New Constitution Passes in Bolivia: Election results show a divided country

Bolivia will see a new day on January 27, 2009. A day in which a process of more than 2 years comes to an end with a brand new consitution. Now begin the serious challenges; eradicating poverty, increasing investment in national industries, creating jobs and strenghtneing democracy and human rights.

Coverage from BBC, New York Times, and CBC:

Bolivians Back “New” Constitution – BBC

Bolivia’s New Constitution – NYT

Bolivians back new, pro indigenous constitution – CBC

Expect more coverage to appear once the final count of ballots has taken place.

Liberalitas Notes:

1. The political divide in the country remains very clear. The constitution passed in four provinces and was defeated in four provinces. In all cases by large margins. The province of Chuquisaca remained too close to call at this time. Support for the constitution in La Paz and Oruro surpassed the 70 percent mark. In Beni and Santa Cruz the rejection to the constitution was higher than 60 percent. The graph shows the provinces that voted against the constitution and those that voted for it (Dark red was against). Chuquisaca, which has not been called yet, is province number 2.

2. Bolivians of all colours, ethnic groups, regions, departments, and political parties welcome change and want it. They just don’t seem to like Morales’ approach to politics. Support for a parallel question asking Bolivians if they supported a limit on the amount of land one can own was high in every single province of the country. the same departments that voted against the constitution in high margins, supported the land ownership limits, possibly indicating that the policies are not what is driving the east away from Morales but the politics.

3. Unless Bolivian political leaders are able to deliver a new national pact and move forward together, the country can be headed into further political problems and a weakening of Bolivian democracy. The election set for December is the next stage for the political divide in the country to surface. The question is whether or not anything will change in the nation’s voting patterns in only 12 months.

4. Support for Morales decreased throughout the country and Morales has lost the Urban vote (more on this on a separate blog posts).
Embedded video from CNN Video

Constitutional Referendum in Bolivia: Will it unite the country?

Unlikely.

This BBC article was able to capture in a decent manner what seems to be occurring in Bolivia.

It is the second time in six months that Bolivia has voted and will probably lead to a new Presidential election in December which promises to deliver a new round of polarized politics in 2009.

According to the early polling numbers, the Yes vote is very likely to win the vote.

However, there is plenty of room for disagreement over the implementation of the new constitution, and disputes between the government and the opposition look set to continue regardless.

Rocky path

Bolivia’s Congress approved holding a referendum only after Mr Morales agreed to make a number of concessions.

Crucially, Mr Morales agreed to restrict his candidature as president to a single five-year term.The election would take place in December 2009.

Under the current 1967 constitution, no president is allowed to have two consecutive terms. This was due to be changed under the original draft text, prompting fears from the opposition that Mr Morales could stay in office until 2019.

Under the new constitution, Catholicism would no longer be the official religion

But in a key concession, the president promised to stand just once more in elections due in December this year if the new constitution is approved.

This means that he is still likely to stay in power until 2014, but he says no longer.

He also made other concessions on autonomy, land reform and Congressional voting procedures.

Nonetheless, in his view, the key changes – extending the rights of Bolivia’s 36 indigenous groups and strengthening state control over the country’s natural resources – remain broadly intact.

When agreement was reached on the concessions back in October, Mr Morales wept in front of a huge crowd of supporters in La Paz’s Central Plaza, where Indians were not allowed to set foot until the 1950s.

“We have made history,” he said. “I can now go to the cemetery a happy man.”

Key provisions

Among the 411 articles of the new constitution, some of the key changes provide for:

• A mixed economy which recognises public, private and communitarian ownership. However, the state will control natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals

• The state as unitary and pluri-national, designed to stress the importance of ethnicity in Bolivia’s make-up. A whole chapter of the draft text is devoted to indigenous rights

• Power will be decentralised, creating four levels of autonomy – departmental, regional, municipal and indigenous

• Indigenous systems of justice will be given the same status as the official existing system. Judges will be elected, and no longer appointed by Congress.

In a further concession, Mr Morales agreed that new limits on land ownership will not be retroactive – a parallel referendum on Sunday will determine whether this limit should be set at 5,000 (12,355 acres) or 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres).

Battles are looming over how [the constitution's] provisions are finally applied John Crabtree Analyst

But even if the vote is in favour of 5,000 hectares – and there are many farms in the east larger than this – landowners will not be affected if they can show that their land is not idle and fulfils a social and economic function.

However, Mr Morales’ opponents say that since it will be up to central government to decide if landowners are complying, the system could be open to abuse.

Another controversial change to the constitution is that Catholicism would no longer be the official state religion – there would be no state religion.

The Church has also criticised the new draft text for not recognising the right to life from conception (possibly opening the way to legalising abortion), although the existing constitution does not either.

Some bishops have joined with the opposition in campaigning against the constitution. One of their slogans says “Choose God, Vote for No”.

Conflict remains

Most analysts say that despite making a number of concessions, Mr Morales remains in a strong position.

They point out that the opposition is split between more moderate members of the Congress and the more confrontational governors of the four, mainly eastern, departments known as the media luna, or half-crescent.

“The balance of power shifted,” says George Gray Molina, a research fellow at Oxford University in the UK.

Protests against the government have sometimes turned violent

“Evo has already won the referendum vote. The opposition will probably retrench for a while with an eye on providing a unitary candidate for the December [presidential] elections,” he says.

