The opposition, which once included Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Sucre, has now been reduced to Santa Cruz, Tarija and Pando. Very significant loses for the opposition, especially of Beni. This was the case during Evo Morales' first term and this will be the case for his next term.

If the above municipal level results are any indication for the final results, MAS will suffer a modest defeat in these elections. What is significant, is the defeat of MAS candidates in La Paz and Oruro. These results show that, the perceived unity of MAS at the national level is confronted with reality of local politics and local interests at the local level. It might also be the result of the strategies MAS has pursued to win in municipalities. In La Paz, for example, MAS opted to break a long-standing partnership with MSM.

In addition, at the national level, these results will mean that Evo Morales and his government will have to engage in negotiation with the opposition more often that they would like. The opposition, while weakened, is still present and now stronger due to the autonomic process. The most immediate test of the new balance of power in Bolivia will be the coming law for autonomy and decentralization. There, the government and the opposition will have to negotiate several things. One, the negotiations will touch on the competencies attributed to the departments. Here it will get complicated because not only the national government and the departmental governments have to be involved but also the municipal governments. Two, another complicated topic is the sources for financing the process. Where will the money come from? That is the big question that has to be negotiated. Three, in some cases such as the indigenous and regional autonomies, the national territory will have to be changed. Inevitably, I see some disputes on internal boundaries coming.

Who's got the power now?

The question is, has MAS consolidated its power in Bolivia? My answer is, not as it would have to. On the one side, MAS has control of the national level of government and perhaps some control over the departmental level of government. At the municipal level, at this point, it is hard to tell. The official results are not out yet.

The problem for MAS is the autonomy process. With gained autonomy from the part of departments and municipalities, the national government has less influence in the internal affairs of each political-administrative unit. Unless, of course, the autonomy remains in paper and reality is different.

Elections in Bolivia, again!

2010-04-03T16:06:00.002+02:00

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For those of you who are interested on following the elections in Bolivia tomorrow live, April 4, I suggest the following links. It turns out there is a lively and busy community in Bolivia with big plans on contributing to the development of an e-democracy. Especially when transparency is the topic. These groups of people are well organized and techno savy and well prepared to bring transparency to tomorrow's elections. Please, give them a visit or follow them on FB and Twitter!

http://elecciones2.0bolivia.com/

http://www.gobernabilidad.org.bo/

http://www.eabolivia.com/elecciones-municipales-y-departamentales-bolivia-2010.html

Of course, you can visit the media where you can get the first estimate results. For that visit La Razon, El Diario, El Deber, Los Tiempos, but especially visit tv channels such as ATB, Univision, or La Patria Nueva. The links are on the side bar.

Andean Symbolism and Politics

2010-03-07T22:56:00.003+01:00

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This is an iteresting article that shows us a bit of the view some radical indigenist groups think about the role Evo Morales has in the indigenist ideology and his use of that ideology for political purposes. Just click on the image to see a larger version.

Bolivia's New State: Aparent vs. Integral

2010-01-24T20:30:00.005+01:00

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Re-elected Vice president Alvaro Garcia gave a speech as he was being appointed for the second time on January 22, 2010. In this speech, which was more of an academic lecture than a political statement, he laid out his "vision" of the new Bolivian state being created.

He distinguished between two kinds of states: Estado Aparente (Apparent State) and Estado Integral (Integral State). He borrowed the concepts from thinkers such as Rene Zavaleta (Bolivian political scientist, politician and philosopher) and Antonio Gramsci (Italian philosopher and politician).

Garcia said that in the apparent state, which was the one in place until 2005, the Bolivian society and the country's territory, in their entirety, were not integrated into the state. Instead, only some parts of that society were represented, while some parts of the territory were not taken into account. Furthermore, the apparent state did not incorporate culture and neither the different forms of sociopolitical organization present in the country. Garcia then argued that the apparent state was a liberal, republican, democratic and dictatorial state, which centralized its resources, engaged in partimonialism and was subordinated to external powers.

On the other hand, Garcia defined the integral state as one in which there is correspondence among citizens, civil society and the state representatives. In essence, it unites all society groups under a moral, intellectual, and political leadership. This state, rests on several pillars. First, economic sovereignty based on the pivotal role of the state. Second, this state recognizes the equality of rights of the indigenous as well as the mestizo groups. Third, the integral state is present in the entire territory. Fourth, it relies on a community based and plural economy where small, medium and large production takes place, and the state is the engine.

As you can see, Garcia's speech reveals many of his Marxist tendencies. That makes me think about what Felix Patzi has been saying about the MAS government. Patzi, an indigenous intellectual, has been arguing that the traditional left (including communists, socialist, marxists, Leninist, etc.) has hijacked the MAS and has surrounded Evo Morales in the government. Patzi argued that the new Bolivia is nothing that the indigenous movements wanted when they started the process to take over power. The indigenous movements seek an indigenous version of a state. Perhaps, one based on the ancient cultures of the Incas or Aymaras. By any means, they sought to implement socialism, Marxism, communism or any other ism that came from what they call the western world.

So, is Patzi right? Has Evo Morales lost his compass? Is he being used by the traditional left?

The New Government

2010-01-23T22:04:00.006+01:00

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This is the new cabinet that will be working with Morales.
Source: Erbol and Cambio

Relaciones Exteriores: David Choquehuanca Céspedes
Ministerio de la Presidencia: Oscar Coca Antezana
Ministerio de Gobierno: Sacha Llorenti Sóliz
Ministerio de Defensa: Rubén Saavedra Soto
Ministerio de Defensa Legal del Estado: Elizabeth Arismendi Chumacero
Planificación del Desarrollo: Elva Caro Hinojosa
Economía y Finanzas Públicas: Luís Arce Catacora
Hidrocarburos y Energía: Luís Fernando Vincenti Vargas
Desarrollo Productivo y Economía Plural: Antonia Rodríguez Medrano
Obras Públicas, Servicios y Vivienda: Walter Delgadillo Terceros
Minería y Metalurgia: Milton Gómez Mamani
Ministry of Justicia: Nilda Copa Condori
Trabajo, Empleo y Previsión Social: Carmen Trujillo Cárdenas
Ministerio de Salud y Deportes: Sonia Polo Andrade
Medio Ambiente y Aguas: María Udaeta Velásquez
Ministerio de Educación: Roberto Aguilar Gómez
Desarrollo Rural y Tierras: Nemesia Chacollo Tola
Ministerio de Autonomías: Carlos Romero Bonifaz
Ministerio de Transparencia Institucional y Lucha Contra la Corrupción: Nardy Suxo Iturri
Ministerio de Culturas: Zulma Yugar Párraga.

They were appointed through Presidential Decree (Decreto Presidencial) Nr. 0407/10.

Images of Morales' Inauguration Ceremony

2010-01-22T20:28:00.003+01:00

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Here are some images from ABI of Morales' Possession as the spiritual leader of the country.

Click on the images to see them in greater detail.

The First Actions of the New Plurinational Legislative Assembly

2009-12-09T16:34:00.003+01:00

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The government and the new Plurinational Legislative Assembly, henceforth, assembly, will need to pass a number of laws in the next weeks. The first five, which by constitutional mandate have to be approved within 180 days from the first day of the assembly, are as follows:

1. The law of the Plurinational Electoral Organ (OEP, in Spanish)
2. The electoral law (probably the current transitory law will do)
3. The law of the Judicial Organ
4. The law of the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal
5. The framework law for autonomies and decentralization

These laws have priority because they will be needed for the next steps, namely the upcoming April municipal and prefectural elections and the constitutional check of the autonomic statutes.

Other laws voted in the assembly will be: the universal health coverage insurance law, the education law (Abelino Sinani), and the anticorruption law (Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz).

Source: La Razon

The Day After the Election: Bolivia

2009-12-07T11:32:00.005+01:00

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According to most press reports based on exit polls, Evo Morales has achieved his objective to sweep the general elections by winning with a large margin (62.5%) and gain control of the Legislative branch with 24 Senators (could be 26 due to a very close race for one seat in Chuquisaca and another in Beni) and 84 seats in the lower chamber (two seats shor of the 2/3 majority, 86). In total, the Plurinational Legislative Assembly is made of 166 seats (36 + 130) and super majority will be reached with 111 members, of which MAS has 108 total. Of course, results are not official, and so we must be patient and wait for the official confirmation of the results by the electoral agency. However, the official results are not expected to vary much from the preliminary results (see graph in La Razon).

At the same time, the five departments that rejected autonomy in July 2, 2006 have decided to hop on the autonomic train. The departments of La Paz, Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Oruro and Potosi have overwhelmingly voted to become autonomic departments. In addition, one region, the Gran Chaco province (Southern Bolivia, bordering Argentina and Paraguay) as well as 11 municipalities that decided to become indigenous autonomic regions have also voted for autonomy. These are: Huacaya,Tarabuco and Villa Mojocoya in Chuquisaca; Charazani in La Paz; Chipaya, San Pedro de Totora, Pampa Aullagas, Salinas de Garci Mendoza and Curahuara de Carangas in Oruro; Chayanta in Potosí and Charagua in Santa Cruz.

In order to keep on track, the government has to rush in the coming years through the approval of around 100 pieces of legislation in total. The first order of business for the new government and assembly is to approve the Ley Marco de Autonomias (which frames the implementation of autonomies) and issue another call for the April 4, 2010 prefectural and municipal elections.

The full extent of Morales' power will become clear with these elections. The MAS' primary objective is to capture as many departments and municipalities as possible. Higher objectives are the prefectures of Beni, Pando and Santa Cruz and their respective municipalities.

Other laws that will be worked on are:
Laws to reform the structure of the Judicial branch and to assure the compatibility of ordinary and communal justice. Another law will bring changes on the National Electoral Court.

Preliminary Results: Exit Polls Give Morales Another Historic Win

2009-12-06T23:34:00.007+01:00

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Update:

Numbers from UNITEL after 66 per cent counted.

Morales 62, Manfred 26 and Samuel 7.

---------------------
According to reports from Erbol (exit polls), Evo Morales and MAS have won the general elections 2009 with 63 per cent of the vote. The closer runner up is Plan Progreso para Bolivia (PPB) from Manfred Reyes got 24 per cent and in third place is Samuel Doria from Unidad Nacional (UN) with a 7.7 per cent of the vote.

Results at the departmental level, which are important for the distribution of legislative seats, are: in La Paz MAS got 81.1%, in Chuquisaca 43.3%, in Cochabamba 65.9%, in Santa Cruz 43.5%, Potosí 69.4%, in Oruro 74.3%, Beni 36% and Pando 47%.

More detailed results: Erbol

MAS is tending to gain 25 seats in the Senate. That means that MAS would have 2/3 majority and with that TOTAL control of the legislative. Including the power to change the new constitution. Changes like making it possible for Morales to run for president for additional terms!

Some analysts counter that not all is said, only when the municipal and departmental elections are carried out, the political future of Bolivia will be finished. In my opinion, Morales does not need to wait (and I would argue he will not do) until these elections are over. My counter argument would be that the constitution can be changed as we have seen recently.

Live and Streaming Coverage of the Bolivian Elections

2009-12-06T15:02:00.002+01:00

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It's as if the last ten years have brought a revolution in the coverage of Bolivia online. When I started blogging, back in 2003, there was only a hand full of people covering Bolivian developments. In fact, that is one reason why I started blogging. Today, I am impressed on the kind of coverage there is of the Bolivian elections. The protagonists are Facebook, Twitter, the web 2.0 and tv feeds.

For example, if you go to Twitter, you can make a couple of searches to find yourself in the lines, at the doors of precincts, and so on. A brief and broad search for Bolivia will take pretty far, but if you want only election coverage then you have to use hash tags such as #elecciones, #bolivianelections, and #6dbol. The last being the most informative, though they are connected. At present time, there are two websites (the so called web 2.0) covering the elections. The first is part of the effort many active citizens, and might I add, young, have created: http://elecciones2.0bolivia.com/. This site, also has a feed of twitts and commentary on Facebook. The other one is www.bolivianosglobales.com. This las site covers what is going on outside Bolivia, in those cities where expat Bolivians are voting (cities such as Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC., etc.).

If you choose Facebook as your source, you will find many of the already mentioned initiatives as well as other interested Bolivian citizens following the developments. In addition, you can find many of the media outlets such as La Razon, El Deber, Bolivia Hoy, and other interested groups.

On the main stream media side, as I said before, you find many of them in Facebook and Twitter, as well as some places such as Justin.tv. The PAT tv network is streaming live its national and international coverage of the process. Also, you can find, of course, the many newspaper websites, which are updated several times a day. But this updates are slower, of course than the Internet. Another source of information, which has been a source for quite some time are the live feeds of radios. You can visit radios such as Fides, Erbol, Illimani, El Deber has a radio as well, etc.

So as you can see, there is plenty of coverage on Bolivia, in Spanish. The coverage in the international arena is pretty much limited to the main stream media, such as BBC, AP reports, CNN International (very little), AFN, etc., and some blogs such as the one you are reading. There is one blog I recommend visiting, and that is Pronto*, which is written by a friend of mine. I recommend it because it is very informative.

PS. For most of the links, please see the side bar in this blog. Thank you.

Election Day in Bolivia

2009-11-29T19:31:00.006+01:00

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Tomorrow, December 6, 2009, Bolivia will, once again, go to the ballot boxes to vote for a new government. They will have to vote for a new President, Vicepresident, and members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (upper and lower legislative chambers).

It's pretty much no secret that Evo Morales will win the election. He has been leading opinion polls all along. I have collected polls from recent months to show the trends. The graphs below present the intention vote conducted by two companies, Ipsos, Apoyo, Opinion y Mercado and Equipos Mori. These polls have been published in Angus Reid's website.

The above graphs clearly present two things. First, the upward trend of Morales' support. He has never really been in any significant trouble, rather in a comfortable lead (about 20 percentage points, at least). Second, and most important, the graphs show the gap between Morales and the closest candidate. This last point is important because, according to the law, the elections will not go into a second round if either of the following conditions is true: The winner (Morales) wins with more than 50% of the vote; or if the winner does not reach relative majority (Bolivians call this absolute majority), he will have to win with at least 40% of the vote and have 10 percentage points lead to the second runner up. As you can see, Morales will achieve both, if the numbers above are any indication.

The last graph shows Morales' approval trend. He was in a bit of trouble in the beginning of 2009. He even reached the 40s, but recovered on time.

What really is at play tomorrow is the control of the new Plurinational Legislative Assembly. MAS has had control of the lower chamber and is pretty much sure it will gain control of it again. The most important task of the campaign was to assure, as much as possible, the control of the Senate. This was the highest priority for MAS and Morales. Without the control of the Senate, it will be politics as usual for the government. If MAS gets to control the Senate, it will be a significant step to consolidate its power. The Senate will have 36 members, 4 for each department. They will be elected following proportional representation, taking the results in each department. The key is for MAS to gain as many seats in the Senate to get a majority, that is, at least 19 Senators.

But, and this is a very weak but, if voters decide to make use of what Bolivians are calling the "crossed vote", things might get a little tricky for Evo. The crossed vote is one of the possibilities voters have at the time of voting. The ballot is divided in two areas, an upper and a lower area. The upper area lists the Presidential and Vicepresidential candidates and includes the candidate lists of the corresponding party. The lower area will present the single district candidate (uninominal, in Bolivian jargon) of each of the 70 districts in the territory. Now, each voter has two votes, one in the upper area where he or she will vote for the President and Vicepresident and for the party. The second vote is in the lower area and is for the particular representative in each district. So, people, have basically several options: either make two crosses (one up and one down) for the President, his Vice and the party as well as for the individual district representative. Alternatively, and this is what I meant with crossed vote, the voter could vote for President Morales and his party MAS on the upper area and for the lower area he or she could say, ok, I want to balance power and I don't want Morales to be almighty, so therefore I will vote for a district representative that is not from MAS. That would be the worst nighmare for Morales, because for certain it will prevent him from gaining control of the legislative.

Tomorrow will be a very busy day for people covering the election. Below I want to post some links where those who are interested on Bolivian politics can follow the events. One thing, some links are in Spanish, no way around that.

Press:

La Razon, El Diario, La Prensa, Los Tiempos, El Deber

Web 2.0:

Letras Alteñas, El Alto Blogs Bolivia, EABOLIVIA, Bolivia al Minuto

And of course in Twitter and Facebook:

El Deber, Pronto, HoyBolivia, La Razon

Please let us know of other links if you know of any, thanks...

Polls!

2009-11-17T17:42:00.003+01:00

MABB © ®

Update:

Another poll from Angus Reid.

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

	Nov. 8	Sept. 28
Evo Morales	52%	47%
Manfred Reyes Villa	18%	16%
Samuel Doria Medina	9%	8%
Other candidates	4%	4%
Undecided / Blank vote	17%	25%

Source: Equipos MORI
Methodology: Interviews with 1,007 Bolivian adults, conducted Oct. 31 to Nov. 8, 2009. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Data in Angus Reid.

