Bolivian Referendumitus

Readers:

While I remain on the road (in Washington this week, meeting with my supervisors at the CIA) political events continue to spin forward in Bolivia. Here is a report from Aldo Orellana and Lily Whitesell on one of those important events, the autonomy votes last Sunday in two Cochabamba departments.

Jim Shultz

Bolivian Referendumitus

On Sunday, June 1, the regional authorities of Pando and Beni brought their autonomy statute legislation, which they had approved in December 2007, to a public vote.

The results were not unexpected. According to the local press’ numbers from Sunday night, the yes vote won more than 80% of the vote in both regions. However, absenteeism, which the Morales government heralded as the best way to express disapproval of the vote, reached levels that gave autonomy supporters in the media luna reason to worry, above all in Pando. (The media luna is the group of four regions that voted in favor of autonomy in a 2006 Constituent Assembly referendum: Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija. The prefects, or regional governors, of these four regions are leaders in the opposition against President Morales.)

As the results came in, there was a moment in which the level of absenteeism in Pando came dangerously close to 50%. According to the regulations that govern Bolivia’s referendums, if less than 50% of the eligible population had voted, the referendum vote would have been declared invalid.

The initial reactions of the Morales government were given by the government minister Alfredo Rada, who told the La Paz press that, “the call for autonomy cannot continue to be damaged like this, with these illegal processes [referendum votes] that have no backing. Beyond the media’s attempts to create pyrrhic victories, they are simply going to end up hurting the autonomy cause, which is a legitimate one and which has public support.”

Unfortunately, there were allegations of election fraud in Pando and an attack on the headquarters of the small farmers’ union in Beni. The government accused the Santa Cruz Youth League (Union Juvenil Cruceñista) of being behind the attack.

The Referendums as a Measure of the Prefects’ Popularity

The results of the Beni and Pando referendums – unlike the comments made after the May 4 referendum in Santa Cruz – provoked much speculation about the popularity of the prefects, or regional governors, with a view towards the upcoming August 10th vote. That grand finale of this series of referendums will be a recall election in which President Morales and all nine of the prefects will be subject to an up-or-down vote.

The Beni prefect, Ernesto Suárez, enjoys more popular support in his region than does the Pando prefect, Leopoldo Fernández, who is in far more danger of being recalled on August 10th. For more on the upcoming elections see here.


By playing the recall election card, the government is trying to hit the autonomy-favoring regions hard and destroy the media luna prefects’ coalition. It will target the most vulnerable prefects. At this time, those look to be in Pando and possibly Tarija, which will hold a referendum on its autonomy statutes just when the recall election campaign is most intense, on June 22. If the June 22 autonomy referendum fails in Tarija – or if the prefect loses the recall vote – it would not only fracture the autonomy movement, but also give the Morales government new influence in the strategic gas-rich region.

Tarija’s Turn

Yesterday the Tarija prefect, Mario Cossio, was in the Beni capital celebrating that region’s yes vote for the autonomy statutes. On that occasion, he assured that Tarija would have little difficulty voting the same way.

The June 22 vote in Tarija will be the last autonomy statute referendum of the four regions that make up the media luna. Cossio asserted that, “Today we are four, tomorrow we will be five, then six and in the end, nine autonomous regions,” clearly alluding to a process in which autonomy is thought to be inevitable by its supporters.

Tarija, however, has a different political panorama than the other three regions of the media luna. On one hand, there is a strong small farmer movement which rejects the autonomy statutes, on the other there is a strong civic movement in the Chaco region which supports autonomy but rejects regional centralism. The Chaco region has a decent amount of weight in Tarija because it is there that the largest gas and petroleum reserves in Bolivia are concentrated.

The Chaco region, without whose support the June 22 referendum could easily fail, has even proposed separating from Tarija and creating a tenth region in the country together with the Chaco areas of the Santa Cruz and Chuquisaca (Sucre) regions. Although the Chaqueños’ demand is not currently moving forward in any way, it is a latent danger for the supporters of autonomy.

Given this situation, the Tarija prefect has seen the political necessity of negotiating with the Chaco authorities and has had to give up important powers to a sub-regional level of government. One of those is the direct election of subprefects, who currently are named specifically by the Tarija prefect.

If Mario Cossio continues to negotiate with the Chaco region leadership and with the small farmer sector, the Tarija autonomy statute could achieve a certain balance in its content and the support of the population would be far less divided than in Beni, Pando, and Santa Cruz.

Written by Aldo Orellana and Lily Whitesell.