Morales and Opposition Agree to a January 25 Vote on New Constitution

Readers:

Thank you for so much support for our action campaign to stop the Bush administration from putting more than 20,000 Bolivians out of work by removing Bolivia from the ATPDEA trade program. At this writing more than 400 people have viewed or video testimony and signed the petition in support of these workers.

For those who haven't gotten involved yet but would like to, you can have a look at the video here, and you can add your name to the petition here. We also have a version now in Spanish here.

Jim Shultz
The Democracy Center

Morales and Opposition Agree to a January 25 Vote on New Constitution

Just before 1pm – before a crowd 100,000 strong, that packed Plaza Murillo so tightly that even elbow room was scarce – President Evo Morales signed into law a measure setting a January vote on his party's embattled proposal for a new constitution.

Approval of the law caps a process that began more than two years ago with election of delegates to a constitution-writing Constituent Assembly. That process ran through a national battle over how many votes should be required to approve it; violence over demands by Sucre that it be named the country's capital; a political showdown in a voter referendum last August; and finally a week of violence in September in Pando and Santa Cruz that left more than 30 people dead.

The vote by Congress today was supported by more than 2/3 of its members and by Morales' MAS party along with the three major parties of the opposition, PODEMOS, UN, and MNR. The vote on the constitution is set for January 25, 2009.

[Here is a link to The Democracy Center's November 2007 briefing paper: Re-Founding Bolivia: A Nation's Struggle Over Constitutional Reform and other articles we've published on the constitutional reform process.]

How did Bolivia Get Here?

How did Bolivia – a nation so polarized that serious analysts spoke of 'civil war' – arrive at a place of such startling agreement (at least on the decision to hold a vote)? Three events were key.

The first was the August 10 elections. Before then the political duel between Morales and his opponents, most notably the renegade governors, seemed roughly balanced. It was an election launched by one of Morales' fiercest opponents among the governors, Cochabamba's Manfred Reyes Villa. But when the votes were counted, 67% of Bolivia's electorate sided with the President and both Reyes Villa and the governor of La Paz, another Morales adversary, were trounced out of office.

After months of the opposition talking tough it turned out that all their bluster had only solidified Morales' base more broadly behind him.

The second event that led to today's agreement was Bolivia's own version of 9/11, the massacre on that date in Pando that left more than 30 campesino backers of Morales dead. Coming on the heels of opposition mobs in Santa Cruz torching and looting public buildings there, the opposition combined its loss at the polls with a loss of whatever moral authority it might have had up until then. The balance of political clout tilted quickly and heavily toward Morales.

Finally, there is the intervention just after the Pando massacre of the other South American Presidents. Led by the two women, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Michelle Bachalet of Chile, the continent's leaders wasted no time in weighing in diplomatically. At a summit held in Chile with Morales at the center the Presidents made clear that he had their support, told opposition leaders to forget any dreams they might have had about independent deals to sell gas and oil from their departments, and called on all sides to negotiate.

Those negotiations began in Cochabamba nearly a month ago and stretched into La Paz this week, given added urgency by a 200 kilometer march to the capital of tens of thousands of Morales supporters demanding a national vote on the constitution. Opponents had criticized the march as it headed toward La Paz, deeming it a violent mob.

But as the multitudes camped overnight in the historic plaza at the steps of Congress, the sounds were not of smashing windows, but of music and song. A starker contrast could not be found between that scene and the one hosted by Morales opponents just over a year ago in Sucre, when they used violence to shut down the Constituent Assembly.

What Did Evo Give Away?

It will take a while to get the details on exactly what was negotiated in the last days in La Paz. At first glance it seems like plenty.

Of the 411 articles in the proposed constitution, more than 100 were modified in some way according to Bolivian news reports. Opposition leader Jorge Quiroga of PODEMOS, Morales' chief opponent in the 2005 election, was boasting on CNN mid-afternoon that his party had secured more than 200 different changes. Among them are significant concessions from MAS on provisions dealing with the media and establishment of mechanisms for "social control" of public agencies, something that had been a key demand from Morales backers.

Bolivian news reports also say that Morales has agreed to recognize and support the autonomy statutes approved in four departments. One newspaper, Los Tiempos, also reported that the key issue of land reform had been delegated to "future action." What that means precisely is more than unclear. The devil is in the details and the details have yet to be fully analyzed.

The issue, however, that leapt to the forefront in the final negotiations was one simple to understand and close to the heart of the politicians on both sides – presidential re-election. Under Bolivia's current constitution presidents may not serve consecutive terms. It is five years than out, though they can seek to return to office five years later, as Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada did in 2002.