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

	Oct. 2009	Sept. 2009
Evo Morales	52%	54%
Manfred Reyes Villa	21%	20%
Samuel Doria Medina	13%	11%
René Joaquino	3%	3%
Alejo Véliz	--	1%
Other / Blank ballot	11%	11%

Source: Ipsos, Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado / La Razón
Methodology: Interviews with 2,205 Bolivian adults, conducted Oct. 10 to Oct. 20, 2009. Margin of error is 2.45 per cent.

Data in Angus Reid.

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

Evo Morales	52%
Manfred Reyes Villa	22%
Samuel Doria Medina	10%
René Joaquino	3%
Other / Blank ballot	13%

Source: Track / Unitel
Methodology: Interviews with 1,598 Bolivian adults, conducted Oct. 29 to Nov. 6, 2009. Margin of error is 2.4 per cent.

Oil and Gas Report 4Q

2009-10-20T11:58:00.002+02:00

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The research analysis website research and markets has published a report on Bolivia's Oil and Gas situation to the fourth quarter 2009. Of course, the entire report costs over €400, but one can take a glimpse on this website.

The report concludes: "Bolivia now shares seventh place with Ecuador in BMI’s Upstream Business Environment rating, four points behind Argentina but well ahead of Mexico. Its proven gas resources and gas reserves-toproduction ratio (RPR) work in the country’s favour, but are undermined by the state’s renewed control of assets, deteriorating licensing regime and generally unappealing risk environment. The country is at the foot of the league table in BMI’s updated Downstream Business Environment rating, reflecting its statecontrolled refining and marketing segment, modest capacity and less competitive environment, offset by a relatively low level of retail site intensity and the country’s gas self-sufficiency. Ecuador is immediately ahead of Bolivia in the regional rankings, but a wide gap exists between the two that is unlikely to be bridged by Bolivia at any point in the near future. "

New Poll Forecasting Morales' Win

2009-10-20T11:55:00.002+02:00

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Angus Reid published a new poll forecasting Morales' win in the next elections. He leads with extreme comfort. One caveat only, the undecided reach 25%.

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

Evo Morales	47%
Manfred Reyes Villa	16%
Samuel Doria Medina	8%
Other candidates	4%
Undecided	25%

Source: Equipos MORI
Methodology: Interviews with 811 Bolivian adults, conducted Sept. 28 to Sept. 28, 2009. Margin of error is 3.3 per cent.

Elections 2009

2009-10-17T14:08:00.006+02:00

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The electoral process is advancing in Bolivia. It seems that Bolivians have gotten the hand of it and can carry out, in amazing speed, all kinds of elections. As you may know, on December 6 this year, Bolivians will, once again, go to the ballot boxes to cast votes on general elections to elect a new President, Vicepresident, Senators, and Deputies (Uninomial, Plurinominal and Indigenous Special Districts) for the now denominated: Plurinational Assembly.

The electoral court has just finished registering voters using a biometric system. There are, for this year, 4,997,172 registered voters. The distribution per department and country of immigration is the following:

REGISTRO POR DEPARTAMENTO

La Paz 1.468.569
Santa Cruz 1.159.343
Cochabamba 874.833
Potosí 343.016
Oruro 256.576
Tarija 255.300
Chuquisaca 254.727
Beni 180.481
Pando 33.824

REGISTRO POR PAÍS

Argentina 90.431
España 50.523
Brasil 18.618
Estados Unidos 10.931

For more see source: HoyBolivia.

As you may imagine, the electoral agency is very happy about this result. However, the process is not over yet. There are two dates to take into account. The first one is October 17, which is the deadline for candidates have to present a series of documentation to be accredited as official candidates. These people, those who do not meet the requirements, will not be included in the official lists and will not be able to be replaced either. However, they may be replaced by other people who do have their documents in order and are able to present them, at least 72 hours before the elections. The second date to take into account is November 2. Until that day, the electoral court will review the voter registry and will exclude or purge any irregular voter. That is know as depuracion in Bolivia.

The second date will present problems after the elections. That is tradition in Bolivia. The first date is already presenting trouble. According to El Diario (image source), 250 candidates across the board resigned to their candidacies.

This is supposedly making trouble even for MAS. But, the smaller parties are the ones suffering the most. MUSPA finds itself in a deep crisis. GENTE, for its part is struggling to stay on the race. Roman Loayza, former MAS leader and founder, wants to run for president with this party.

This, however, should soon come to an end. Better said, today at 0 hours the deadline will fall and all candidates should be official.

The Democratic Development Index: Bolivia

2009-10-13T16:17:00.004+02:00

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The Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Polilat.com have developed an index measuring the development of democracy in Latin America. The index, Democratic Development Index (DDI), measures that process in light of four dimensions: Basic conditions of democracy, respect for political rights and civil liberties, institutional quality and politic efficiency, exercise of the effective power to be able to govern (this last dimension is divided into two sub dimensions: capacity to generate well being policies and capacity to generate economic efficiency policies). The authors have published the results in the form of reports, which have been published since 2002.

The 2009 report finds Bolivia in last place, out of 18 Latin America countries. The explanation points to the relative better performance of other countries and the, again, relative worst performance in the institutional quality and political efficiency as well as in the capacity to generate social well being.

This report is a blow to the Bolivian government which has been wanting to portray that Bolivia is doing generally better than before (pre Morales), in democratic terms as well.

In comparison to other countries, the fact that Bolivia is doing worst than countries such as Venezuela, Honduras, and Guatemala, gives me something to think about. Taken with a bit of criticism, it might be in the way these authors measure the distinct dimensions. For one, it cannot be, the more I ponder, that Honduras scores better than Bolivia in the institutional quality and political efficiency dimension.

Just to put some more perspective, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Index of Democracy, finds Bolivia, worldwide, in 75th place as a flawed democracy for 2008. That is ahead of Nicaragua (78), Guatemala (79), Ecuador (88) and Venezuela (95). Honduras was placed 74 at the time. While Freedom House places Bolivia in the company of Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, as partly free countries. Another index, the Bartelsmann Transformation Index, ranks Bolivia below Nicaragua and Honduras, but above Guatemala, Ecuador and Venezuela.

So, what is the conclusion from all this? The conclusion is that it is very difficult to measure democracy. Who knows where Bolivia is on the average. The questions remain: is it a more democratic country? is democracy taking hold?

For what its worth, it is nice to see another index join the ranks, so to speak!

Popularity Polls

2009-10-10T16:34:00.001+02:00

MABB © ®

Angus Reid's latest polls...

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

Evo Morales	54%
Manfred Reyes Villa	20%
Samuel Doria Medina	11%
René Joaquino	3%
Alejo Véliz	1%
Other / Blank ballot	11%

Source: Ipsos, Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado / La Razón
Methodology: Interviews with 1,608 Bolivian adults, conducted Sept. 2 to Sept. 20, 2009. Margin of error is 2.45 per cent.

Angus Reid Reports on Evo's Popularity

2009-10-05T13:52:00.002+02:00

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Angus Reid published new numbers on Evo's popularity.

It looks like Evo is doing something right, or the opposition is doing everything wrong!

Polling Data

Do you approve or disapprove of Evo Morales’s performance as president?

	Sept. 2009	Jul. 2009	Apr. 2009
Approve	60%	57%	53%
Disapprove	36%	39%	43%

Source: Ipsos, Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado / La Razón
Methodology: Interviews with 1,024 Bolivian adults in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, conducted from Sept. 10 to Sept. 18, 2009. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

The Candidates Are Official

2009-09-08T18:33:00.005+02:00

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This is the list of candidates who will run for the Bolivian Presidency and Vicepresidency. Now, all can happen is that one of duos is disqualified for any reason.

The source article is to be found here.

Here is the whole list of candidates, as of September 8, 2009. This list could change if one of the candidates does not meet the requirements of the electoral court. For example, if he or she did not register to vote, or if he or she figures in another list, etc.

Here is a list for La Paz candidates.

Pre-Electoral Landscape

2009-09-06T18:04:00.004+02:00

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As we get closer to the December 6 general elections, the Bolivian pre-electoral landscape is sorting itself out and candidacies seem to be emerging. The main reason is the upcoming deadline (September 7) to register political alliances. In addition, the candidate lists for president, vicepresident and members of congress (plurinationals) have to be presented as well.

As many readers surely have already seen in the Bolivian press, the negotiations among opposition leaders have been, the past weeks, nothing short of frantic. The Frente Amplio (Ample Front) could not be realized in spite of all the meetings and negotiations among opposition leaders. According to many reports, regional politics have played a major roll in these negotiations. Not only among the various regions such as La Paz, Cochabamba, Tarija and Santa Cruz (to mention some) but also within the regions themselves. Different groups have been trying to gain political relevance in light of the lack in leadership in the opposition.

In particular, dissent and lack of compromise have proven damaging to articulate an opposition front able to dispute the country's leadership in the next elections. From the many meetings and negotiations covered by the press, it has become clear that the opposition is plagued by too many leaders who don't seem to want to give up political aspirations. In the last two weeks Samuel Doria Medina (UN), Victor Hugo Cardenas (Gente), German Antelo (MNR), Manfred Reyes Villa (NFR), Rene Joaquino (AS), Alejo Veliz and Roman Loayza (the last two former MAS leaders) have declared themselves candidates. In La Paz, the discrepancies have been the strongest. To the dispute about who will make a good candidate, Cardenas has been confronted with political analyst and journalist Jimena Costa. The latter was suggested by one of the major paceno political forces, Plan Progeso's Jose Luis Paredes. It became later clear that the disagreement was concentrated on the making of the members of congress plurinational lists. The opposition's opium has been access to power.

However, within the las three days, Manfred Reyes Villa has been able to capitalize on one politically advantageous move, i.e. the nomination of former Pando Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez as his running mate. Fernandez has been in jail accused, by the government, for masterminding the Porvenir killings. The move is politically shrewd because many Bolivians think that Fernandez has been unjustly jailed, not because there is prof of his innocence, but because of the way the government has acted in his case. He was basically kidnapped and jailed before he was judged guilty. The Reyes Villa-Fernandez duo has attracted much support. Some of the groups already in camp are: Jose Luis Paredes, German Antelo, Mario Cossio, Sabina Cuellar, maybe even Rene Joaquino. The alliance name will be Plan Progreso para Bolivia - Convergencia Nacional (PPB-CN).

Other two candidacies are in the game as opposition. First, with the UN, Samuel Doria Medina and Gabriel Halbing Arauz (former union leader in Santa Cruz), with support of Oscar Ortiz, the Senate President. The other is AS with Rene Joaquino and Carlos Suarez (former evangelical priest). The government is currently in a comfortable position due to its poll showings in the upper 40s. Morales is in the middle of his campaign and the implementation of his electoral strategy to get the super majority in both chambers of congress.

Lastly, nothing is set on stone yet. The pieces could be reordered still as two more important dates are coming. The first one (October 17) is the deadline for the parties to present all the requirements confirming the candidates fulfill, again, all the requirements. The second date is November 21, which is the last day anyone can file an appeal to invalidate the accreditation of a candidate. After this last date, there won't be going back.

Bolivian Urbanites Will Vote for Morales?

2009-09-04T13:49:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

Another poll attempting to measure the level of support for Morales (Angus Reid). Strong support for Morales!

Polling Data

Which candidate would you vote for in the presidential election?

Evo Morales	57.7%
Samuel Doria Medina	9.7%
Manfred Reyes Villa	8.6%
Jorge Quiroga	7.2%
Víctor Hugo Cárdenas	4.5%
René Joaquino	3.5%
Germán Antelo	1.5%
Jimena Costa	1.2%

Source: Encuestas & Estudios Gallup International
Methodology: Interviews with 3,860 Bolivian adults, conducted from Aug. 5 to Aug. 22, 2009. Margin of error is 2.27 per cent.

Morales: The Best President Since 1982

2009-08-31T13:08:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

Angus Reid published again a poll citing the popularity of Evo Morales. According to the poll, Morales is the best Bolivian president since democracy returned to the country. The poll asks Bolivians who they think has been the best president since 1982. Not surprisingly, the result is 41% of the people think Evo Morales is the best president. Is not surprising because around 60% of the population identify themselves as indigenous (2001 census), and if Morales' strongest appeal is being of indigenous descent, the poll is right on. Well, very close, at least.

In addition, this poll represents mostly an urban opinion. If the pollsters would think of going to the country side, I think the percentage would rise a bit more.

Who do you think has been the best president since the return of democracy on October 10, 1982?

Evo Morales	41%
Víctor Paz	24%
Carlos Mesa	5%
Hugo Banzer	5%
Jaime Paz	5%
Jorge Quiroga	3%
Eduardo Rodríguez	2%
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada	0%

Source: Equipos MORI / Poder y Placer
Methodology: Interviews with 2,100 Bolivian adults in Cochabamba, El Alto, La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Tarija, conducted in July 2009. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

UNASUR Summit 2009

2009-08-29T23:02:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

The UNASUR met in Bariloche, Argentina, on August 28, 2009. The first picture presents the heads of state. The following pictures show the proceedings. The result of the meeting was a declaration of the South American region as a "region of peace". They also expressed their rejection of military forces that may threat any nation in the region.

The images are from the ABI.

Here you can find some graphics that show the various integration projects in South America. Here is the first graph and here is the second graph. Here is the source.

MAS Strategy to Win the Next General Elections

2009-08-27T22:05:00.005+02:00

MABB © ®

Until now, MAS and the Morales government have only reached part of their political goals. The historic win in 2005 has marked only the beginning. These last four years have made it clear, for Morales and his supporters in government, that it is not enough to win the Executive power. In order to make the planned changes MAS needs to control Congress and the courts.

One important step forward has been taken by passing the new constitution in early 2008. The text incorporates some, not all, of the changes desired. But, how to implement such changes when the government only controls the Executive? As stated, the last four years have shown that it would be near to impossible to do that without majority support in Congress.

Therefore, the most important task for MAS and Morales for the December elections is to win a majority in Congress. But how to do that?

As far as I can see, MAS has been preparing for this for a long time. One first step was the ID issuing program, where the government went to the people to give them IDs. A second step was to use the old voter registration list for the coming elections. However, this was not possible. Now, the government is preparing its candidate lists and is also moving voters to regions where it needs to gain votes.

The latter move is rather obvious. Good, the government wants to provide a better life for poor people by moving them to border regions and give them land. But, why now? Why can't it wait until the conditions are given? By conditions I mean housing with the necessary conditions to live. This move is very suspect, is it not?

As for the preparation of candidate lists, MAS is betting that it already has a significant number of uninominal (district) candidates in its camp. It just needs to place its people in the plurinominal lists. That way, MAS makes sure that the people who land in Congress do as the party leadership says.

This is a list of the people who will fill the MAS candidate lists:

From the government: Walker San Miguel (Ministry of Defense), Héctor Arce (Minister of Defense for the Legal Nationalization), Luis Arce Catacora (Minister of Economy and Finances), Sacha Llorenti (Viceminister of Coordination with the Social Moviement), Wilfredo Chávez (Viceminister of Governmental Coordination, Óscar Coca (Minister of Hidrocarbons), Juan Ramón Quintana (Minister of the Presidency), Ramiro Tapia (Minister of Health), Rebeca Delgado (former Viceminister of Governmental Coordination).

Social Movements Leaders: Isaac Ávalos (CSUTCB), Fidel Surco (Conalcam), Édgar Patana (COR).

Former members of the Constituent Assembly: Raúl Prada, David Herrada, Feliciano Vegamonte, Jorge Alvarado y Silvia Lazarte.

Members of Congress: René Martínez, José Pimentel, Félix Rojas, Jorge Silva y César Navarro.

These are people who have already proven themselves in the Morales government. These are the people who will fill the new Plurinational Congress and will give the government green light.

Sources: Here, here.

Morales With a Large Advantage

2009-08-24T12:10:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

The latest poll (again, only conducted in large urban areas), published by Angus Reid, shows Morales has a large advantage against his opponents.

As you can see in the below table, 43% of the people would vote for Morales. This shows that the opposition has a lot of work in front of them and that the work, done until now, has not been efficient.

Personally, I don't think there is a candidate in the opposition that could stand up against Morales in the next elections. Even Jimena Costa, who has been said to be the most promising, will not be able to drive people away from Morales' side.

I think the opposition needs someone from the rural areas, preferable a woman with a strong character who is able to answer to Morales' comments and does not represent in any way the "traditional", "neoliberal", "corrupt", "elitist", "I am better than you", "servant of the empire", "urbanite", kind of candidate image. Someone who can look at Morales straight in his face and tell him, this is what you are doing wrong, and this is what we need to do instead. He needs to be attacked on his weak sides, such as his authoritarian tendencies, and he needs to be reminded of what he said and what he is doing now.