However, there is plenty of room for continuing opposition from the four media luna departments, which tend to be wealthier and more ethnically mixed than the mainly indigenous departments of the western highlands. They want more autonomy from the central state.

They also contain most of Bolivia’s natural gas production and agribusiness, such as soya.

There are two main issues over which opposition civic organisations can continue to fight.

The first is whether their departments will have priority over the other three levels of autonomous organisation envisaged in the new constitution.

Another is how the taxes on gas exports will be divided up between the state and the four levels of autonomous organisations.

“The civic groups in Santa Cruz and Tarija, in particular, will continue to demand a bigger share of the proceeds of gas exports,” says John Crabtree, an analyst at the Oxford Centre for Latin American Studies in the UK.

“While the new constitution may now be legally enacted,” he says, “battles are looming over how its provisions are finally applied.”

Bolivia set to vote this weekend amidst division

Morales is seen as likely to win the divisive referendum on Sunday, but tensions that have riven the country along geographic, racial and class lines are not expected to go away.

If anything, they may only intensify as the scene would be set for early elections in December.

Already, the country has flirted with unrest bordering on civil war in September, during which 20 indigenous government supporters were killed in a northern state, prompting Morales to slap martial law on the region.

The roots of the conflict have been growing ever since Morales in 2005 became the country’s first indigenous president and set about upending an order inherited from Spanish colonial times and subsequent military regimes that favored Bolivia’s ‘whiter’ citizens.

The opposition, led by state governors in the country’s more prosperous east, fear that Morales’ march towards a socialist state is taking their nation into the orbit of Venezuela’s anti-US president, Hugo Chavez, and further away from social and economic advancement.

Morales and Chavez expelled the US ambassadors to their countries last September, accusing the administration of former US president George W. Bush of interference. Washington retaliated by sending the Bolivian and Venezuelan envoys home.

The United States “wants to finish with our government,” Morales said Thursday, two days after US President Barack Obama took over from Bush.

His comment, before the Bolivian congress, prompted the abrupt departure of the charge d’affaires of the US embassy, Krishna Urs, who had been in the public watching, according to a local radio station.

The new constitution would also scrap the single-term limit for the president, allowing Morales to stand for re-election. He has proposed early legislative and presidential polls in December if the new referendum passes.

The opposition, though running an energetic campaign against the referendum in recent weeks, remains fragmented.

That, and the fact that the indigenous population making up 60 percent of Bolivia’s 10 million people are fierce in standing up for “their” president, point to a probable victory for Morales.

The Carter Center, the US organization founded by former US president Jimmy Carter, is to send a group of observers to join other international monitors to watch over the referendum.

Morales, meanwhile, launched a new state newspaper, Cambio (“Change” in Spanish) just days before the vote, to counter what he sees as anti-government “lies” in Bolvia’s press.

The government already controls a national television network, 16 local radio stations and a news agency.

Reuters

Interesting Blog post on the referendum

Bolivia: A divided year ahead

Bolivia's Congress during the session in which the text for the new constitution was passed

The political divide in Bolivia is stark. Often portrayed as East vs West, Indigenous vs White, Rich vs Poor or Capitalism vs Socialism, the divide is, in reality, much more complex. In the most recent recall election, Evo Morales won his re-election by more than 60% of the vote, but the governors of the departments where the opposition is strong also won by similar margins. It remains clear that Morales’ support is strong in the Andes, but has significantly decreased in the eastern lowlands. The challenge for Morales is to find a way to get cooperation from the eastern departments as they control more 60% of the economy. Unfortunately, the Morales’ government has repeatedly used inflammatory rhetoric to describe those who oppose or disagree with him as traitors, racists or friends of the “empire”. The opposition has responded with a similar tone and the political unrest has been intensifying.

On September 11, 2008, violent conflict between Morales supporters and pro-autonomy groups erupted in the department of Pando resulting in over 20 deaths. A recent commission has found that most of the responsibility lies with opposers of Morales and the opposition has already labelled the commission’s report as biased. The truth probably lies somewhere in between but there is no prospect of a political resolution in the country in the near future.

On January 25th, Bolivia will hold a referendum to approve the text of the new Constitution. Odds are, the political divide will once again be clear once the votes have been counted and that the campaign leading up to the presidential election set for December of 2009 will be long and divisive.

What will happen in Bolivia is unclear. However, Morales has already begun to target his opposers by filing charges of corruption against most of the Governors of the departments where the opposition is strong. They are unlikely to not respond. Things in Bolivia’s could get a whole lot worse before they get better.

Professor John Crabtree from Oxford University’s Centre for Latin American Studies provides a brief overview of the year ahead and the year that has past by in this short article. He states that the political polarisation between the government and its most bitter critics in the dissident civic committees will not disappear.

The Comité Pro-Santa Cruz, which is by far the most powerful of the civic organisations in eastern Bolivia, has already indicated its dissatisfaction with the agreement on the constitution between the government and the main opposition parties. Indeed, most of Santa Cruz’s Podemos congressmen voted against the law enabling the referendum to go ahead, an act of defiance against the party leadership of former president Jorge Quiroga. The local leaders in Santa Cruz say they will rally their supporters for a “no” vote in the January referendum. The civic leaders in Sucre are equally bitter, since their demands that their city be restored to its historical role as full capital of Bolivia were blatantly ignored in the agreement.