The Constituent Assembly – Lite

It was supposed to be an instrument of popular democracy; the way that Bolivia’s marginalized communities would design a new political system for their nation. It was a demand from the people second only to the call for the nation to take back control of the nation’s gas and oil. “A Constituent Assembly that is sovereign and of the people!” That was the refrain during last December’s heated election campaign.

Three weeks from today Bolivia will shut down for a historic national vote to name representatives to a national constituent assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution. From the way it feels on the street here in Cochabamba, at least, most people couldn’t seem to care less.

A Lifeless Election

In the run-up to the December elections you could feel the process of political transformation; it was palpable. Walls were painted in party colors. Campaign headquarters were being opened in every neighborhood. Flags flew. The newspapers wrote of it endlessly. Candidates were everywhere (it was hard to go to the store to buy milk without running into one). Most importantly, people were talking and debating about the election.

With three weeks to go to the Constituent Assembly vote, it is hard to even know it is coming up. Yesterday in Plaza Colon I spotted my first actual campaigning. PODEMOS, the party of Jorge Quiroga – the once-President and distant second place finisher in December – was running a lackluster motorcade in endless circles around the Plaza, its only sign of life being a blaring instrumental version of the Kjarkas classic, “Viva Cochabamba.”

In the city at least, MAS is even less visible, though I did run into Evo a couple of weeks ago with a head full of mixtura (confetti) standing in the Central Plaza doling out a fresh supply of computers to the regional police. A handful of billboards dot the city featuring the faces of unknown people who occupy the main slates for election. To be honest, it feels something like having the Bush/Kerry slugfest in 2004 turned into a race for leadership of a local mosquito abatement district. It is not just that it lacks the same intensity. It lacks any intensity at all.

How did This Happen?

The first thing is that a Constituent Assembly process that was supposed to be wide open – in which the country’s vibrant social movements would step squarely into the arena of elections and political reform – is instead just one more party for the political parties. It came out that way because the political parties designed it that way.

Parties like MAS, PODEMOS and UN qualified for the ballot automatically. Unions, indigenous groups, and other social movements had to hit the streets and gather 15,000 signatures each – complete with fingerprints and identification card numbers – in a few weeks. You couldn’t qualify a ballot initiative in California under such rules. No surprise; some of the most potent potential competitors to the parties didn’t make it to the ballot at all.

Some in MAS will claim that party dominance of the Assembly vote was the compromise price it had to pay to get the legislation it needed out of Congress to set that popular vote. But MAS was clearly playing the game to filter out or co-opt potential competitors for its base. It found a winning formula in December that it would like to repeat on July 2 – let the traditional parties split their vote and let MAS have the left to itself.

A MAS Backfire Waiting to Happen?

I think it is a strategic decision that could backfire big time on MAS.

In December MAS and Morales benefited from waves of enthusiasm and interest in the election. People who might not have otherwise voted went to the polls in droves and they voted for Evo. Candidacies from the social movements would have helped generate some of the enthusiasm missing around the July 2 vote. What happens with a vote in which a lot of people just stay home?

Here’s a scenario MAS won’t like.

In a low-turnout vote, the traditional political players, folks like Quiroga; they know how to get people to the polls. I think there is a very, very good chance that MAS, even if it wins more votes than any others July 2, will finish in a first place that pales in comparison to the 54%, historic, outright majority Evo took in December. This is not a national race with Evo on the ballot. This is a series of local races in which MAS faces are a cast of unknowns. It is more akin to municipal elections and the last time Bolivia had those, the traditional powers beat MAS easily most everywhere. The same was true in the December elections for governors around the country.

Symbolically, the vote will be hailed by Morale’s substantial opponents as sign that his popularity is waning. The press, both in Bolivia and abroad, will repeat that refrain. MAS may easily find itself with a Constituent Assembly in which its rivals have a much more clout than in their limited numbers in the MAS-dominated Congress.

MAS gambled on having an Assembly vote it thought it could dominate, a means of further solidifying its political power. Instead, by helping design a vote that is closed and pretty boring, it may end up handing away a substantial part of the victory it fought to hard to win just seven months earlier.