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

Evo Morales	43%
Víctor Hugo Cárdenas	11%
Manfred Reyes Villa	10%
Samuel Doria Medina	9%
René Joaquino	4%

Links to Recent Laws Concerning Elections and Autonomies

2009-08-14T08:32:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

The following are links to the laws providing the framework for the December national elections and the autonomic referenda scheduled to happen on the same day.

This link points to the provisional electoral code (Law No. 4021) which regulates the coming elections in December. This is the point of reference for future actions concerning the electoral process and the autonomic referenda for La Paz, Potosi, Oruro, Sucre y Cochabamba (those departments that do not have autonomic statutes yet.

This link points to the Decree (Presidential Decree No. 0231) that regulates the process by which indigenous, originary and campesino municipalities become autonomic.

The last link points to the future and, as of now, suggested bill or law regulating the autonomy and decentralization process. If passed in Congress, this bill will become the reference for these two processes.

Pando Vote History

2009-08-13T23:56:00.005+02:00

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Pando's voting history. It's voted against MAS persistently. The civic leaders want now to take the government to court to stop, what they call, the government's efforts to change the voting pattern in Pando. The government has been transporting (by now around 700 men) immigrants to Pando so settle the border region to make Bolivia's borders more secure, so they say. The Pando civic leaders want to call on Article 202 of the Electoral Code to stop the government. The article says that it is illegal to massively transport citizens for electoral purposes. We'll se if Pando will come through with this new development.

Source: La Razon.

The Bolivian Opposition: There Are 12 Candidates Plus Morales

2009-08-13T22:53:00.004+02:00

MABB © ®

The opposition to Evo Morales has been unable to come up with one candidate to confront him in the next national elections coming December 6. After many meetings, conversations, dinners, and negotiations, the many political leaders could not agree on one candidate to unite the opposition. Many options were handled, there was the talk of a woman, such as the journalist Jimena Costa, or the possibility of another indigenous leader. Actually, these were seen, also by political commentators, as the only possible candidates that could run against Morales and have a chance to win. The other candidates are too identified with most of the traditional political parties which took part in government in the last periods before Morales. They were one of the reasons why Morales won.

Now, the opposition could not unite and most of the "traditional" leaders have chosen to declare themselves official candidates. Perhaps, they want to gain some more power to negotiate more gains, before they really pick a candidate. So now, there are so far, 13 candidates. The list follows:

Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia
Victor Hugo Cardenas (made it official on August 12)
Samuel Doria Medina (UN) (made it official on August 12)
Jorge Quiroga (Podemos) (made it official on August 13)
Manfred Reyes Villa (...) (will make it official on August 25)
German Antelo (MNR) (announced he is looking for a vice president on August 12)
Rene Joaquino (AS) (already in the race)
Alejo Veliz (Pueblos Unidos por la Libertad y Soberanía - Pulso) (will announce August 15)
Hugo San Martin (Alianza por el Verdadero Cambio Democrático - AVCD)
Roman Loayza
Peter Maldonado (dissident Deputy of the UN)
Ana Maria Flores (NFR Senator) (August 22 will present her list)
Juan Choque (Causa por Bolivia)

September 7 is the deadline for candidates to present their lists and formalize their candidacy. So there is still time for the opposition to pull together and pick a candidate. So far, we have to still wait for what is coming.

Source: La Razon article.

Poll Numbers

2009-08-10T11:36:00.001+02:00

MABB © ®

Here are the poll results from Angus Reid. According to AR this time, Morales is gaining support as Bolivians march ahead towards a very important elections date.

Polling Data

Do you approve or disapprove of Evo Morales’s performance as president?

	Jul. 2009	Apr. 2009	Mar. 2009
Approve	57%	53%	49%
Disapprove	39%	43%	48%

Source: Ipsos, Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado / La Razón
Methodology: Interviews with 1,044 Bolivian adults in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, conducted from Jul. 8 to Jul. 20, 2009. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Elections Poll

2009-08-05T11:45:00.005+02:00

MABB © ®

I came accross this site where a group of Bolivian university students (from UMSA, La Paz, San Simon, Cochabamba, and Gabriel Rene Moreno, Santa Cruz) is posting a survey on political popularity and the chances Morales and company have in the coming December elections.

The students are doing a remarcable job at not just surveying but also analyzing the results.

Below you can see some slides as results, but I suggest to pay them a visit to see the whole presentation.

According to the survey, Morales a 44% approval rate and a 35% disapproval rate. There is not a bit of change in approval compared to the survey published by Angus Reid GM. What is interesting to me in these results are the percentage of people not decided yet (55%) versus the already decided (38%). If I remember correctly, for the last elections, there were many more people decided who to vote for at this stage of the game.

These other two images I see as a preliminary list of candidates. Of course some names have already changed. For example, the name of the new possible opposition candidate (Jimena Costa) is not included and it doesn't take into account that Roman Loayza has just lost its party and therefore its support (Muspa).

Decree for Indigenous Autonomies

2009-08-04T12:16:00.004+02:00

MABB © ®

This is the decree that sets up the framework for the indigenous autonomy process. The government issued this decree and presented a bill proposal to be approved by Congress.

DECRETO SUPREMO PARA LAS AUTONOMÍAS INDÍGENAS
El presidente Evo Morales Ayma, en Consejo de Ministros decreta:
Artículo 1. El presente decreto supremo tiene por objeto reglamentar la disposición final tercera de la Ley 4021 (de Régimen Electoral Transitorio) del 14 de abril de 2009, estableciendo los requisitos y procedimientos para la convocatoria y realización del referendo municipal de consulta para adoptar la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina a realizarse el 6 de diciembre de 2009.

Artículo 2. Voluntad autonómica. El referendo municipal citado en el artículo precedente establecerá la voluntad de los pobladores del municipio para adoptar la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina y sólo servirá como tales una vez aprobados sus estatutos autonómicos.

Artículo 3. Derechos propietarios y territoriales. La adopción de la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina de un municipio no modifica de ninguna manera los derechos de propiedad existentes en la jurisdicción.

Artículo 4. Límites de los municipios que adoptarán la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina. Los municipios que hubiesen adoptado la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina resultantes de la aplicación del procedimiento establecido en el presente decreto supremo deberán mantener los límites territoriales reconocidos a los municipios antes de adquirir la condición de autonomía indígena.

Artículo 5. Requisitos. Los requisitos para realizar el referendo municipal de consulta sobre la adopción de condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina a realizarse el 6 de diciembre de 2009 son: 1) certificación del Ministerio de Autonomías sobre los siguientes aspectos: a) jurisdicción actual del municipio y correspondencia histórica a la territorialidad de los pueblos originarios que lo habitan; b) la existencia de estos pueblos que sean una existencia precolonial; y c) que la población indígena del municipio comparta identidad cultural, idioma, tradición histórica, territorialidad, cosmovisión y organización o instituciones jurídicas, políticas, sociales y económicas propias. El referendo (inaudible) del Concejo Municipal por dos tercios de votos.

Artículo 6. Procedimiento ante el Ministerio de Autonomías.
Parágrafo I. El Concejo Municipal, Alcalde o solicitantes del referendo, por iniciativa popular solicitarán de forma escrita al Ministerio de Autonomías la certificación descrita en el artículo precedente desde la fecha de aprobación del presente decreto hasta el día 24 de agosto de 2009 impostergablemente, adjuntando información requerida en el formulario de información especial para adquirir la condición de autonomía indígena que en anexo forma parte del presente decreto.
Parágrafo II. El Ministerio de Autonomías notificará hasta el día 4 de septiembre de 2009 a la Corte Nacional Electoral (CNE) con las resoluciones ministeriales referidas en el artículo cinco del presente decreto supremo.

Artículo 7. Procedimiento ante el Órgano Electoral.
Parágrafo I. La Corte Nacional Electoral y las cortes departamentales electorales serán los órganos competentes para la revisión de libros de apoyo al referendo municipal por iniciativa popular, en el marco de las competencias descritas en el Código Electoral y su reglamentación.
Parágrafo II. El procedimiento de verificación de libros por iniciativa popular se sustanciará y concluirá en el plazo de 15 días calendario, computables a partir de la presentación a la Corte Departamental Electoral competente.
Parágrafo III. El Concejo Municipal emitirá ordenanza municipal que de acuerdo a lo previsto en el numeral dos del artículo cinco del presente decreto.
Parágrafo IV. El gobierno municipal solicitante deberá notificar con la ordenanza municipal de convocatoria al referendo a la Corte Departamental correspondiente y a la Corte Nacional Electoral hasta el día 4 de septiembre de 2009.
Parágrafo V. La Corte Nacional Electoral publicará, de acuerdo a su cronograma, el listado de municipios en los que se llevará a cabo el referendo del 6 de diciembre de 2009.

Artículo 8. Iniciativa Popular. A los efectos de la emisión de la ordenanza municipal de la convocatoria a referendo, previamente se deberá cumplir con lo establecido en el parágrafo dos del artículo seis de la Ley 2769 del 6 de julio de 2004, del referendo.

Artículo 9. Pregunta. El referendo municipal objeto del presente decreto supremo tendrá la siguiente pregunta: ¿está usted de acuerdo con que su municipio adopte la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina de acuerdo a los alcances y preceptos establecidos en la Constitución Política del Estado?

Artículo 10. De la papeleta del referendo. En la parte superior se consignará el nombre del municipio donde se realiza el referendo, en el centro se consignará la pregunta específica y en la parte inferior las dos casillas con las opciones del sí o del no. Las demás características formales y de seguridad serán definidas por la CNE.

Artículo 11. Decisión del referendo. La decisión del referendo se adoptará por mayoría simple de votos válidos de la respectiva circunscripción y tendrá validez si participa al menos el 50% del electorado habilitado.

Artículo 12. Elección de autoridades. La elección de autoridades municipales del 4 de abril de 2010 en aquellos municipios que hayan decidido, mediante referendo, adoptar la condición de autonomía indígena originaria campesina deberá supeditarse a norma expresa emitida al efecto.

Artículo 13. Financiamiento. Se autoriza al Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas Públicas debitar de las cuentas de los municipios en los que se realizan el referendo municipal los recursos financieros necesarios para llevar a cabo el mismo en el marco de lo establecido en la Ley 2769.

Los ministros de Estado en los despachos de Economía y de Autonomía, y el presidente de la Corte Nacional Electoral quedan encargados de la ejecución y cumplimiento del presente decreto.

(Fuente: transcripción de la lectura del decreto supremo efectuada por el ministro Carlos Romero).

Source: Cambio.com

The Race to the December Elections

2009-07-10T12:23:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

The electoral court signed the contract with NEC-Argentina SA., for the implementation of the biometric vote for the coming December 6 general elections. The contract represents 21 million dollars. The CNE (Corte Nacional Electoral) wants to start registering voters by August 1. For that it needs to deliver the equipment to the 9 departmental courts by July 25. It is calculated that around 10,000 people will work to register all voters at the national level. The government liberated the CNE of 44 million dollars of import taxes to bring the equipment to Bolivia.

What a race!

Sources: La Razon, CNE.

Popularity Polls from Angus Reid

2009-07-10T11:43:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

This is the new poll conducted by Bolivian pollster firm, Apoyo, Opinion y Mercado, for many, among them Angus Reid Global Monitor. BTW, ARGM are a good source to track polls in Bolivia, I think, for the last few years.

Polling Data

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?

	Jun. 2009	Apr. 2009
Evo Morales	44%	41%
Víctor Hugo Cárdenas	8%	7%
Samuel Doria Medina	7%	n.a.
Rubén Costas	6%	5%
Jorge Quiroga	5%	6%
Manfred Reyes Villa	5%	n.a.
Carlos Mesa	n.a.	7%
Other / Undecided	25%	34%

Source: Ipsos, Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado / ATB
Methodology: Interviews with 2,177 Bolivian adults in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, conducted from Jun. 5 to Jun. 12, 2009. Margin of error is 2.1 per cent.

Though the numbers above do not say anything, in my opinion, is good to keep them as public record.

Interview with a Legar Advisor of the Hondurean Military

2009-07-09T14:16:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

This is an interview with the legal adviser of the Honduran military. He talks about why the military acted as it did. He also touches on the regional patter Chavez used to cope power.

Read here.

Elections 2009

2009-07-08T15:04:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

Here is an article from La Razon where one can see how many candidate wanna-bes there are:

René Joaquino • First candidate to announce he is running.

Román Loayza • Former MAS leader.

Víctor Hugo Cárdenas • Former Vicepresident will announce his candidacy end of July.

Alejo Véliz • Already in campaign.

Manfred Reyes Villa • Former Cochabamba Prefect, allied with promising young politician, Adriana Gil and with Marcial Fabricano.

Hugo San Martín • Has support from the middle class, will announce later.

Conalde • Opposition prefects work on a political formula and a candidate.

Óscar Ortiz • Senate President and former Podemos member wants to run.

Podemos • This Citizen Gruoup wants to support Jorge Quiroga for president.

Peter Maldonado • Former UN militant seeks political backing.

MIR - NSD • The remake of MIR is seeking an identity, a candidate and support (possible leader Rodrigo Paz, son of former party leader, Jaime Paz).

MNR • Seeking alliances and candidates.

Felipe Quispe • El Mallku wants to run against Evo.

About Indigenous Collective Rights and Lat Am - EU Relations

2009-06-12T14:00:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®
Derechos colectivos y Derechos individuales, Carlos Malamud
Infolatam, Madrid, 10 de junio de 2009

"La importancia de estos dos testimonios viene dada por el hecho de que no se trata de manifestaciones de dirigentes marginales, o de grupos minoritarios o periféricos, sino de un movimiento, como el MAS, que ostenta el gobierno de su país. A estas cuestiones hay que sumar el tema cada vez más preocupante de los castigos físicos inflingidos al amparo de los “usos y costumbres tradicionales” y que suelen encontrar el amparo de la justificación en criterios multiculturales. Si las leyes de los estados deben ser limitadas por los derechos de los indígenas, cuáles son los límites que éstos, a su vez, deben tener. ¿O acaso, por el mero hecho de ser derechos indígenas, y teóricamente colectivos, son ilimitados y están fuera del alcance y del control de las instituciones y la justicia nacionales? El futuro de la gobernabilidad de algunos países latinoamericanos se juega en torno a estas cuestiones, ya que las resoluciones de Naciones Unidas y otros organismos internacionales que reivindican los derechos colectivos de los pueblos indígenas no entraron a fondo en ellas. Es hora de que se acometa una revisión a fondo de los acuerdos, ya que, de otro modo, la destrucción de algunas sociedades está a la vuelta de la esquina, en un mundo donde las leyes de las mayorías y las minorías no están claras y donde la sola matemática no basta para resolver los conflictos."

Read the article here.

España impulsará un "salto cualitativo" en los lazos UE-América Latina en 2010 Infolatam/Efe
Montevideo, 11 de junio de 2009

"Queremos que sea una presidencia muy latinoamericana, con un fuerte impacto en el fortalecimiento de las relaciones entre Europa y América Latina", explicó De Laiglesia, quien subrayó que en esta gira por el Cono Sur pudo recabar "las opiniones y el consejo" de las Cancillerías de esos tres países al respecto.

Read the article here.

General Elections 2009

2009-05-23T21:52:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

There are a number of names circulating around to participate in the coming general elections in December 2009. In April I posted twice (here and here) on the same topic. In those posts I talked about the intention of Victor H. Cardenas and Roman Loayza, two indigenous and well established political leaders, to run for president. This I said, would be a challenge and a problem for Evo Morales.

Now, there are more names to throw around. Savina Cuellar in Chuquisaca is one of those names as well as Mario Cossio in Tarija and Senate President, Oscar Ortiz, in Santa Cruz. To those names we can add those of somewhat known character such as Rene Joaquino from Alianza Social and Alejo Veliz (campesino leader).

All of them are in the process to acquire legal status with the electoral court.

New Decree Authorizing Expropriation of Private Property

2009-05-21T19:52:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

Evo Morales issued a decree (No. 0138) authorizing the expropriation of private property from those who are thought to affect the security of the state. Here is the whole text of that decree.

CONSIDERANDO:

Que el Estado de Bolivia, mediante Ley N° 2284, de 5 de diciembre de 2001, aprobó y ratificó la Convención para Prevenir y Sancionar los Actos de Terrorismo Configurados en Delitos contra las Personas y la Extorsión Conexa cuando éstos tengan Trascendencia Internacional; abierta a firma en la ciudad de Washington el 2 de febrero de 1971. Asimismo, ratificó y aprobó mediante Ley N° 2279, de 27 de noviembre de 2001, la Convención Internacional para la Represión de la Financiación del Terrorismo, aprobada por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, el 9 de diciembre de 1999 y suscrita por Bolivia el 10 de noviembre de 2001; norma jurídica que establece en su Artículo 18 la obligación de adoptar medidas preventivas contra el terrorismo.

Que como expresa en la Carta Democrática Interamericana, ningún Estado democrático puede permanecer indiferente frente a la clara amenaza del delito de Terrorismo.

