Report from Sucre

Readers,

Once again with this post we return to The Democracy Center team in Sucre, the city named for Bolivia's first President and the site of the nation's constitution-writing Constituent Assembly. Today's post sets the scene and captures a snapshot of a day on the life of one of the Assembly Commissions.

Jim Shultz


Report from Sucre

We arrived in Sucre one Tuesday morning, the week before Independence Day, Aug 6, which also marks the one-year anniversary of the Constituent Assembly. Known as the White City or the Athens of America, Sucre’s population of just under 250,000 is settled in a valley of low mountains. It was a pre-colonial capital and then wore many names under Spanish rule – La Plata, Chuquisaca, and finally Sucre in 1840, to honor the General who fought for its independence in 1825.

A year ago, this beautiful and sleepy city was transformed into a buzzing community of Constituent Assembly representatives and support staff. Even on the streets, one feels the dignified but busy atmosphere. When the morning meetings let out for lunchtime, Sucre’s eating establishments – from cafés and restaurants to the pensions in the marketplace (popular-style restaurants that serve local food) are filled with small groups of representatives. Many of the representatives even rent rooms in the same buildings, forming enclaves and communities dispersed throughout the city.

Teatro Gran Mariscal

Most of the action is concentrated in two buildings, the Teatro Gran Mariscal and the Colegio Junín. Teatro Gran Mariscal, where the plenary (full-congress) sessions take place, sits four blocks north of Sucre’s main plaza, next to Bolivia’s Supreme Court. It is the kind of elegant colonial-style building that Sucre is known for with its ornate white columns, topped with the Bolivian flag of red, yellow, and green flying proudly next to the red and white departmental flag for Chuquisaca. Sucre remains the judicial capital of Bolivia, the seat of the Supreme Court, while executive and legislative headquarters of the government are in La Paz.

Inside, the room where the Constituent Assembly meets for floor debate is reminiscent of European opera houses, with three tiered balconies adorned with pale yellow and white carvings of lion heads. Two hundred and fifty five oak desks fill the floor of what would be audience seating, each equipped with a microphone and a call box. Marble staircases outside the theater lead up to the second floor press and visitors’ balconies.

That Tuesday evening, the Gran Mariscal was filled with representatives. They were preparing to vote on the final report of the Assembly’s operating expenses for the past year. As the vote drew nearer, the debate grew more and more intense. Opponents to the approval of the report steadily raised their voices claiming that there had not been enough transparency in the fiscal administration. Other representatives called out, “If you are against what this Constituent Assembly is doing, why don’t you give back your salary from the last year?”

One representative opposing the passage of the report kept protesting insistently. Constituent Assembly President Silvia Lazarte finally cut off the debate, calling for a vote. The representative continued to argue and insist loudly throughout the vote, even though the budget report passed with nearly two-thirds majority.

Colegio Junín

Colegio Junín is the second oldest public school in Bolivia, founded in 1621. It was still functioning as a school up until a year before the Constituent Assembly was convened, when it began to be repaired. Since then, it has been converted from a schoolyard into Constituent Assembly Central. It does not look that impressive from the outside, but the inside opens up to a large cobblestone patio surrounded by two floors of offices, with balconies painted blue and orange.

These days, the patio and halls are filled with clusters of reporters and their technical crews gathered around individual representatives speaking on the latest proceedings. Each commission office hums with activity – representatives’ assistants and commission staff discussing the latest happenings of the commission and, in interior meeting rooms, representatives working out new agreements on article language and text.

In mid-July, the 21 commissions assigned to write the main articles of the new Constitution, finished debating and finalizing the articles they will propose, be they by consensus, by majority, or by minority. Now the commissions that overlap on their approved articles are meeting together in joint meetings to iron out the differences and redundancies. Support staff familiar with the process estimate that the mixed meetings will take another month to present a coherent and usable product.

After the mixed meetings, the next step will be the Settlement Commission (Comisión de Concertación). The Assembly leadership will join forces with the heads of the political parties and the presidents of the commissions to try to reach compromises and approve more articles of the new Constitution by consensus. Then the Constitution will be sent to the full Assembly (plenary session) for debate and a final decision, in which each article must be approved by a 2/3 vote.

[In a previous blog post we wrote that the Settlement Commission would be meeting in the week up to August 6. That is not the case, as the entire process will be extended through to December 14 of this year.]

The commissions are remarkably open to public access. Anyone is able to sit in on most committee meetings, and the Assembly representatives, when not rushing to the next meeting, are very open to questions and conversations afterwards. One morning while we were there, the extent of that openness was tested.

It was a joint meeting of the New State Structure Commission and the Economic Development and Finance Commission. The representatives had already delved deep into their day’s work when an assistant came in with a message that several spokespeople from the Professionals’ Association, who had organized a march for that morning, wished to meet with them. The joint meeting agreed to let them come in to present their demands. “Five minutes. We can give them five minutes of our time,” the representatives decided.

Then the spokespeople from the Professionals’ Association march filed into the meeting room. Their first few words were humble and flattering to the Constituent Assembly but the tone quickly changed. Spokespeople claimed they had been refused a meeting the day before, a charge the representatives denied, explaining that it must have been another commission.

The professionals began advocating their point, claiming that professionals (doctors, lawyers, architects, pharmacists, etc.) that were associated with them were more reliable and accredited. They presented their demand that the new Constitution include specific protection for Professional Associations. A few Assembly representatives critiqued the associations, citing examples of young professionals who had graduated with honors but who could not afford the steep prices that the associations charge for membership.

Commission President Isabel Dominguez cut off all parties, offering an evening meeting time, which the professionals initially balked at. In the end, after forty-five minutes of initial heated interaction, the representatives even rearranged their afternoon schedules to accommodate the professionals’ spokespeople. The professionals left the room and the joint meeting of the two commissions continued, article by article, smoothing out the differences and overlaps.

The next day, the local press reported that the afternoon meeting had been fruitful for both sides. On one side, the Assembly representatives had ensured the professionals’ right to their associations. In exchange for that greater protection, the associations agreed to reduce the cost of joining to make membership more accessible to all professionals.

Our first few days in Sucre showed us a Constituent Assembly divided by political fault lines and but also willing to listen to other sides of the debates. It is an Assembly whose leaders are seasoned veterans of partisan conflict but also skilled at building compromises between the wide range of people and perspectives that exist in this country.

Written by Leny Olivera, Aldo Orellana, and Lily Whitesell