Originally Morales and MAS wanted unlimited opportunities for re-election. That eventually got negotiated, in the document approved by the Constituent Assembly, down to letting the President seek just one additional term. But since it was not to include the five-year span Morales is currently serving, the chance at two additional terms translated out to the possibility of a Morales presidency through 2019, a poison scenario for the opposition.

The compromise worked out this week, and the basis for Congress' approval, is a concession by Morales that the term Morales would seek would count. If approved in January, the new constitution would allow Morales to campaign for just one more consecutive term, in elections that would be held in December 2009. That limits Morales' potential presidential horizon to 2014, a substantial concession.

Two Long Roads

Bolivia's constitutional story is one of two long roads.

The first is the one that led to today. The demand for a constituent assembly, which goes back decades in many indigenous communities in Bolivia, was envisioned originally as a process that excluded politicians and political parties. The idea was to create, at a national level, a process akin to community decision making at the local level. The people would be sovereign and the politicians and parties would have to sit on the sidelines and watch.

That vision of things went out the window fast and early when, shortly after taking office in 2006, Morales and MAS had to negotiate with their opponents in Congress to win approval of a law convening the vote for delegates to that Assembly. In a deal mutually beneficial to politicians of all parties, they were not only let back into the process but put in charge of it. Candidates had to be affiliated with a political party to run, and the Assembly ended up looking pretty much like Congress, but with another name and a less-decorated meeting venue.

The scrambled negotiations this month between Morales and the Congress put the political icing on a political cake. In the end it was not an Assembly of the people or a process of long deliberation that did the final sculpting of Bolivia's likely new Magna Carta. It was politicians acting in haste to cut a deal.

The other long road is the one that comes next. In any nation, but in Bolivia especially, the distance between words on paper and actual changes in people's day-to-day lives is measured not in weeks or months but in years and decades. What difference a new constitution will make in terms of broader economic opportunity, deeper accountability of government, or greater social justice is unclear.

Nevertheless, for those who have invested great hope and emotion in the fight for a constitution they want to call their own, today is a historic day in Bolivia. Given Morales' strong backing in August, it seems unlikely that he and his supporters will have trouble securing the simple majority support they will need in January. So the constitution approved by the Congress seems clearly headed for enactment.

It is also a historic day for those who favor peace over conflict. Once again, after having looked over into the abyss, the nation has inched itself back onto the ledge. In Bolivia the "most dangerous road in the world" is not the one that foreigners dare on mountain bikes that stretches from La Paz to Coroico. The most dangerous road in Bolivia is the one that marks the route for political change. Today that road looks both a little more hopeful, and a little safer as well.

A December Vote on a New Constitution?

Readers:

As promised, even though I am in Buenos Aires working this week, we continue with our coverage from Bolivia, courtesey of other members of the Democracy Center team. Here, from Lily Whitesell and others, is a report on the past week's political battles over President Morales' call for a December vote on MAS' proposed new constitution.

Jim Shultz


A December Vote on a New Constitution?

It's not often that the National Electoral Court makes headlines multiple times in one week. But the "CNE" has been taking care of business. It's fining television stations for having shown political ads in the 48 hours before the August 10 recall election. It has begun removing from the voter rolls those Bolivians who didn't vote. And most importantly, on Monday, it declared President Morales' decree - the one which called for a December 7th referendum on the new Constitution - null and void.

The Electoral Court's argument was that a referendum would need to be passed into law by Congress - not the president. (Morales' party MAS controls the House of Delegates, but the opposition controls the Senate by a slim majority.) The decision seemed to catch the Morales administration by surprise.

You can imagine how the week went. On Monday and Tuesday, spokespeople from the government lashed out at the Court and assured that the December 7th referendum would still be held. "We lament and condemn the conduct of the Electoral Court, which without legal nor legitimate arguments, through a letter, has decided to void the decree." No mincing words there. The opposition, on the other side, were thrilled about the decision, but quickly got back to their work of blockading highways and roads about the ongoing struggle about how the gas and oil revenues will be used and distributed.

By Thursday, the opposition was intensifying their blockades and threatening to go for the pipelines that pump gas and oil to Argentina and Brazil. The government, on the other hand, had toned down its rhetoric, with Vice President Lineras expressing the desire to work together and dialogue with the "democratic" part of the Bolivian right wing to get the law passed through Congress.

The Mandate

Last year, the Democracy Center wrote a briefing paper about the Constituent Assembly after a trip to Sucre. One of the main conclusions that we drew from that experience was that the conflict around the Constitution stems from one main issue, one point of disagreement between Evo Morales' supporters and opposers. That was: how much of a mandate does Morales have to shake things up in Bolivia?