Que en cumplimiento a lo que señala la Resolución N° 1373 del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas y la Convención Interamericana contra el Terrorismo, el Estado debe emitir disposiciones que prevengan y repriman la financiación de los actos de terrorismo, así como abstenerse de proporcionar cualquier tipo de apoyo a las entidades o personas que participen en la comisión de actos terroristas.

Que el Artículo 124 de la Constitución Política del Estado, tipifica el delito de Traición a la Patria, entre otros previsto contra quienes atenten contra la unidad del país. Asimismo los Artículos 121, 123 y 133 del Código Penal, tipifican los delitos de Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y Soberanía del Estado, Sedición y Terrorismo, inscritos en los alcances de los Convenios Internacionales precitados, instrumentos internacionales que requieren de mecanismos legales y administrativos para su aplicación efectiva, con relación a los recursos y medios utilizados para la efectivización de las conductas ilícitas, conforme establece la jerarquía normativa determinada por el Parágrafo 11 del Artículo 410 de la Constitución Política del Estado, con el objeto de brindar efectiva tranquilidad pública y garantizar la seguridad interna del Estado, del conjunto de ciudadanos y ciudadanas.

Que el Artículo 71 del Código Penal, dispone que la comisión de un delito lleva aparejada la pérdida de los instrumentos con que hubieren ejecutado y los efectos que de él provienen los cuales serán decomisados, a menos que pertenecieran a un tercero no responsable, quien podrá recobrarlos, asimismo regula la disposición de los mismos.

Que el Artículo 90 del Código Penal, establece que desde el momento de la comisión de un delito, los bienes inmuebles de los responsables se tendrán por hipotecados especialmente para la responsabilidad civil, teniendo que reglamentarse dicha disposición legal.

EN CONSEJO DE MINISTROS,

DECRETA:

ARTÍCULO 1.- (OBJETO). El presente Decreto Supremo, tiene por objeto establecer el procedimiento para determinar la jurisdicción, la aplicación de medidas cautelares sobre el patrimonio, medios e instrumentos que hubieran sido utilizados o estuviesen comprometidos, en la comisión de los delitos de Terrorismo, Sedición o Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y Soberanía del Estado.

ARTÍCULO 2.- (JURISDICCIÓN). Queda consolidada la ciudad de La Paz, como ámbito de jurisdicción procesal para el juzgamiento de los delitos de Terrorismo, Sedición o Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y Soberanía del Estado, siendo esta ciudad la Sede de Gobierno legalmente constituida donde se encuentran las principales instituciones del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.

ARTÍCULO 3.- (ÁMBITO DE APLICACIÓN). La presente norma reglamentaria, se aplicará sobre el patrimonio, medios e instrumentos para la comisión o financiamiento que pertenecieren a los imputados, o posibles instigadores y cómplices de las conductas calificadas por el fiscal como Terrorismo, Sedición o Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y la Soberanía del Estado, desde la medianoche del momento del hecho delictivo.

ARTÍCULO 4.- (APLICACIÓN DE MEDIDAS CAUTELARES DE CARÁCTER REAL) l. En conocimiento del hecho por cualesquiera de las formas de inicio de la investigación penal, el fiscal dentro el plazo de las diligencias preliminares dispuesto por el Artículo 300 de la Ley N° 1970, de 25 de marzo de 1999, Código de Procedimiento Penal, por la supuesta comisión del delito o ante la flagrancia prevista en el Artículo 230 de la Ley antes citada, requerirá ante el Juez de Instrucción, la incautación del patrimonio, medios e instrumentos que pertenecieran a los imputados, y posibles instigadores y cómplices de las conductas calificadas como Terrorismo, Sedición o Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y Soberanía del Estado.

II. Los bienes muebles e inmuebles, quedarán bajo custodia de la Dirección de Registro, Control y Administración de Bienes Incautados -DIRCABI.

III. El fiscal, podrá requerir la retención de fondos de los imputados y posibles instigadores y cómplices por ante el sistema bancario y de entidades financieras a través de la Autoridad de Supervisión del Sistema Financiero. La incautación se aplicará aunque los fondos de recursos financieros no hayan sido usados efectivamente o no se haya llegado a producir los actos de Terrorismo, Sedición o Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y Soberanía del Estado

IV. La incautación de bienes inmuebles del propietario procederá cuando éste haya participado en cualquiera de sus formas en el hecho delictivo.

V. Los bienes incautados incluidos recursos financieros y valores preferentemente se destinarán a programas de seguridad ciudadana y del Estado.

ARTÍCULO 5.- (PROCEDIMIENTO PARA LA APLICACIÓN DE MEDIDAS CAUTELARES DE CARÁCTER REAL)

l. Procedimiento de Incautación. El o la Fiscal a tiempo de iniciar la etapa de investigación o en su desarrollo, hasta antes de dictarse la sentencia, mediante requerimiento fundamentado, solicitará al Juez o la Jueza de la Instrucción la incautación de bienes sujetos a confiscación, especificando los que quedarán a su disposición a efectos de prueba.

II. Resolución de Incautación. El Juez o la Jueza de Instrucción Penal, atendiendo el requerimiento fiscal, si existen suficientes elementos de convicción acerca de la participación del imputado o posibles instigadores y cómplices mediante resolución fundamentada dispondrá:

a) La incautación de los bienes inmuebles, valores y dineros que hayan podido servir a la comisión de los delitos de Terrorismo, Sedición o Alzamientos Armados contra la Seguridad y Soberanía del Estado.

b) La anotación preventiva de la resolución de incautación, tratándose de bienes muebles sujetos a registro.

c) La entrega de los bienes a DIRCABI.

d) Si luego de celebrado el juicio se determina la sentencia condenatoria y aquella adquiere ejecutoria, los bienes incautados pasarán a la categoría de confiscados y pasarán a propiedad del Estado, sin derecho a indemnización alguna.

III. No serán objeto de incautación los bienes muebles u objetos personales que fueran de uso indispensable por el imputado o posibles instigadores y cómplices, y su cónyuge según dispone el Artículo 179 del Código de Procedimiento Civil.

IV. La anotación de la incautación en los registros públicos, estará exenta del pago de valores judiciales y administrativos.

ARTÍCULO 6.- (REMISIÓN A PROCEDIMIENTO COMÚN). El procedimiento desarrollado en el presente Decreto Supremo, se ejecutará en el marco definido por el Reglamento de Bienes Incautados, Decomisados y Confiscados.

DISPOSICIONES

ABROGATORIAS y DEROGATORIAS

Se abrogan y derogan todas las disposiciones contrarias al presente Decreto Supremo.

El señor Ministro de Estado, en el Despacho de Gobierno, queda encargado de la ejecución y cumplimiento del presente Decreto Supremo.

Es dado en Palacio de Gobierno de la ciudad de La Paz, a los veinte días del mes de mayo del año dos mil nueve.

La Razon.

Latin America: Oscar Arias' Words to Latin American Elites

2009-05-13T20:04:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

I am reproducing the speech Costa Rican President, Oscar Arias, gave at the Americas Summit in Trinidad and Tobago last April 18, because I think he speaks to the hearts of Latin American elites. I share many of his words.

Apparently, this speech is going around the internet and has become very popular. I would have liked to have an English version, but could not find it. So, here is the Spanish version. I think though it is better to read the original version.

Oscar Arias: "Algo Hicimos Mal" los Latinoamericanos

El discurso del presidente de Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, en la Cumbre de las Américas de Trinidad y Tobago, el pasado 18 de abril, está circulando con gran energía por todo Internet. En el mismo, Arias pide a los líderes latinoamericanos que hagan un "mea culpa" por los errores políticos que han colocado a América Latina en desventaja frente a otras regiones del mundo, en lugar de culpar a terceros de sus problemas. Arias, artífice de la paz en Centroamérica en los años 80 y Premio Nobel de la Paz, ilustra sus puntos de vista con gran cantidad de ejemplos. Estas fueron sus palabras en la Cumbre de las Américas:

"Tengo la impresión de que cada vez que los países caribeños y latinoamericanos se reúnen con el presidente de los Estados Unidos de América, es para pedirle cosas o para reclamarle cosas. Casi siempre, es para culpar a Estados Unidos de nuestros males pasados, presentes y futuros. No creo que eso sea del todo justo.

No podemos olvidar que América Latina tuvo universidades antes de que Estados Unidos creara Harvard y William & Mary, que son las primeras universidades de ese país. No podemos olvidar que en este continente, como en el mundo entero, por lo menos hasta 1750 todos los americanos eran más o menos iguales: todos eran pobres. Cuando aparece la Revolución Industrial en Inglaterra, otros países se montan en ese vagón: Alemania, Francia, Estados Unidos, Canadá, Australia, Nueva Zelanda… y así la Revolución Industrial pasó por América Latina como un cometa, y no nos dimos cuenta. Ciertamente perdimos la oportunidad. También hay una diferencia muy grande. Leyendo la historia de América Latina, comparada con la historia de Estados Unidos, uno comprende que Latinoamérica no tuvo un John Winthrop español, ni portugués, que viniera con la Biblia en su mano dispuesto a construir “una Ciudad sobre una Colina”, una ciudad que brillara, como fue la pretensión de los peregrinos que llegaron a Estados Unidos.

Hace 50 años, México era más rico que Portugal. En 1950, un país como Brasil tenía un ingreso per cápita más elevado que el de Corea del Sur. Hace 60 años, Honduras tenía más riqueza per cápita que Singapur, y hoy Singapur –en cuestión de 35 ó 40 años– es un país con $40.000 de ingreso anual por habitante. Bueno, algo hicimos mal los latinoamericanos. ¿Qué hicimos mal? No puedo enumerar todas las cosas que hemos hecho mal. Para comenzar, tenemos una escolaridad de siete años. Esa es la escolaridad promedio de América Latina y no es el caso de la mayoría de los países asiáticos. Ciertamente no es el caso de países como Estados Unidos y Canadá, con la mejor educación del mundo, similar a la de los europeos. De cada 10 estudiantes que ingresan a la secundaria en América Latina, en algunos países solo uno termina esa secundaria. Hay países que tienen una mortalidad infantil de 50 niños por cada mil, cuando el promedio en los países asiáticos más avanzados es de 8, 9 ó 10.

Nosotros tenemos países donde la carga tributaria es del 12% del producto interno bruto, y no es responsabilidad de nadie, excepto la nuestra, que no le cobremos dinero a la gente más rica de nuestros países. Nadie tiene la culpa de eso, excepto nosotros mismos. En 1950, cada ciudadano norteamericano era cuatro veces más rico que un ciudadano latinoamericano. Hoy en día, un ciudadano norteamericano es 10, 15 ó 20 veces más rico que un latinoamericano. Eso no es culpa de Estados Unidos, es culpa nuestra.

En mi intervención de esta mañana, me referí a un hecho que para mí es grotesco, y que lo único que demuestra es que el sistema de valores del siglo XX, que parece ser el que estamos poniendo en práctica también en el siglo XXI, es un sistema de valores equivocado. Porque no puede ser que el mundo rico dedique 100.000 millones de dólares para aliviar la pobreza del 80% de la población del mundo –en un planeta que tiene 2.500 millones de seres humanos con un ingreso de $2 por día– y que gaste 13 veces más ($1.300.000. 000.000) en armas y soldados.

Como lo dije esta mañana, no puede ser que América Latina se gaste $50.000 millones en armas y soldados. Yo me pregunto: ¿quién es el enemigo nuestro? El enemigo nuestro, presidente Correa, de esa desigualdad que usted apunta con mucha razón, es la falta de educación; es el analfabetismo; es que no gastamos en la salud de nuestro pueblo; que no creamos la infraestructura necesaria, los caminos, las carreteras, los puertos, los aeropuertos; que no estamos dedicando los recursos necesarios para detener la degradación del medio ambiente; es la desigualdad que tenemos, que realmente nos avergüenza; es producto, entre muchas cosas, por supuesto, de que no estamos educando a nuestros hijos y a nuestras hijas.

Uno va a una universidad latinoamericana y todavía parece que estamos en los sesenta, setenta u ochenta. Parece que se nos olvidó que el 9 de noviembre de 1989 pasó algo muy importante, al caer el Muro de Berlín, y que el mundo cambió. Tenemos que aceptar que este es un mundo distinto, y en eso francamente pienso que todos los académicos, que toda la gente de pensamiento, que todos los economistas, que todos los historiadores, casi que coinciden en que el siglo XXI es el siglo de los asiáticos, no de los latinoamericanos. Y yo, lamentablemente, coincido con ellos. Porque mientras nosotros seguimos discutiendo sobre ideologías, seguimos discutiendo sobre todos los “ismos” (¿cuál es el mejor? capitalismo, socialismo, comunismo, liberalismo, neoliberalismo, socialcristianismo...), los asiáticos encontraron un “ismo” muy realista para el siglo XXI y el final del siglo XX, que es el pragmatismo. Para sólo citar un ejemplo, recordemos que cuando Deng Xiaoping visitó Singapur y Corea del Sur, después de haberse dado cuenta de que sus propios vecinos se estaban enriqueciendo de una manera muy acelerada, regresó a Pekín y dijo a los viejos camaradas maoístas que lo habían acompañado en la Larga Marcha: “Bueno, la verdad, queridos camaradas, es que mí no me importa si el gato es blanco o negro, lo único que me interesa es que cace ratones”. Y si hubiera estado vivo Mao, se hubiera muerto de nuevo cuando dijo que “la verdad es que enriquecerse es glorioso”. Y mientras los chinos hacen esto, y desde el 79 a hoy crecen a un 11%, 12% o 13%, y han sacado a 300 millones de habitantes de la pobreza, nosotros seguimos discutiendo sobre ideologías que tuvimos que haber enterrado hace mucho tiempo atrás.

La buena noticia es que esto lo logró Deng Xioping cuando tenía 74 años. Viendo alrededor, queridos presidentes, no veo a nadie que esté cerca de los 74 años. Por eso solo les pido que no esperemos a cumplirlos para hacer los cambios que tenemos que hacer. Muchas gracias".

Elections December 2009: Preliminary Survey of the Vote

2009-05-10T14:13:00.004+02:00

MABB © ®

This is the first survey I see on the candidates for the coming December general elections. According to the results, which are good for April, Morales has 41% support, followed by Carlos Mesa with 7% (who said is not running), Victor Hugo Cardenas with 7% (who is not officially in the race yet, but already said will run), Jorge Quiroga with 6% and Ruben Costas with 5%.

Also, 60% of the people surveyed thought Morales will win the elections. Finally, 14% think Mesa and/or Quiroga are the best opposition candidates. Both are followed by Cardenas with 10% and Costas with 7%.

I will be willing to bet if such results keep coming up and the percentage of support for Mesa rise, he will change his mind. After all, the reason he ventured into politics, he said, is because he thought he had accumulated a certain amount of experience and knowledge which made him feel he could be ready for the presidency. So much for one's own view of one self!

Click on the image to see it larger!

La Prensa article

The Assasination Plot in Bolivia

2009-05-03T22:51:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

As you very well may know the story about these "terrorists" who were in Bolivia and were planning to assassinate, among others, Evo Morales, goes on and on. The investigations are still underway but the verdicts are already out. Three people are dead and two are in jail. Of the latest, alleged terrorists, one is the Hungarian Elod Toaso.

The Bolivian government brands him as terrorist and his family in Hungary say he is an innocent young man. The sister, I think, sent me the website she (maybe they) built for him.

www.toasoelod.com

In it, they ask the European Union to take care of Toaso because he is innocent and his rights are being violated.

This situation can potentially be a strong blow for the government if it does not clarify the case. Especially, after the alleged terrorists were shot to death and some accounts have, again, alleged they were executed and not shot in fire exchange. The government can potentially come out in a bad light from this case not only internationally, due to the fact that some of those men were European citizens, but nationally because the memory of former military regimes is still fresh in the collective Bolivian memory.

The Electoral Season II

2009-04-30T17:25:00.007+02:00

MABB © ®

The electoral season has already started in Bolivia. The general elections of December this year will be, yet again, one more important electoral event Bolivia will have to pass on its way to more stability. The clock has started to run and the different political groups are organizing themselves. One thing is certain, Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia from MAS will run for re-election. What is left to be sorted out are the different opponents MAS will have.

In that respect, there are several interesting developments concerning MAS' support. Having into account that the last time MAS was up for vote in 2005, it got 54% of the vote. Even though this was a historic number, this time around, it doesn't seem as though MAS will reach anywhere near that far.

There were always rumors of rifts within the party. I've always heard rumors about differences between the so called "indigenous wing" in MAS and the "intellectual" win. The argument was that the objectives of the two were hardly reconcilable. In recent months those rifts have been brought to light. The most recent significant example of such rifts is Román Loayza's divorcing the party. He was, after all, the leader of the campesinos (CSUTCB) and founder of MAS, and thus a fundamental piece within the power structure of MAS. In the last few weeks, Loayza announced he will register a new political party and will run for election in December. This is the outcome of a long struggle within MAS between Loayza and Morales. Loayza left MAS complaining that Morales was surrounded by people who were taking advantage of the moment and had nothing to do with the indigenous movement MAS was. He especifically pointed at Walker San Miguel, Alfredo Rada and Juan Ramon Quintana. Loayza also said that he was told he was the "moral guardian" of the party and as such he would run for the presidency.

