A New Constitution, and Fresh Battle Lines

Events in Bolivia, surrounding the adoption of a new Constitution, have begun to happen so fast and furious that we'd have to put up new posts every few hours just to keep up. In addition, the Constitution approved by the Constituent Assembly is 405 articles and 100 pages long. A real analysis is going to take a bit of time.

So, for this post, we offer an overview – of what the various warring sides have to say about the Constitution approved over the weekend, and of the events across the nation in reaction to that approval. We'll get to a more complete analysis of the Constitution itself later.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION: WHAT THE VARIOUS SIDES HAVE TO SAY

Depending on which version of events you wish to believe, the adoption of a new Constitution over the weekend by the Constituent Assembly is either the fulfillment of decades of campaigning to right centuries of injustice, or a headlong step toward authoritarian rule by Evo Morales and MAS. As usual, the two sides farthest apart, MAS on one side and PODEMOS and Santa Cruz Civicos on the other, are prone to political exaggeration. Here's a look at what they have had to say.

The Word from MAS

We have had to deal with pressure, not just from the right, but from our families. After we were kicked out of Sucre and after they would not let us finish our work, we had to finish in Oruro. But our work has not finished; now we have to guarantee approval [of the new Constitution] in the referendum.

-- Constituent Assembly President Silvia Lazarte

The rap from MAS and Morales: The new constitution is a historic step that, for the first time, recognizes Bolivia's 36 indigenous peoples, establishes public control of the nation's key natural resources, and establishes a critical set of individual and community rights. It also allows Bolivia to pave a way forward based on a variety of economic models, not just foreign corporate control. The Constitution was approved legally, and after more than a year of dialogue and work by people with many different views. The leading opposition party, PODEMOS, failed to participate in the meeting over the weekend by its own choice.

The Word from the Opposition

The Assembly has broken democracy and order in the country, becoming the imposition of the governing party and robbing Bolivia of the historic opportunity to have a new Constitution clearly inclusive. But Bolivia has been a sea where countless authoritarians have drowned and no action that has been imposed against the will of the people has lasted.

-- Statement Monday from the Governors of the Beni, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija and the Pando.

Rap from the opposition: The Constitution approved over the weekend is illegal because the Assembly failed to give opposition members the legally required notice for the session in Oruro. It's main objectives are to consolidate power into the hands of MAS and Morales, by allowing reelection of the President for an additional ten years, and by eliminating full representation by minority parties in the Congress and letting the majority party alone approve key government appointments. It also lets the government prosecute, as 'traitors any individual or group accused of advocating division of the nation.

The Word from the Middle of the Road

It's overall not a bad constitution, but the problem is the official party didn't listen to anybody else. It seems this matter of presidential re-election was Morales' final goal all along.

-- Samuel Doria Medina of the opposition National Unity party.

UN's chief criticisms: Presidential reelection in any form is a doorway to authoritarianism in Bolivia. The new Constitution undermines minority representation in the Congress. Many of the articles are vaguely worded or incomplete and need to be modified. MAS did not include many of the consensus points worked out in the multi-party discussions in October.

WHAT NEXT?

Again, the big question here is whether the heated differences between the various parties and regions will be worked out through a political process or in the street. Most likely, according to Bolivian custom, we can expect a good bit of both.

President Morales, while trumpeting the Constitution and defending its legitimacy, has asked again that the nine Governors meet with him and talk about a way forward. Five of those Governors, meeting in Cochabamba yesterday, showed no signs of being interested in such a dialog. Four of them – from the regions where regional autonomy was approved by voters last year, the Beni, Santa Cruz, Tarija and the Pando – announced that they would be declaring that autonomy from the national government effective this Saturday. What that means remains unclear.

We can certainly look forward to a flurry of elections in Bolivia in 2008. There will be one in which the new Constitution will be voted up or down by a majority vote. Another will take up the land reform issue, where the new proposed article received a majority vote but not 2/3. Then of course there will be the proposed 'recall' vote to give voters the option of abruptly ending the terms of the President, Vice President, and the nine state Governors. The formula for that vote will now become the next big political debate here.

The good news here: lots of free t-shirts and caps for everyone next year!

A FEW ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS TO ADD TO THE MIX

First, I think that, in fact, the opposition from PODEMOS and the eastern departments got just what they wanted this weekend. If they had really wanted to kill the MAS Constitution in its Oruro cradle all they had to do was show up and vote 'no', article by article. The approval was based on a vote of 2/3 of those present. The opposition's absence, which was deliberate, assured that MAS could achieve that. Consider these two opposition choices. Choice one: Show up in Oruro, kill the MAS Magna Carta, article by article, and face the wrath of a really pissed off mass of indigenous groups, social movements and others. Choice two: Let MAS ram through its Constitution without opposition support or participation and have the rallying cry of 'beware the authoritarians' fall right into your lap. Which option would you pick if you were them?

Second, MAS is going to have a real hard time convincing swing voters that the approval process was 'kosher', to use a Bolivian term. Talk to people present and you will here the story of one article after another voted on by a quick show of hands with no real debate or reflection. As I have written before, I really don’t see how MAS and other backers of the new Constitution expect to win 51% for it given that MAS political ceiling seemed to be pretty pegged at 53% two elections in a row and given that in a yes/no vote on the Constitution much of the party's urban middle class political base will desert it and the opposition will be unified, not fragmented as before.

Third, let’s just review a few of the recent events from that hotbed of democratic principle, the department of Santa Cruz. Early Sunday morning the lone MAS representative on the Santa Cruz city council, Osvaldo Paredo, faced a sixth violent attack against he and his family. This time, according to a report from Radio Erbol, a group of attackers threw a live hand grenade at the window of the room where his 11-year-old daughter was asleep. Fortunately, the grenade bounced off and blew up just outside the house.

Then yesterday in Santa Cruz's Central Plaza a small mob of hunger strikers from the famous local "Youth for Democracy" physically attacked a 45-year-old ex-miner, René Vargas, after mistakenly identifying him (presumably by his skin color) as a MAS party activist (see photo above). Screaming their favored chant of "Indian shit" the youth chased the man for blocks hitting and kicking him at all the opportunities they had, until several women intervened to stop them. Bolivia's Human Rights Ombudsman, Waldo Albarracín denounced the attack, "The country watched with indignation the images on television when a group of people, four or five youth, cowardly attacked another countrymen with similar rights as them, demonstrating a racist attitude against the victim."

Is there really anyone left in Bolivia willing to say with a straight face that race is not a central factor in this conflict?