Winning the election in 2005 by the highest percentage in Bolivian history - how much of a mandate did that give him? Enough of a mandate to "nationalize" gas (renegotiating contracts), it seems, has been pretty much agreed upon by all sides (they're all fighting over the money now, right?). But enough of a mandate to pass a Constitution that emerged as the second demand of the October 2003 protests? That question has been the source of much of the political back-and-forth of the last year or more.

And now, winning the recall referendum with 67% support, how much of a mandate does that give him? Has anything changed significantly in the political stalemate since where the country was on August 9th? There is still the government, there is still the opposition. Neither has the political will to budge from their current positions. In one sense, nothing has changed.

But in another sense, one key thing is different. If the government finds a way to dialogue with some of the more centrist members of the opposition, and to get the law for a December 7 referendum passed... Well, then maybe that recall election was a warm-up for the real vote. The 67% support for Morales could very easily translate into a 50 plus one percent victory for the Constitution next December.

La Yapa

As your casera can tell you, anything in Bolivia should have some yapa. In this case, we have three interviews from regular people about current events in Bolivia, with more coming next week. A number of them were done on referendum day, long before the Constitutional decree, but their basic messages still shed some light on the ups and downs of this week's events.

As a disclaimer, they are disproportionately from the city, and disproportionately middle class, but there are a variety of people (including one quite well-known Bolivian comedian - make sure to check the blog next week) and opinions among them, which I hope readers will find interesting, if not useful. You can see the videos in full on YouTube by following the links.


Grover Ledezma, a "common and ordinary citizen"

The DC: What do you think of the current political situation?

G: Well, to be honest it's a very complicated moment the one Bolivia is currently going through. It turns out that we currently have two Bolivias, an eastern Bolivia and a western Bolivia. Perhaps the ones that have more complications and to a certain extent have to “pay the broken dishes,” in this situation are the ones, like me, living in the valley. It's a situation where everyone picks sides, so Cochabamba currently finds itself divided by 2 different political views.

The DC: What message would you send to the government and also the opposition party?

G: Well, firstly to the government, for it to govern the whole of Bolivia not just the residents of the West, nor the residents of the tropics or the residents of the high lands of La Paz because we are all Bolivians. And for the opposition to act more cautiously before making its decisions. We just hope that we can all sit together to talk so [Bolivia can be] governable. I wish for a democratic government for all Bolivians and for people to respect a government chosen constitutionally, whether that is at a national level or at a departmental level but in reality we all need to be governed and we must comply with a government that has been constitutionally established.

The DC: Is there anything else you would like to add?

G: Well, surely, the eyes of other neighbor countries including the country of the North are upon Bolivia and I can only think to myself and at times think with other Bolivians on how can it be possible in a country with 8 million people and a country so rich for people not to be able to understand each other. As an intellectual of our country used to say, “the cause of our poverty is our wealth.” Well, we have to start by changing and proposing the construction of a strong democracy and a more socially, politically and economically stable country.

Don Waldo

Honestly, in Bolivia, we have had a split, a falling out between two groups, I would say, between the opposition and the current government, which actually acknowledges the needs of Bolivians, who are always the poorest out of all the countries. Since I am from the long-suffering class, [I support] Evo Morales. I know he knows what the needs of the Bolivian people are. It is really a shame in our country that the “rich” class, as they say, always wants to grab the baby bottle. They are the only ones that do well in life, they don’t let the long-suffering class rise.

Maria Julia

It's not that I disagree with Evo, because there are things that convince me about his work, but I think that there are also things that aren’t handled well. What really bothers me is this revenge logic, this logic of “now it’s our turn”. I think that a president has to shake himself out, I mean his personal identity, or his identity of origin, without forgetting it, but taking on the role of a conciliator, managing to unite all the differences. I don’t want us all to be the same, because we’re all different, but we have to learn to respect those differences. And that means from above, from all sides, from below, from each individual.

I think that before we think about whether we’re with MAS or with the opposition, or from here or from there, we’re all people, and people forget that. And furthermore, we’re all animals, right? But we think we’re the king of natural creation, or who knows what, owners of the land to exploit it and use the resources. To use everything and to use the people too. We forget about respect and being part of something, of a complete world, a balanced world. So I think we also have to make some adjustments in the government, because it’s not a matter of taking turns, it’s a matter of wanting to improve everyone’s lives.

Written by Lily Whitesell

Many thanks to our distance volunteers Ana Carolina Romero, Kristin Bard, and Maren Hill for their help with transcription and translation!