Since 2005, MAS lost valuable people in its ranks. Recently, the operative right hand of Morales, former YPFB director, Santos Ramirez, was thrown out of the party for corruption. He was caught receiving pay-offs from the state oil company's contractors. Also, MAS senators (Guido Guardia and Gerald Ortiz) declared themselves dissident and broke with the government's line. This resulted on MAS having 10 instead of 12 Senators and so losing influence in the Senate. In addition, former ideologue and founder of MAS as well, Filemon Escobar, also left MAS for disagreements with Morales. Lastly, a young cruceno woman, Adriana Gil, who had been credited with delivering significant support for Evo Morales in Santa Cruz, left the party because she felt the leadership did not recognized her efforts.

MAS has lost significant support since 2005. But, the biggest blow is the splitting of Román Loayza, who has a significant number of supporters among one of the largest groups within MAS, the peasants group.

Below, you see a picture of Adriana Gil, who is a very young (24 years old) political figure in Santa Cruz. She has recently said that she will support Romàn Loayza in his efforts to gain the presidency.

I was impressed by this young lady, in her courage to stand up for what she believes. She supported Morales in one of the most difficult regions to support someone like Morales. Yet, she helped him gain acceptance and, most importantly, votes in 2005. However, similarly disenchanted with what Morales is currently doing, she has left the party and is seeking now other ways to channel her energy and "political savvy". Just as an additional note in this post, is this the face of the future first elected woman President of Bolivia?

Links:
La Razón, Adriana Gil, Bottup, El Deber interview, El Deber attacks, El Deber cadidates 2004, Bolpress, Book on R Loayza, Ernesto Justiniano blog, La Prensa

Electoral Season in Bolivia

2009-04-26T09:50:00.006+02:00

MABB © ®

The electoral season is taking shape and the possible candidates for the December general elections are taking their first steps. In the course of last week, former Vicepresident during the first term of Sanchez de Lozada, Victor Hugo Cardenas has decided to confirm his intention to run for president. Cardenas, of Aymara descent, said he is working on his candidacy's bureaucratic process, on his financing and his coalition building.

Cardenas is a clear rival for Morales and one of the many candidates with indigenous roots expected to take part in the elections this time around. He has the potential to attract adherents not only in the Altiplano, which is where he comes from, but also in the Eastern lowlands of the country. The Santa Cruz Prefect, Ruben Costas, has put emphasis on building a national coalition to confront the government in the elections. Cardenas might just be the candidate of elections for this coalition.

Meanwhile, on the part of the government some problems emerge on the horizon. Most important is the erosion of support within the ranks of MAS. In the last weeks the indigenous of the Eastern lowlands have expressed their desire to "revise" their relationship with the government. The CIDOB (Confederacion de Indigenas del Oriente de Bolivia) were upset the government did not pressed on the number of "special districts" for indigenous in the new Congress. The new electoral law only has 8 of these districts and not 14 as it was demanded by indigenous groups. With that, the seats for CIDOB were eliminated.

But the MAS' problems do not end there. A now dissident, founder and former leader of MAS, Roman Loayza, has been hinting at joining the elections as candidate. Loayza has criticized before some of the decisions Morales has taken regarding his cabinet. Specifically, Loayza dislikes the presence of Alfredo Rada, Juan Ramon Quintana and the Peredo brothers whom he links with traditional parties and says have hijacked Morales and the presidency. Loayza argues that there are a number of groups unhappy with morales' performance, namely the indigenous faction with in MAS. He cites as examples his travels and conversations with indigenous people in Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando. At the same time, some signs of dissatisfaction come from the Santa Cruz neighborhood and MAS stronghold, Plan 3000.

Also signs of dissatisfaction are shown in El Alto. The city's council member, Roberto de la Cruz, has expressed he has been approached by groups unhappy about the way Morales has been governing and has been urged to seek his candidacy. That way bringing an alternative to MAS.

On the electoral race there is already Rene Joaquino of AS in Potosi who has also announced his candidacy. This is another potential problem for MAS since it is bound to split the vote in Potosi. In any case, Loayza and Joaquino are in conversations about a possible coalition. So there might be a new coalition coming.

Another indigenous or campesino announcing his candidacy was Alejo Veliz of Cochabamba.

So it seems MAS has its problems. Support might be dwindling due to Morales' decision to stick with the people around him or it might just be a strategy to win the 2/3 majority in the next Congress.

I explain myself. In the elections for the Constituent Assembly, a strategy MAS used was to present itself, at the local level, with a different name altogether. This was to adjust itself to local conditions and to somehow distract the opposition. After the candidates were elected, these allied with MAS. In the end MAS had a majority, very close to a super majority. Simple! If this strategy paid off in 2006, it might just be that MAS wants to use it again in December 2009. It might just be that Loayza, Veliz, Gil and others are just pretending to split from MAS to gain the votes and later on ally with MAS. After all, this is the government who said they were just bluffing in the new constitution negotiations with the opposition in Congress so they would get just what they wanted in the end. Let's remember that.

Links:

La Prensa.

A Peek Into the New Electoral Law

2009-04-16T14:10:00.004+02:00

MABB © ®

This is a short and preliminary look into the new Bolivian electoral law. It is also opportune to mention that there are apparently many versions circulating. Until the government publishes the law in the official newspaper (Gaceta Oficial), there will be doubts. The version I got comes from Congress. Thank you Mariana!

Characteristics

The law has 75 articles and 8 final regulations.

Citizens older than 18 years of age can vote (before there was a proposal by the government to let 16 year olds vote). One has to be registered and eligible to vote.

To promote gender equality each candidate list will have to alternate between men and women. In the single districts, the alternating principle will also be applied. The exceptions are the candidates for the special indigenous seats. In this case, they can apply their own rules.

The current electoral courts officials are to remain in their posts until the members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (national and departmental) are elected.

There will be a new voter registration list, which will use biometric data as well as ID number, RUN or military service number.

People who cannot run for election are: government officials, ministers and military personnel in active service who did not resign from their post at least 3 months before election day; directors in "transnational companies" who did not resignt at least 5 years before election day; citizens who are in prison and owe the state.

The law calls for general elections and autonomic referenda on December 6, 2009 and for elections of departmetnal executives and assembies as well as municipal authorities on April 4, 2010.

Election procedures

President and Vicepresident - 51% + (absolute majority) or at least 40% with a minimum 10% difference with the second runner up. If no candidate winns, there will be a second round of elections (within 60 days) between the two most voted candidates. He or she who wins with a simple majority will win.

Legislative Plurinational Assembly - it is composed of the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Senators. The lower chamber will be made up of 130 seats, from which 68 will be uninominal (single district/simple majority/based on population and territory) and 54 plurinominal (party lists headed by President and VP/proportional representation) and 8 "special indigenous" seats (simple majority/indigenous districts). The upper chamber will be made up of 36 members, 4 in each department. They will be elected according to proportional representation system as well.

Departmental executives - Governors or Prefects can be elected; in all departments, except in Santa Cruz, Governors or Prefects can be elected by simple majority (in Santa Cruz absolute majority is necessary). In Santa Cruz there will be a second round if necessary between the two most voted candidates (similar to the national level). There is the possibility to resign or bein recalled.

Departmental Assemblies in Beni, Tarija, Pando and Santa Cruz - In Beni the assembly is made up of 3 representatives of each departmental province, two indigenous and two campesinos (peasants) seats. In Tarija there will be 30 seats, 12 per province, 15 according to population and 3 indigenous seats. In Pando there will be one representative per municipality and one indigenous representative. In Santa Cruz a total of 28 seats, of which one representative for each of the 15 provinces, five indigenous seats and 8 seats according to population in each province.

Electoral Law Passed

2009-04-15T10:25:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

On Tuesday, April 14, 2009, at 4.04 am, the Bolivian Congress passed the new "transitory" Electoral Law wich has 75 articles and 8 disposiciones transitorias (additional rules). With this, this and next year's electoral schedule are set. The major decisions are:

The creation of a biometric voter registration system (Art. 19).
General elections on December 6, 2009 - This means re-election for Morales and Garcia and the election of members of Congress (Art. 25).
At the same time there will be referenums on autonomy for the departments of La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosí, Chuquisaca and Oruro.
In addition, there will also be a referendum on regional autonomy for the Gran Chaco province
On April 4, 2010 there will be municipal and departmental elections when Prefects and Mayors will be elected (Art. 26).
In the last minute it was decided to set the "special" indigenous seats to 7 instead of 8 due to the intervention of the Chuquisaca faction.
The Vocales (people who make decisions in the National Electoral Court) will remain there until the next elections (Art. 13).
The President and Vicepresident winner will be elected by obteined votes of 50+1 per cent or 40+ per cent with a minimum 10 per cent difference with the second winner.
There will be 4 Senators per Department and 130 Deputies in the lower chamber (single district and party lists) (Art. 32, 35, 39).

The law passed by the Chamber of Deputies included 14 seats, but the Concertation Committee (the negotiation venue between the opposition and MAS) modified this number to 8 seats. In the end it was lowered to 7 seats for the above mentioned reasons.

How the negotiation went:

At one point, the opposition and MAS could not agree on how voters might register. The opposition questioned the documents required to register, namely it was agains the use of passports, the RUN (Registro Unico Nacional), and the military service document. Their main concern was falsification. In the end the documents were left the way they were.

The opposition wants the resignation of the National Electoral Court, Mr. Exeni.

Some links:
Law 1660, Law 1245, La Razon article.

The "Transitory" Electoral Law

2009-04-13T08:47:00.004+02:00

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Bolivia has reached a state of political crisis once again due to the discrepancies between opposition and government in generating a "transitional" Electoral Law. This law is supposed to provide legal framework for the December 6, 2009 general elections and the Prefect and municipal elections in 2010. It is transitional because, once the new Plurinational Assembly is elected in December, it will work on passing a new electoral law.

As usual, a "concerting" commission in Congress is handling the negotiations while the law is being debated on the floor. However, there are several points that still need agreement:

1. The overseas vote
2. The national voter registration list
3. The special indigenous seats

Since Thursday last week opposition and government could not agree on neither of these points. On the issue of special indigenous seats, the parties are still playing with numbers ganging from 14 to 8 seats. The organizations representing the indigenous groups demanded the government to give them 14 seats in Congress. The opposition has argued that this would generate imbalance in the representation ratio against urban areas, over representing rural areas where the population is less.

On the issue of the overseas vote, first, the National Electoral Court (J. L. Exeni) said the revision of the national voter registry and the implementation of a biometric voter registration system (one that registers photo, digital signature and finger prints) was not possible. Now, Exeni is promising to implement such a system in three months, after the government agreed on financing such a move.

To this it has to be added that there has been a series of observations, made by analysts arguing the national voter registry is being manipulated and thus not trustworthy. That is the reason the opposition insists on revising the list and making it secure against manipulation.

These disagreements have caused the opposition to walk out of the debate after Vice President and Congress President Garcia passed the law "en grande", meaning without detailed revision of each of its 80 articles. At the same time, the opposition move prompted the government to threaten a massive and voluntary resignation by MAS members of Congress. But, since this would not work for the government, the President Evo Morales decided to start a hunger strike. Below you can see the Bolivian President in hunger strike. Images from ABI.

The situation is favorably unfolding due to the government's agreement to implement and finance the biometric system of voter registration and the reduction of special indigenous seats in Congress.

Mesa for Candidate - Cartoon

2009-03-27T16:24:00.003+01:00

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Here is a cartoon from Opinion. It shows Carlos Mesa thinking about his candidacy in the upcoming elections. Enjoy!

Bolivia, the US and Drug Eradication

2009-03-27T13:01:00.000+01:00

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Here is the 2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, of which the Bolivian government is complaining because it is too hard on the government. The report does give the impression that the US government has opted for a stronger stance than under the prior administration. Here is the summary:

Bolivia
I. Summary
September 15, 2008, the President of the United States determined for the first time that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably” to adhere to its obligations under international counternarcotics agreements. This determination was made due to a number of factors, including the forced departure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from the coca growing Chapare region, continued increases in coca cultivation and cocaine production, the Government of Bolivia's (GOB) policies to expand the cultivation of “licit” coca, and its unwillingness to regulate coca markets. The GOB’s decisions to expel the U.S. Ambassador in September and all Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) personnel in November, based on false accusations of conspiracy – seriously damaged counternarcotics cooperation, and call into question whether the GOB will continue any bilateral efforts with the United States in this area.
In 2008, the GOB eradicated over 5,000 hectares of coca nationwide, about 95 percent of which took place in the Cochabamba tropics (Chapare) and Yapacani region. Nonetheless, coca cultivation and cocaine production capacity increased rapidly due both to greater cultivation as well as Bolivian traffickers adopting more efficient cocaine manufacturing methods. Bolivia is a party to the 1988 UN Drug Convention.

I have bolded the statements that the Bolivian government is taking to heart.

In a response to the report, the Bolivian foreign relations Minister, Choquehuanca, said "if the US government doesn't want to cooperate under Bolivian conditions, it can stop the cooperation."

In prior posts I have argued that Bolivia was in a relative "position of strength" against the US government. As I see it, the US has more to loose than the Bolivian government with the end of cooperation efforts. The most obvious reason is the shrinking of the sphere of influence for the US. Another problem would be a noticeable diplomatic defeat for the US. Lastly, the drug eradication policy will be severely compromised.

If the US leaves Bolivia, it will be seen as an act of arrogance (within the region). That would have repercussions in the region. Let's take into account that Brazil, Chile and Argentina (not to mention Venezuela and Ecuador) are greatly interested to keep maverick Bolivia engaged. Isolation, from the part of the US, will not work this time.

If the US leaves, it will be seen as a severe hit to Washington's diplomatic efforts. The US cannot take another faux pas in the international arena. The Europeans, just to cite some example, will surely watch with scorn and displeasure if the US leaves Bolivia. Domestically, it would also be a tragedy for the current administration. I bet, many Obama voters are sympathetic to the Bolivian President (however romanticized that support might be).

If the US leaves Bolivia, one of the major pillars in US foreign policy will be in trouble. Drug eradication has been a major issue providing a framework in the relations between the US and the Latin American region. Bolivia, as one of the former (and now again potentially major) sources of Coca leaves is of much importance for this policy.

Federalism in Bolivia

2009-03-17T16:53:00.004+01:00

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1871 debate in the National Assembly in Sucre between Lucas Mendoza de la Tapia (Cbba) and Evaristo Valle (La Paz), leader of the "unitarios". Mendoza de la Tapia argued that federalism would end the revolutions and dictatorships by giving the regions more autonomy. Valle never argued against adopting federalism, but simply said that the country was not ready for it. Before engaging in institutional reforms the customs should be changed.

1874 - 1877 Andres Ibanez (Sta. Cruz) was a leader of the Santa Cruz delegation in the National Assembly, and amalgamated federalist and, what he called "igualitarian" ideals, which really were socialist. The elites were scared of his political advancements. He established the Junta Superior del Estado Federativo Oriental. He was persecuted by President H. Daza and killed in 1877.

1898 - 1899 Federal Civil War between La Paz and Sucre. Arguments for bringing the government to La Paz: Most of the state revenue came from La Paz, Sucre did not produce anything, it had too few inhabitants and was too isolated. Liberales in La Paz against Conservadores in Sucre. Federico Zuazo and Jose Manuel Pando are the leaders of the movement. Zuazo left the National Assembly after it passed the infamous Ley de radicatoria, rendering the debate over federalism and La Paz as capital as ended.

Evo and Coca

2009-03-14T17:10:00.002+01:00

MABB © ®

Going through my daily doses of news, I found myself reading Evo Morales' op-ed in the New York Times. This short, yet well exposed argument for the decriminalization of the coca leaf gives the reason(s) why the leaf should be taken out of the narcotics list.

I think Morales argues eloquently and thus has a powerful impact. He concludes:

The coca leaf also has alkaloids; the one that concerns antidrug officials is the cocaine alkaloid, which amounts to less than one-tenth of a percent of the leaf. But as the above examples show, that a plant, leaf or flower contains a minimal amount of alkaloids does not make it a narcotic. To be made into a narcotic, alkaloids must typically be extracted, concentrated and in many cases processed chemically. What is absurd about the 1961 convention is that it considers the coca leaf in its natural, unaltered state to be a narcotic. The paste or the concentrate that is extracted from the coca leaf, commonly known as cocaine, is indeed a narcotic, but the plant itself is not.

He also talks about the significance of the leaf for his culture:

Why is Bolivia so concerned with the coca leaf? Because it is an important symbol of the history and identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes.
The custom of chewing coca leaves has existed in the Andean region of South America since at least 3000 B.C. It helps mitigate the sensation of hunger, offers energy during long days of labor and helps counter altitude sickness. Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies.
Today, millions of people chew coca in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and northern Argentina and Chile. The coca leaf continues to have ritual, religious and cultural significance that transcends indigenous cultures and encompasses the mestizo population.

I just thought, this was a nicely written op-ed. One that, in short, effectively lays out the argument. I wonder who helped Morales write this?

More of the Same: Report from the Inter-American Dialoge on US Foreign Policy Towards Latin America

2009-03-11T11:35:00.002+01:00

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More of the same, the IAD published a report advising the US administration to do more of the same in Latin America. The report reads:

This report does not propose a new vision for the Western Hemisphere
or a dramatic redirection of U.S. relations with Latin America and
the Caribbean. Nor does it suggest that the United States reassert its traditional
role and pervading influence in the hemisphere. Instead, it urges
the new administration in Washington, first, to focus on an agenda of
concrete problems and opportunities; and, second, to respond to them
in continuing consultation and cooperation with the nations of Latin
America and the Caribbean.
It is also a call for pragmatism—for Washington to adjust its policies to
take account of the profound changes that have taken place in the United
States itself, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the wider world.
The new administration must recognize that the United States’ ability
to exert authority and determine outcomes has diminished; that Latin
American governments now regularly take the lead in dealing with regional
problems (last year, for example, they addressed Bolivia’s political impasse
and helped settle Colombia’s conflict with Ecuador and Venezuela); and
that extra-hemispheric actors, such as China, Russia, and Spain, have
expanded their profile and influence in the region. Washington should
not view these changes as setbacks or defeats for U.S. interests. Rather,
stronger leadership and more vigorous initiative from Latin America and
the Caribbean should be seen as offering new opportunities for productive
cooperation on issues of importance to both the United States and
the region.

You can find the report here.

Carlos Mesa: Article in El Pais (Spain)

2009-02-26T16:10:00.003+01:00

MABB © ®

Here is an article, in El Pais, from Carlos Mesa on the new constitution.

El sí a la nueva Constitución expresado en el voto por el 61% de los bolivianos nos ha dejado algunos mensajes inequívocos y algunos equívocos en el mensaje.

Thank you Detlef!

Bolivia, its Millenium Account and its Scores

2009-02-20T12:42:00.004+01:00

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(Click on the image to see a bigger version)
Bolivia has been excluded from the Millenium Challenge scheme the US government uses to distribute foreign aid. The MCC is in charge of giving aid to those selected countries that achieve good scores in a complex score system developed by the MCC. Above you can see the score card for 2009 on Bolivia. The main reason why Bolivia has been excluded is the deteriorating political conditions.

For FYI only.

About Latin American Constitutions

2009-02-17T11:20:00.002+01:00

MABB © ®

This is an article the Post published on Latin American constitutions. It points to the alleged role some Spanish scholars have had in the writing of the Venezuelan, Ecuadorian and Bolivian constitutions. The question is, how much influence (if any) have these academics had on the texts?

Latin America's Document-Driven Revolutions

Team of Spanish Scholars Helped Recast Constitutions in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador

By Joshua Partlow

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 17, 2009; Page A01

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Once a product of armed rebellion, the revolution in Latin America today is taking place on paper in the form of new constitutions, a mostly peaceful process influenced by the work of European legal scholars who have played a behind-the-scenes role in drafting the populist documents.

Venezuela's referendum Sunday on whether to amend a constitution less than a decade old to allow President Hugo Chávez to run for office indefinitely is just the latest example. Two other South American countries have embarked in the past decade on rewriting their societies' fundamental rules, creating enormous new charters that vastly expand the social and economic rights granted to citizens, particularly the poor.

In all three cases, from the Venezuelan charter in 1999 to the new constitutions in Ecuador last year and Bolivia last month, a team of Spanish legal scholars influenced the conception, drafting or implementation of the documents, which have stirred domestic class tensions and harmed relations with the U.S. government. The leader is Roberto Viciano Pastor, an author and constitutional law professor at the University of Valencia whose technical, and some say ideological, assistance in writing the constitutions is generating new scrutiny across South America.

(Continue reading in Washington Post)

Sorry, I would like to post the whole article but I cannot, copyright!!!!!

The Bolivian Constitution and its Reforms

2009-02-09T15:07:00.001+01:00

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There is always some useful information about Bolivia to be found in the website of the electoral court (CNE). In their efforts to educate the citizens about the democratic process, they bring out different publications. For example, the brought out this brochure explaining what the vote in January 25 means. In it one can find the above graph listing all 16 constitutions in Bolivia's history. Very useful little graph.

Here are the texts of the current constitution (1967) and the "new" constitution (2008).

In addition, they explain what kind of reforms were those in 1994 and 2004.

The reforms in 1994 included:

The state was denominated "multi-cultural and multi-ethnic"
Created the Consejo de la Judicatura (Judicial Council, the entity in charge of overseeing the Judicial branch
Created the Constitutional Tribunal (Constitutional Court)
Created the Defensor del Pueblo (Ombudsman)
Introduced the Diputados Uninominales (single district Deputees)

The reforms in 2004 included:

Introduced the referendum
Introduced the citizen legislative initiative
Introduced the constitutional assembly
Introduced the possibility that agrupaciones ciudadanas (citizens' groups) and pueblos indigenas (indigenous groups) could participate in elections

Also, one can find a brief historical overview of the constitutions, the constitutional assembly and the use of referendum in Bolivia.

Here is a list of links for the corresponding constitutional reform laws.

2005	Law Nr. 3089 (July 6, 2005)
2004	Law Nr. 2631 (February 20, 2004
1995	Law Nr. 1615 (February 6, 1995) in accordance with Congress
1994	Law Nr. 1585 (August 12, 1994)

2002	Law Nr. 2410 (August 8, 2002) necessity for reform
1993	Law Nr. 1473 (April 1, 1993) necessity for reform

One question remains: were the 2002 reforms carried out or not? I found conflicting information on it.

Morales' New Cabinet

2009-02-08T21:46:00.003+01:00

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Evo Morales has redesigned the Executive branch and has created 20 ministries.

Red Erbol reports the new cabinet as follows:

Ministro de La Presidencia - Juan Ramón Quintana (Ministry of the Presidency)
Ministro de Planificación - Noel Aguirre (Planning Ministry)
Ministro de Medio Ambiente- Ernesto Orellana (Environment Ministry)
Ministra de Desarrollo Rural - Julia Ramos (Rural Development Ministry)
Ministro de Obras Públicas – Walter Delgadillo (Ministry of Public Works)
Ministra de Producción Y Microempresa - Susana Rivero (Ministry of Production and Microenterprise)
Ministro de Gobierno - Alfredo Rada (Government Ministry)
Ministro de Defensa - Walker San Miguel (Defense Ministry)
Ministra de Justicia - Celima Torrico (Justice Ministry)
Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores - David Choquehuanca (International Relations Ministry)
Ministro de Educación - Roberto Aguilar (Education Ministry)
Ministro de Empleo - Alberto Chipana (Employment Minstry)
Ministro de Salud - Ramiro Tapia (Health Ministry)
Ministro de Defensa del Estado- Héctor Arce (Defense of the State Ministry)
Ministro de Autonomías - Carlos Romero (Ministry of Autonomy)
Ministro de Culturas - Pablo Groux (Culture(s) Minstry)
Ministra de Transparencia - Nardy Suxo (Ministry of Transparency)
Ministro de Economía y Finanzas - Luís Arce Catacora (Finance and Economy Ministry)
Ministro de Hidrocarburos – Oscar Coca (Hydrocarbons Ministry)
Ministro de Minería – Luis Alberto Echazú (Ministry of Mining)

Of the 20 names above, David Choquehuanca, Luis Alberto Echazú, Roberto Aguilar, Juan Ramón Quintana, Susana Rivero, Alfredo Rada, Walker San Miguel, Celima Torrico, Ramiro Tapia, and Héctor Arce have been ratified in their posts.

The New Political Constitution of the Bolivian State (NCPE)

2009-02-07T21:05:00.004+01:00

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President Morales proclaimed today the New Political Constitution of the Bolivian State (NCPE), in Spanish Nueva Constitución Política del Estado, in El Alto, La Paz at 12:54 p.m. (16:54 GMT). The ceremony took place in a corner of La Paz's International Airport, John F. Kennedy.

Morales spoke of the end of oppression for the indigenous people, a new Bolivia and unity. The latter at a time when Bolivia seems to be even more divided than before (video of the speech in Erbol).

His Vice President, as he was receiving the official results from the electoral court, agreed that this constitution had major contradictions. For the first time since he is in office, he pointed to the American Constitution's amendments and said that was the way constitutions would be refined.

This link from Fides shows the text of the old and new constitutions with the corrections and additions.

Below, find some pictures of the ceremony. Thanks to the ABI.

Official Results - Referendum January 2009

2009-02-03T10:53:00.006+01:00

MABB © ®

This is the official result from the referendum to approve the new Bolivian Oruro constitution. The electoral agency has counted 100% of the votes.

This graph is La Razon's reporting of the national and departmental results. We can see that only four departments rejected the constitution, while five others, including Sucre and Cochabamba, voted YES.

The results on the land tenure questions are reported as well.

Descripción	Cantidad	Porcentaje
Inscritos Habilitados	3,891,316
Votos Computados	3,511,699
Participación computada		90.26%

One result deserving attention is the participation rate of 90.26%. This is got to be some kind of record!

FYI

Bolivia: Divided We Stand

2009-01-27T14:19:00.013+01:00

MABB © ®

One only needs to take a look at this graph to see the result of last Sunday's referendum on the Oruro Constitution (approved in December 2007 in Oruro). While the result at the national level was 61.6% approval against 38.3% rejection, it became even more evident that the country is geographically divided between the YES and NO votes. The denominated media luna (the green/NO part) region voted, at times overwhelmingly, to reject the new constitution and the other Bolivia (in blue/SI) readily accepted it.

Actually, if we guide ourselves by the map, it looks as though the constitution should have been rejected. The green area is bigger than the blue. The favorable result for the SI vote was determined by the number of voters in the cities of La Paz and El Alto. For the number of voters in these two cities see my post last week. The fact that there is such a large region of the country that voted NO points to a very serious problem which the government is bound to feel, and which will be the reason why the country will continue on this path of political turmoil. In the media luna region, there is the general feeling that the Oruro Constitution was not approved, even though they recognize its success at the national level. Moreover, based on the per province referendum results, the approval of the constitution is not obvious. What is obvious is that this new social contract has been clearly rejected by these regions. Therefore, the opposition leaders demand a national "dialogue" to duscuss in which ways the government is to implements the new social contract. In the words of Santa Cruz Prefect, Ruben Costas, "...the government should not delay the implementation of autonomies, should compromise positions in the negotiations, should work towards a national accord, and [above all] not impose the new constitution". Should the government not do this, the opposition has warned, they will not to follow the new constitutional rules and continue ahead with its autonomic path.

The opposition is skeptical because the executive has repeatedly played the confusion card where it agrees to one thing and does the opposite. In addition Morales himself has shown its intention to march ahead with the implementation of the new constitution, regardless what the opposition does or says. He is preparing a set of new laws to start the process. The government's first steps will be to pass the new laws regulating the electoral process, the hydrocarbons sector, taxes, civil and penal codes, land redistribution, how to reorganize the Executive and how to implement autonomy.

For the moment, it seems the opposition has chosen to make a distinction between what the constitution actually says and how will it be interpreted and, in the end, implemented. That is one reason why the opposition, once the constitution has already become the supreme law of the land, still asks the government for consensus. They want a say in drafting all the new rules of the game. For its part, the government has expressed its intention only to negotiate one issue with the opposition, namely how to adapt the province constitutions or statutes to the new constitutional framework. This is of course too little for the opposition.

There are two fundamental questions that come to mind as a result of this outcome. Why is Bolivia so divided? and What happens now? In what follows, I intend to list, and by no exhaustive means, the issues dividing Bolivia. Also, I will attempt to recount what will be the next steps in this most interesting process.

What are the divisions?

At the general level, it can be argued that Bolivia is divided because, at the moment, there is a fierce power struggle between new vs. traditional political elites, in which the new elites are about the displace the traditional ones. This power struggle has heavy socio-economic and ethnic components. At the same time, these two groups are divided in their conception of what the country should look like. On the one hand, the traditional side sees no reason why the current legal framework, partly based on the current democratic model, as well as trade, private property, private investment, etc., should be changed. On the other side, the new elites prefer to give the state a pivotal role in all social, economic and political aspects in the country. They also want to highlight the socio-ethnic aspect. This is, more or less, a short picture at the most general level. At the more specific level there are several issues to be considered. For example:

How to implement autonomy - If the government tries to force its point of view, without, at the same time, making some concessions to the opposition, the divisions are bound to widen even more. So far, the government used a confronting rhetoric with the opposition. It repeatedly pointed out that Morales has the support of the majority. It can back that claim by citing last year's recall referendum and now the approval of its constitution. However, that is not enough for the opposition, since Morales does not enjoy overwhelming support in the media luna. That is his basic problem. He lacks legitimacy in the region. That is the major reason why the opposition will still attempt to place Morales against the wall and force some kind of agreement at the moment of passing the laws. Otherwise, the radicalization of the attitudes are bound to follow.

The new electoral code - The new rules to elect the representatives will be an important issue. The new code must specify how will the President and Vice President be elected. Who will get elected and with which margins. Most important will be the distribution of seats in Congress. This will most likely set the balance of power. The opposition want to make sure the weight is not tilted towards Morales.

Land re-distribution - The way in which the government re-possesses land and re-distributes it is also bounded to create some tensions. Now that the question of how large land in private hands should be is cleared, the pressing issue will be whose land will the government take back. Most likely the owners of these lands will make it difficult for the government to take away their land. In fact, they are already up in arms and, I am guessing, heavily investing in the opposition forces to represent them politically. Most important will be who will be able to claim some of this land from the government. These people, the landless, are also a force to reckon with. Some people from the landless movement MST have already started occupying some government lands.

The new hydrocarbons law - The government has expressed its intention to design a law re-distributing the money coming from the export of natural gas to the Western provinces. Currently, the provinces where the natural gas is recovered receive more that the other provinces. There is a compensatory percentage. The problem will be if the government decides to increase this compensation and the producing provinces feel disadvantaged by the new rules.

The Sucre's claim to be the capital city - A major issue to keep Bolivia divided is the demand Sucre makes to discuss the future of the capital of Bolivia. Originally, as Bolivia was founded, Sucre was the capital of Bolivia. In 1809 the government seat and the legislative branch were moved to La Paz. Since then, Sucre has been periodically trying to recover its status as capital city. During this last Constitutional Assembly process, the opposition encouraged Sucre's demand and thus gained one more allied. Since then, Sucre has been loud in asking a debate over this issue.

TLC with the UE - In commercial terms, the division is more or less orthodox. The government rejects a TLC from principle, and the opposition supports Bolivia's engagement in the globalization process. This is more prone to touch the private industry sector and middle sized export firms.

What is to come?

On February 20, the CNE will present the final report on the January 25 referendum. Congress will approve it and will present it to the President. The President then signs it into law. Once this happens, Congress has 60 days to pass a provisional electoral code. This law will be the legal framework for the general election of December 6, 2009. The President, the Vice President and all members of Congress will be elected on this date. Once the new "National Plurinational Assembly" (that is the name) is convened, it has to sanction several laws taking no longer than 180 days. These laws are: laws regulating the new electoral agency, the Judicial branch, the Constitutional Tribunal, as well as drafting the new electoral code and the framework regulating the decentralization and autonomic processes.

My take is that 2009 will be plagued by electoral campaigns and the fight in Congress to pass those new laws. And of course, more marches, demonstrations and strikes. Why not!

Preliminary Results

2009-01-25T23:33:00.004+01:00

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Update 1:

The results are clear, one day after the referendum. According to recounts, table by table, the Oruro Constitution has won approval by the electorate. The results are:

58.7% approve

41.3% reject

The press is reporting a 90% level of participation. Historical indeed!

The CNE said the official results will be available on February 20.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Preliminary results are starting to show the Oruro Constitution has won approval by 54% against 46%. The departments that approved the constitution were: La Paz (77%), Cochabamba (62%), Potosi (73%), and Oruro (73%). The departments that rejected the new constitution were: Santa Cruz (68%), Tarija (56%), Pando (57%), and Beni (68%). The department of Chuquisaca is undecided with 50-50.

The result is: 54% for SI and 46% for NO.

When we take a look at the results per capital of department, the result would be a defeat for the new constitution. The results are as follow: La Paz (61%), Potosi (57%), Oruro (64%) and El Alto (82%) have voted to approve the new constitution. Santa Cruz (73%), Cochabamba (58%), Tarija (62%), Cobija (63%), Trinidad (66%), and Sucre (71%), voted to reject the new constitution.

That would result in: 47% for the SI and 53% for the NO.

The difference make the vote in Cochabamba and Sucre. The results in Sucre, at the departmental level are not that clear. There is still room for the department to turn into a NO department. The full results are not in yet. In Cochabamba, it was to be expected that the city was going to vote NO and the rural areas were going to vote SI. It looks like the rural areas are winning, so far.

On the question about the size of large private land, it looks like Bolivians in general want to limit that size to 5000 hectares.

Reports below:

Red Erbol, Fides, La Razon, Unitel.

Everything Ready for Tomorrow's Referendum

2009-01-24T22:38:00.005+01:00

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Tomorrow, Bolivia will once again vote on a referendum. The decisions to be made are two. First, citizens have to decide whether article 398 of the new constitution should include, in its final sentence, 10,000 (24 710 acres) or 5,000 hectares (12 355 acres). The article pretends to define how large "productive" private property should be. Productive here, is defined as land that has a social function. I am deducing, from prior comments, that social function refers to land that produces sugar to supply the internal market, for example.
Second, voters must approve or disapprove the new constitution, which was written by the Constituent Assembly, agreed upon with the Prefects and amended by the Special Committee on "Concertation" in Congress.

The two questions will be approved when the absolute majority of Bolivians vote for the "YES" option. Absolute majority in Bolivia means 50 per cent of the valid votes plus one per cent (50 + 1). The document will be completed in Congress by including the winning paragraph in the private property question. Then it will be sent to the President to be signed.

In the case the "NO" option wins, the current constitution will remain in force.

From this point on, it all comes down to the number of voters who can vote. I took this table from the official National Electora Court (CNE) report on the registry, the National Voters Registry or Padrón Nacional Electoral. The CNE audited the registry because of fraud allegations and published the report on its website.

As you can see, 3.89 million Bolivians are registered and ready to vote tomorrow. To get a better idea, however, one has to divide this table in regions. The one region is the denominated Half Moon or Media Luna, which includes Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando, Beni and now Sucre. This region is known as the opposition and thus believed to vote for the NO option. According to the table, the number of voters in this region make up 1.418 million voters. That would represent, approximately, 36 per cent of the total electorate. The other region, the one believed to support (overwhelmingly) the government, make up 2.473 voters, which represent around 64 per cent of the total voters.

Assuming these two regions vote strictly by their preferences, it is an easy win for the government. That is almost exactly what the government predicted in its latest survey made public (see my post on January 1, 2009). Now, I am guessing it will not be that easy for the government because of the fact that the Oruro constitution has many detractors in the YES regions as well. And, of course, the opposite hapens in the NO regions.

According to this simple observation, then, the new constitution should be approved with out problems. Again, assuming the overwhelming support in the respective regions stays constant, as many assume it will.

So far, there are no indicators which tell us how successful have been the campaigns of the two groups. All we know, from observation, is that both sides have carried out ferocious campaigns which have reached deep into the country. Also, both sides have spent a lot of money on radio, television and newspaper ads and many campaigns have even been brought to the internet.

As I stand here, I have to admit, I don't have a clear idea of how will the results come out. My observation says the government will win the approval of its constitution, but my feeling is that the opposition has done a very good job in bringing its message out. At this point, it is very hard to say with clarity who will win. All we know with certainty is that this referendum will be the most "observed" electoral exercise in Bolivia's history. It will have around two hundred international observers and more national observers going from place to place, table to table to see the process develops smoothly.

A bit of history:

On March 6, 2006 - Ley Especial a la Convocatoria de la Asamblea Constituyente No. 3364
On July 2, 2006 - Elections of 266 members of the Constitutional Assembly
On August 6, 2006 - The Constitutional Assembly started work
On December 14, 2007 - The work of the Constitutional Assembly ended
On December 9, 2007 - The new constitution was approved in Oruro (that is why this constitution is known as the Oruro constitution)
On October 21, 2008 - Congress finished the "adjustments" to the Oruro constitution text. Interpretative Law No. 3941 provided the legal framework for these adjustments

There were three referedums in recent history

July 2004 - It was about Bolivia's hydrocarbons policy
July 2006 - About the inclusion of the autonomy issue in the new constitution
August 2008 - Presidential recall referendum

HRW Report: Bolivia

2009-01-15T11:51:00.004+01:00

Bolivia’s deep political, ethnic, and regional divisions and the fragility of its democratic institutions contribute to a precarious human rights situation. Almost two thirds of the population lives below the national poverty line, and over a third— mostly indigenous peoples—lives in extreme poverty.

Since his landslide electoral victory in December 2005, President Evo Morales has sought to introduce a new constitution and other far-reaching reforms. The reform process has contributed to dramatic political polarization within the country, which has led to numerous episodes of political violence. The government’s supporters and its opponents, as well as the police and military, have been accused of killings during violent clashes between rival demonstrators. Investigations into these unlawful killings are often politicized and generally fail to establish criminal responsibility. Despite judicial rulings that civilian courts should have jurisdiction, military courts usually investigate alleged abuses by army troops, further contributing to impunity.

Although Bolivia enjoys diverse media and a vibrant public debate, political polarization has brought violent attacks on journalists and media outlets by both pro-government and opposition demonstrators.

The Referendum in January and the Government's Version

2009-01-01T19:55:00.005+01:00

MABB © ®

The government's office of Public Administration Observatory (OGP), has released this survey on oncoming referendum to approve the new constitution (January 25). Much depends on the results of this referendum. That is why the government is betting the whole house on it. As you can see, the government predicts an overwhelming victory. To the questions Will you vote? the government predicts that 85% of the people will go voting. To the question Will you support the new constitution?, the government is predicting 64% support, nationally.

For more detailed information on how each region comes out, take a look at the report. What surprised me is that the numbers for the "NO" vote in regions such as Santa Cruz, Sucre and Tarija are rather weak. I am attributing this to the fact that the survey comes from the government. However, I would like to see more surveys done.

January will be another interesting month.

The Shape of the Current State

2008-12-30T15:02:00.002+01:00

MABB © ®

This is another graph published by La Razon, which shows which public offices are filled by pro tempore officials. What the article talks about is that the government has appointed pro tempore people to fill these offices. It also shows however, the extent to which the government and MAS have taken over the government. Most, if not all officials, are MAS supporters; people who do not dare question the government or the party.

In prior posts, I have argued that this was part of the government's plans to stay in power. Once they occupy most of these offices, there'll be no one who will question the government's policies.

The Shape of the New State

2008-12-29T11:29:00.002+01:00

MABB © ®

The above graph was published by La Razon today. It gives a glimpse of the future shape of the state. For instance, the president and vicepresident will be elected directly if they get 51% of the vote. If not, they, at least, would've have to obtained 40% with a 10% difference with the second runner up. If this does not happen, the new constitution opened the possibility to a second round of elections between the two most voted candidates.

For the legislative branch, the lower chamber will have 130 members to be elected in a mixed-member proportional representation system. That means, roughly half of the members will be elected by closed lists and the other half will be elected per district, directly. The senate will have 36 members, one more per department than today.

The judicial branch will have a Supreme Justice Tribunal, a Tribunal for Agrarian and Environment, Plurinational Constitutiona Tribunal and Consejo de la Magistratura (the instance in charge of controlling and overseeing the judicial branch). The justices will all be elected, and not nominated as it is now.

Lastly, the new constitution will create a new kind of authority, the indigenous authority. This person will exercise authority in these "indigenous regions" according to the uses and customs of the region.

So much for the new structure of the state.

The tentative schedule is as follows:

January 25, 2009: the approval of the new constitution
December 6, 2009: general elections of the new authorities
April 4, 2010: election of prefects, mayors and governors

Unemployment

2008-12-28T16:28:00.004+01:00

MABB © ®
El Deber published the above survey conducted by Captura Consulting in the central axis (i.e. Eje Troncal). The report says that the major problems the country was going through, for Bolivians, were unemployment, followed by the current economic crisis, inflation, drug trafficking and poverty. At the other end, one can notice that, according to Bolivians, general health, foreign debt and lack of domestic investment are the least worries. When asked how was 2008 for Bolivia, 52% give a mixed review (almost indiferent). As for 2009, most people (55%) think the coming year will be better. In similar manner, people asked said they expect 2009 be a better year for them personally. What a bunch of optimists!

So, in summary, according to the report, people in the cities of Cochabamba, La Paz, Santa Cruz, El Alto, have a mixed review of 2008 but think 2009 will be a better year! From this stand point, Bolivians do have a reason to raise their cups and hope for a better year.

Just found this link with statistics.

End of Year Balance 2008

2008-12-27T23:26:00.003+01:00

MABB © ®

The Bolivian government is trying to pass its 2009 budget, called Presupuesto General de la Nacion or PGN. This is just a proposal for now, until Congress approves it.

According to the government, next year's domestic investment will be in the order of 1.8 billion dollars.

If we take a look at the graph above, taken from the government's proposal PGN, the picture is rather positive. Gee, who'd've thought! The government is projecting an annualized GDP growth of 5.75%, down from 6% in 2008; inflation is projected 10.6%, down from 14% in 2008; the fiscal deficit is projected to be 1.84% of GDP (I assume from GDP, it doesn't specify), while in 2007 there was a historic surplus of 1.7%, and in 2008 the projection is a deficit of 4.1%.

What can you tell from these numbers? Not much! The first thing to remember is that the numbers are from the government. It is logical that they will want to present the rosiest picture they've got. Having said that, it calls my attention that they are projecting still a growth for 2009, while many analysts are saying the region will be touched by the global financial crisis. I mean, the biggest economies in the world are projecting recession, that means less demand for foreign products, the price of oil is down to the mid 30s (let's remember the price of natual gas is coupled with the price of oil), trade benefits for Bolivia with its second largest trade partner (US) has ended in October, etc. Why is the government being so positive about the macro economic conditions? I am thinking if the government makes good on its promise to invest 1.8 bn, then economic growth can be possible. They are counting on it.

In addition, it has been reported plenty in the press that inflation in Bolivia in 2009 will be well above the government's predictions to 16% (IMF). But, over the last months, those predictions have been lowered to around 12%. If the government is able to keep up government intake at the level its been having, then they will not need to print more money and inflation will not surge. However, if the price of natural gas keeps down and the government keeps spending the way its projecting to do, then where else will it get the money? It is already projected to make loans of up to 1 bn dollars to YPFB for investments. We'll see.

FYI, here is a statistical report from the National Statistics Institute you can take a look at.

2009 should be another interesting year for Bolivia. This time, the economic factor will be more prominent, I think.

Merry Christmas to Everyone Who Visits MABBlog

2008-12-24T10:00:00.003+01:00

MABB © ®

Since there is little going on in Bolivia, as Bolivians are already full in Christmas mode, I take this opportunity to make my season wishes to all MABBlog visitors.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and may all enjoy the holidays with friends and family.

I will be off line until Friday, at least!

More Critique Starts to Surface

2008-12-17T17:23:00.003+01:00

MABB © ®

Yesterday, I posted that critique against the Morales government, from its own support base, is starting to surface. Today, I read again new critique against the new constitution. La Razon reports that the Tupac Katari Peasant Organization from the province of Omasuyos (in the Altiplano, north from La Paz and Felipe Quispe's home turf) made public a resolution calling the government "traitors to their cause" and saying they will not support the new constitution in the coming approval referendum (January 25). In short, they call for the re-consideration of the constitution approved in Oruro in December 2007. Consequently, they dismiss the new constitution which came out of the negotiations in Congress (October 2008). They further say, they distrust all the "ngo people" working in the government. This refers to the people surrounding the President. Many of them, worked in ngos. The report also mentions critical voices coming from The Public University of El Alto and the Movement Without Land (MST).

From another front, the former Press Secretary, Alex Contreras, qualified Morales' reactions against the press as wrong. Contreras said the President should have concentrated on the persons who named him and not the press. This is a reference to the confrontation Morales is having with the members of the press. Apparently, he was fed up with the press publishing compromising reports about him and a huge smuggling case in Pando. Therefore, Morales decided he would not speak to the Bolivian press anymore and instead would prefer the international press. This has been going on for a couple of weeks, with last week having been one nationally coordinated demonstration from the part of the journalist unions.

Morales' agreements in Congress in October this year to approve "his" constitution is coming back to bite him. He made so many concessions just to approve the constitution that the Oruro document and this new document are very different. This is slowly being realized by the different organizations and movements within the MAS, and the result is that many don't like it. In addition, this last smuggling case incriminating Minister Quintana is turning to be a damaging case for the government. Morales' reaction against the journalists has been seen in many circles as too harsh and simply wrong.

The fissures within MAS are starting to show. The interesting question for me is, from a political scientist view, if the MAS as a new form of political party, is able to effectively replace a "traditional" political party.

Critique From the Bases

2008-12-16T12:23:00.002+01:00

MABB © ®

Today I read again an article about the critics that have been brewing within the MAS for a long time. These critics, as quiet as they have been, are getting louder. At least, that is my perception.

Today's La Razon, published the opinions of Felipe Quispe, leader of Movimiento Indigena Pachakuti and Alejo Veliz, a long time leader in the coca growers movement. These two people belong to the increasingly critical indigenist wing within MAS. Just FYI, you can get a good english description of the internal squabbles of MAS in Donna Lee Van Cott's book From Movements to Parties in Latin America.

Quispe told La Razon that it wasn't just Quinatana's presence in government, but most of the people around Morales, who, according to his opinion, could not interpret correctly the preferences of the people. Veliz, in turn, criticized that Morales surrounded himself with people from NGOs and not with indigenists. These people, according to Veliz, have their own interests in mind and not those of the people.

I May, I saw an interview in Bolivian television to Felix Patzi (link to a post in MABB), an indigenist intellectual who criticized Morales sharply for surrounding himself with what Patzi called the traditional left. He said Morales' government was "hijacked" by this "obsolete and radical" left and that this left was not in tune with MAS' original objectives and purposes. In that sense, Morales had veered away from the origins of MAS.

This criticism is louder within MAS, but it just doesn't make for many headlines. Now that the government started to use security forces to repress some protests (today there were reports that a clash in Patacamaya had left at least one dead), it might set the stage for a different relationship between the, so called, social movements and the government.

The Performance of the Bolivian Finance Minister

2008-12-10T15:15:00.003+01:00

MABB © ®

La Razón, reported about a published survey by América Economía, where a panel of 140 international economists rate the best finance ministers in the region.

The report does not touch on Bolivia, but one can see from the graphs that Bolivia ransk very low among its peers. It is pretty discouraging to see the perception of Bolivia in the international arena is so low.

The Power Struggle in Bolivia Retreats to the Legal Arena

2008-12-04T14:03:00.000+01:00

MABB © ®

The power struggle between the current government and the opposition has left, for now, the political arena to move on to the legal arena. Now that there is a new deal regarding the constitution and all the parts are waiting for next year's approval referendum, the battle has been continuing on the courts.

On the one side, the government has continued with its "witch hunt". The strategy is to remove the opposition or to weaken it as much as possible with any means. First, the government tried the ballot boxes at the recall referendum, where it did remove two thorns, Jose Luis Paredes, former Prefect of La Paz and Manfred Reyes Villa, former Prefect of Cochabamba. It seems that the next step is to try the law. One Prefect is already removed. Leopoldo Fernandez, former Prefect of Pando, has been taken to La Paz and has been incarcerated. In addition, the government has also "taken" many civic activists from Pando to La Paz to face charges against them. Now, it seems that Tarija is next and therefore the government has been also "taking" some civic activists to La Paz to process them.

The actions of the government has alarmed the opposition. It is currently in the process of re-organizing itself to respond to these attacks. In addition, it has initiated its own legal process to counter these attacks. The Santa Cruz Prefect, Ruben Costas, together with the people left in the Conalde (Natinal Council for Democracy), which groups the opposition, has initiated paperwork to accuse the Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana and the Ministry of Government, Alfredo Rada for having staged the Porvenir killings and conspire to remove elected authorities, such as Leopoldo Fernandez, by fabricating and manipulating evidence.

All these are indictions that the power struggle in Bolivia is far from over and the battle goes on.

At the same time, there is an important piece of news coming out fron the Judicial branch of government itself. All the organisms in this branch (the Supreme Court, Constitutional Tribunal, the Judicative Council, and the Agrarian Court) got together in the city of Trinidad, Beni for the 6th Judicial Power Summit. In this meeting, the branch presented a resolution where they express their worries and critiques to the governmet arguing that the current government is contributing to the collapse of the rule of law and the state itself.

In its attempts to dismember the opposition, the government is trampling over other powerful actors such as the Judicial branch. These actors are less likely to stay put if they see danger in their futures. One indication is this recent resolution which heavily criticizes the actions of the Morales government. Other actors, such as the Catholic Church, are also becoming bolder and raising their voices against the government.

What seemed to be over with the agreement on the new constitution is continuing in other arenas outside the political one.

Approval for the New Constitution

2008-11-24T09:00:00.001+01:00

The majority of people in Bolivia agree with the revised version of a new Constitution, according to a poll by Equipos MORI. 56% of respondents support the changes to the new charter agreed upon by government officials and members of the opposition.

The data can be found here.

The above graph is from La Prensa and presents a more condensed situation. Perhaps more to the reality. As you can see the black bars represent approval of the constitution and the white bars represent disapproval. In Santa Cruz, Trinidad, Tarija and Sucre, the people will not accept the new document as the new constitution. While, clearly, La Paz, El Alto, Oruro and Potosi will vote to accept the new constitution. The battle-ground is (to use an American elections term) Cochabamba. Three percentage points separates the yes from the no, in favor of the yes.

According to the simple average I took based on the above data, the constitution has an approval rate of 43%, while 39% of the people disapproves of it. This is a significantly different number from the number I quoted from Angus Reid above. I don't know whether they use a different source, but it seems they base their numbers on the same Mori survey.

One more thing to observe is the percentage of undecided, the gray bar. According to the numbers above around 19% of the electorate are not sure they'll support the new constitution. What is more interesting is that in the departments where the no-vote is higher, the undecided seem to be higher. In the departments where the yes-vote is higher there seems to be less undecided, with perhaps the exception of La Paz, where the undecided vote makes 33%.

One thing seems to be clear, if the vote would be now, it looks like the new constitution would be approved. The campaigns have started and it seems it will be a hard fought battle. I expect the government to continue bombarding people with adds through radio and TV. Likewise, I expect the opposition to do the same, but at a more local level. In the end, I think the difference will be that the government has a national strategy and the opposition doesn't. If the opposition will coordinate at a national level perhaps it will have a chance. That is, provided they have the same funds the government will have at its disposal.

Evo Morales in my Alma Mater

2008-11-23T13:31:00.000+01:00

MABB © ®

Morales, in his recent visit to Washington, DC, chose to hold a speech at my Alma Mater, American University. AU, has been an important place for politicians (international and national) to express their views, when it was important for them that their words would resound inside the Beltway.

In recent history, people like John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter (who's no stranger to AU) and Bill Clinton, to cite a few, have used their time at AU to make important speeches. I personally, profited from this while at AU and heard the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton (1997), Shimon Perez, and others that scape my memory.

Morales was a natural to speak at AU, where progressive (meaning left leaning) ideas are the order of the day. Not to say that conservative ideas are not present. For what I remember, there is a lively debate between these two camps in campus.

But, as far a Morales is concerned, his speech was well received by the people. He got cheered when he entered the room and people laughed at his jokes.

Morales used this speech to try to convey, what it seems to me, a contradictory message to the future US government. He said he was expecting to have a better relationship with Obama and at the same time he kept attacking the DEA, USAID, the US Embassy in Bolivia, etc. I say contradictory because for the US government, if you attack the mechanisms that build that relationship, what kind of relationship will be built?

If you are interested to watch his speech, you can visit AU's speeches page. There you can download the video and watch it.

Possible Contenders in Next Year's Elections

2008-11-16T09:03:00.000+01:00

MABB © ®

If the new Constitution is approved next year in January, which is expected to happen, the next step will be to pass laws to start implementing the new system. After that, the other significant event will be the general elections in December 2009.

For the latter, there are already groups trying to get together to offer an alternative to MAS.

For example, Samuel Doria Medina, leader of the political party UN, wants to start a group called National Alliance. For that he invited all leaders who want to participate. He also wants to directly elect the person who will lead this front into the elections.

The Santa Cruz Prefect, Ruben Costas, also wants to create an alternative, the National Ample Front. His idea is to group together regional parties to promote autonomy as a central issue.

In addition, in Santa Cruz there are two other groups wanting to organize. One group will be an initiative from the Santa Cruz faction in Congress. Those Senators and Deputies who once represented PODEMOS, which, as of today, it seems destined to extinction. The other project is denominated Equalitarian Collective, which will have a leftist leaning.

In the Andes, as it was to be expected, Felipe Quispe wants to make a comeback with his party, Pachakuti Indigenous Movement. He wants to dispute the leadership with Evo Morales.

Also, former leader of FSUTCB and CSUTCB, activist Alejo Veliz, has created Pulso (Peoples for Liberty and Sovereignty). It is believed he will be taking part on the next elections.

Another front from the Altiplano (high plateau) is the Potosi Alianza Social (Social Alliance) lead by Mayor Rene Joaquino. He has already taken part in the last elections. It is also to be expected for him to take part in the oncomong elections. He has a commanding lead in Potosi.

On the side of the traditional political parties, the MNR is currently trying to clean up house and get ready for next year. I am expecting also that MIR, to a most regional level, will be taking part in next years elections.

There is an unconfirmed rumor that former Presidents Carlos Mesa and Rodriguez Velze, together with former Vicepresident Victor Hugo Cardenas, will be organizing a group to participate in the elections next year. The rumor is going on strong because neither party, especially Mesa, wants to deny it.

Of course, MAS will be taking part as the current major political force to reckon with.

That seems to be the future political landscape. Notice that there are few political parties and lots of alliances. This is attributed to the still going on crisis in the Bolivian political party system. A new animal has appeared, the civic alliance.

On the January 2009 Referendum - The Ballot

2008-11-09T18:19:00.001+01:00

MABB © ®

This is the ballot to be used in the January 2009 referendum, when Bolivians are supposed to decide over the text article number 398 is supposed to have and approve or reject the newly negotiated constitution (click on the image to see a larger version).

The first part asks voters to decide whether article 398 should read, in its final sentence, 10,000 (24 710 acres) or 5,000 hectares (12 355 acres). The article pretends to regulate the private property of large pieces of "productive" land. Productive here, is defined as land that has a social function. Please, don't ask me what social function is, because it is not defined.

The second part asks voters to approve or disapprove the new constitution, which was written by the Constituent Assembly, agreed upon with the Prefects and amended by the Special Committee on Concertation in Congress.

This referendum is the next milestone Bolivia, Bolivians, the government and the political leadership have to go through in order to bring Bolivia away from the current crisis.

The bloodiest constitution writing process

While most constitution writing processes are prone to social unrest, political polemic, long and heated debates and full of accusations and even insults, the latest Bolivian attempt to write a new constitution was one of the bloodiest in recent history.

According to a report in La Razon, there were 25 deaths product of the intolerance and intransigence the opposition and the government negotiated the document.

The process started on August 6, 2006, as Evo Morales sought to drive his political agenda ahead.
Six months later, and after serious delays on the constitutional assembly process, the first 3 victims fell. On January 11, 2007 government followers and supporters of the then Cochabamba Prefect, Manfred Reyes, clashed without control and without the presence of the police. Reyes had announced he would push through autonomy for Cochabamba.

Eight months later, on September 24 - 26, 2007, police forces and protesters clashed on the streets of the city of Sucre (a.k.a. Chuquisaca), with 3 more people dead. The civic organizations had called supporters to action to force the Constituent Assembly to include the moving of the capital to Sucre in the debate.

But September 11 - 12, 2008 were the bloodiest of days of all. In one of the most violent confrontations between government supporters and opposition forces, 18 died in the small town of Porvernir, in Pando department. The conflict grew out of protests from the opposition departments (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija) in response to the government's efforts to impose its constitution and the reduction of the department's intake from natural gas exports (IDH). In the same month, September 17, one young opposition supporter, member of the UCJ (in Spanish Union Juvenil Crucenista) died beaten by government supporters.

The calculations on how much money was spent in this process are still being made. However, no matter how expensive it was, the loss of one life was too much.

Latinos Surrounding Obama

2008-11-05T11:30:00.001+01:00

MABB © ®

Here is an article, in Spanish, talking about the Latinos surrounding Obama. Obama himself admitted he does not much about the region and thus it is important to get to know the people with whom he intends to associate in order to get advice.

One guy, Dan Restrepo, was already mentioned in the prior post but the rest not. I only know Arturo Valenzuela from his academic work. The rest of the guys are: Riordan Roett, Gregory Craig and Frank Sanchez (I am not sure about the link).

And, here is an article in Times magazine about why Bolivia is quiting the US war on drugs.

Possible US Approaches to Latin America and Bolivia

2008-11-03T17:42:00.002+01:00

MABB © ®

Update:
Ok, here is a brief summary of the interview with Dan Restrepo, Obama adviser on Latin America.

Obama's approach

1. Meetings with leaders (Chavez and Castro) (with conditions) to convey democratic values
2. Cooperation on Democracy and security
3. The establishment of a Latin America office (in the White House?)
4. Revision of NAFTA
5. Support of TLC with Peru
6. Critical of CAFTA
7. Support Colombian on security
8. Critical of Colombian action against union leaders and ONGs
9. Skeptical of TLC with Colombia (wants to make it conditional upon the criticism)
10. Will focus more on Mexico-US border control and domestic reduction of use of drugs
11. Allow Cubans in Miami to visit family in Cuba and send money
12. Continuation of the embargo

A commenter asked, does it really make a difference if we get to know McCain's approach to Latin America? At this point in time, I tend to make myself the same question.

Also, in July this year I have taken a look at this same question and looked for some clarity on Obama's and McCain's approach to Latin America.

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I will be following the race with the help of the Washington Post. Just in case you want to do the same, here is how.

Washingtonpost.com throughout the day for the latest news, election returns and commentary from our writers, analysts and others.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Share your voting experience and find out how it compares to what other voters are finding with Vote Monitor.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008/vote-monitor/

Come back in the evening to watch our Live Election Webcast beginning at 6 p.m. on postpoliticstv.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/postpoliticstv/

Get Breaking News on Your Mobile Device. Text "ELECTIONS" to WPOST (97678) for breaking news and race calls delivered via text message.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/contents/mobile/alerts.html

Follow your favorite blogs and columnists, and access state-by-state election results, on our mobile site at twp.com.
http://www.twp.com/

Twitter users can have Post state calls delivered throughout the evening via our results-only Twitter feed.
http://twitter.com/washpostresults

Navigate Post Election Day coverage on TimeSpace, an application that maps news stories, blog posts, photos, videos and more.
http://specials.washingtonpost.com/timespace/election/

Listen to an election day preview on the Post Politics Podcast.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/podcastfront.htm#politics

Follow Washington-area races in our Local Elections section.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/elections/2008/index.html

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Otto, a friend of mine, told me about this BBC Mundo article where the two foreign policy advisers from Obama and McCain speak about their own approach to Latin America. This is an interesting article that could shed some light on future policy towards the hemisphere.

I am posting this before I read them, and therefore without commentary.

PS. The article is in Spanish only. Hopefully those of us who read the article will have a discussion so people who cannot read Spanish are able to know what is going on. Otherwise, I will summarize the articles in the next days. Enjoy!

DEA Suspended

2008-11-01T23:43:00.000+01:00

MABB © ®

Morales announced today the indefinite suspension of DEA operations in Bolivia. He accused the DEA of political activities, such as financing the opposition in 'rebel' departments, spying and transporting unknown cargo in and out of Pando, Beni and Santa Cruz.

In addition to that, Morales announced he will wait for the next administration to ask for Bolivia to be placed back into the beneficiary countries list.

The big question is, what will Obama do in the case of Bolivia? (is there any doubt now that Obama will be the next president of the US?) Judging from his willingness to speak to Raul Castro, his inclination to lift the long standing Cuba embargo and his willingness to dialog with Hugo Chavez, it is very probable that Obama will put back Bolivia on the list.

Or, will Obama stick to the American line of foreign policy towards Latin America?

Big question!

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4A01IW20081101
http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia1.php?id=1&identificador=740&bdatos=notiportada1

The New Constitution

2008-10-24T01:05:00.002+02:00

MABB © ®

This is the first version I've seen of the new constitution. Take a look at here (in Spanish only).

Here is the old version to compare it to.

With a bit more time I will post some opinions.

Enjoy!

Referendum to Approve the Constitution

2008-10-21T20:27:00.000+02:00

¿Esta usted de acuerdo con refrendar el texto de la nueva Constitución Política del Estado, presentado por la Asamblea Constituyente y ajustado por la Comisión especial de Concertación del Honorable Congreso Nacional, que incluye los consensos logrados en el diálogo entre el Gobierno con los prefectos y representantes municipales sobre autonomías, incorporando el resultado de la consulta sobre el artículo 398 a ser resuelto en este mismo referéndum y que la misma sea promulgada y puesta en vigencia como nueva Ley Fundamental del Estado boliviano?

Do you approve the text of the new constitution, as presented by the Constituent Assembly and adjusted (amended) by Congress, which include the agreement of the dialog between the government with the prefects and municipal representatives, and incorporates the result of the referendum regarding article 398 to be resolved in this same referendum, and that the new constitution be promulgated and designated as the new fundamental law of the Bolivian state?

Sorry, the question is enormous, but that is the way Spanish is used. Though, some referendum questions in English are not so different.

I got this from Fides.

Agreement is Reached in Bolivia

2008-10-21T12:46:00.003+02:00

MABB © ®

In the early hours of October 21, 2008, the government of Bolivia and the opposition in Congress reached an agreement on what will become the new Bolivian Constitution (Constitución Política del Estado Boliviano).

After grueling months of conflicts, which brought Bolivia several times to the brink of collapse, and 12 days of negotiations, around 100 articles modified and endless verbal confrontations, the new Bolivian constitution was finally agreed upon.

To reach this accord, the government had to show its flexibility and let up its hard line position. The opposition is the relative winner in my opinion.

The re-election of the president was the last difficult issue. President Morales accepted in the end to reduce his ambitions to stay until 2019 and accept a one term re-election after the new constitution is enacted, that is he would be able to run for office and theoretically stay until 2014.

First, Congress had to pass a law re-interpreting article 233 of the current constitution. This article gives Congress the power to 'adjust' and fine-tune the new text without changing the character of the document. Congress has to approve these 'adjustments' by 2/3 vote.

Once these 'adjustments' were done, the president signed the new law and only then the constitution could be 'adjusted'. After the adjustments were done, the Congress drafted the law convoking a referendum to approve the new constitution.

The schedule runs as follows:

Last night, Congress approved the law calling for the referendum to approve the new constitution. This referendum will be carried out on January 25, 2009. If the new constitution is approved, this would give free way to the next general elections on December 2009, where new President, Vicepresident and legislators would be elected. The new constitution is set to come into effect from January 1, 2010 on.

In January there will be two questions, one asking to decide for the size of land tenure (between 5000 and 10000 hectares) and to approve or disapprove the new constitution.

The agreements are set, but the new constitution is not yet drafted. There is an attentive expectation from the part of the opposing departments (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija and Sucre). They want to keep any opinion until they've had the chance to see the document.

However, these departments warned of their skepticism for the new constitution. The legislative factions of these regions voted against the law calling for the referendum. That was a sign that they were not happy with the agreements.

The Path to the New Constitution

2008-10-21T12:26:00.000+02:00

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The following photos are taken from ABI.

These photos depict the march towards Congress. Morales caught up with the march in El Alto and led it to its destiny, the Murillo square (Plaza Murillo, the seat of government).

Plaza Murillo in daylight. Congress was in the building negotiating and debating. In essence, doing what they should have done a long time ago.

Notice the presence of police in front of the building. This is a change of strategy by the government. Initially, the police was supposed to stay away.

The Plaza Murillo at night. The people had decided to stay there until an accord was reached.

Evo celebrates his triumph.

The State of Negotiations in the Bolivian Congress

2008-10-20T15:30:00.001+02:00

MABB © ®

It seems as though the negotiations in the Concerting or Compatibility Commission in Congress are going rather well. Positions have come closer and some agreements are starting to filter out. Issues such as land tenure and use, as well as autonomy are said to being close to an agreement.

There is one issue, however, that is standing out because of its difficulty. It turns out that the government wants to call to general elections as soon as the constitution is approved. This would mean that on January, general elections would be called so that in June a new President, Vicepresident and legislators would be elected. This would mean, in turn, the reduction of mandates.

It is a hard issue because we are talking about elections in no other place than Congress, where the eyes of politicians is not only on the present but also on the next elections. The opposition does not want to accept what they call the reduction of mandates because according to their calculations this would favor Morales.

The opposition thinks or calculates that in the next two years, Morales will still have strong support. Therefore, he is not afraid to go to the polls because he knows he will win. The most pressing possibility however is that the opposition will lose its grip on the Senate and thus render it utterly useless.

Therefore, the opposition is proposing to have the new constitution enter into force after the next elections (in 2010) as the new government takes office. This, would at least give them time to get together and ready themselves for a new electoral exercise.

In the mean time, the Conalcam has reached El Alto and is now, as I type, on its way to plaza Murillo and Congress. Surco, the President, has said the organizations will not leave until the new law calling for a referendum to approve the new constitution is passed. That means, they will siege Congress and stay there to pressure legislators to pass the law.

As you have see on my earlier post, some legislators have gone prepared to congress bringing their own mattresses in order to stay in the building and prevent any political maneuvering from the part of the government.