(photo from the Economist)
from The Guardian:
Evo Morales hails 'new Bolivia' as constitution is approved
by Matthew Taylor, Monday 26 January 2009
Bolivians yesterday approved a new constitution granting more power to the country's indigenous majority and rolling back half a millennium of colonialism, discrimination and humiliation.
After a bruising struggle between supporters and opponents of the president, Evo Morales, the country voted to adopt the new constitution in a referendum.
The charter confirms Bolivia – the second poorest country in South America after Guyana – as a leader in the regional "pink tide" of leftwing governments that have ousted traditional elites and challenged US influence.
Yesterday, Morales, who wept for joy when the draft of the new constitution was agreed last October, told a crowd in front of the presidential palace that the vote signalled the start of a new era.
"Here begins the new Bolivia," he said. "Here we begin to reach true equality."
The president said the charter would "decolonise" Bolivia by championing indigenous values lost since the Spanish conquest.
It also includes clauses on land redistribution and sets aside seats in Congress for minority indigenous groups.
However, in Boliva's conservative eastern lowlands, a semi-tropical stronghold of European descendants, there was widespread opposition to the constitution, with critics saying it was a recipe for ruin, division and authoritarianism.
They argued that the focus on indigenous communitarism ignored the freewheeling capitalism that drives the eastern plains' huge cattle ranches and powerful soy industry.
There were bloody clashes between pro and anti-government supporters, including miners armed with dynamite and peasants with machetes, during the drafting of the charter.
Several people died, hundreds were injured and Bolivia was left dangerously polarised.
Yesterday, Moises Shiriqui, the cowboy-hatted mayor of the eastern provincial capital, Trinidad, said there was still fierce opposition to the new constitution.
"In five states, we're rejecting the constitution," he said. "In five states, we have another vision of the country."
An unofficial tally by the Bolivian television network ATB showed the constitution winning with 59% of the vote.
The quick count had a 3% margin of error, and was mirrored by two private exit polls. An official vote count will be announced on 4 February.
The constitution also gives Morales the opportunity to run for re-election and remain in power until 2014.
He is expected to go to the polls again in December in an election that will also elect a newly reorganised Congress with seats set aside for minority indigenous groups.
A provision granting autonomy for 36 indigenous "nations" and four opposition-controlled eastern states is at the heart of the constitution.
But both groups are given a vaguely defined "equal rank", which critics say will create rival claims to open land in Bolivia's fertile east, home to the large agribusiness interests and valuable gas reserves that drive much of the country's economy.
With an eye to redistributing land in the region, the constitution limits future holdings to either 5,000 or 10,000 hectares (12,000 or 24,000 acres).
Current landholders are exempt from the cap in a nod to the cattle and soy industries.
Morales, an Aymara Indian, has allied himself closely with the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez.
He expelled the US ambassador and drug enforcement administration agents after claiming they had conspired against his government last year. Washington denied the allegations.
Elected in 2005 on a promise to nationalise Bolivia's natural gas industry, Morales has increased the state's presence throughout the economy and expanded benefits for the poor.
In 2006, his reform project nearly failed when an assembly convened to rewrite the constitution broke apart along largely racial lines.
The following year, three college students were killed in anti-government riots, and 13 mostly indigenous Morales supporters died when protesters seized government buildings to block a vote on the proposed constitution in September.
and from The Economist:
A question of rights:
Bolivia's divisive new constitution grants greater rights to indigenous people
Jan 26th 2009 | LA PAZ
THOUSANDS gathered in front of the presidential palace in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, waving the chequered flag of the country’s indigenous people alongside the national tricolour on the night of Sunday January 25th. The reason for the joyous celebrations was the victory in a referendum on a new constitution designed to give special rights and privileges to Bolivians of indigenous descent. “A new Bolivia is being re-founded” said President Evo Morales, who led support for the new constitution.
Mr Morales, a socialist of Amerindian descent, has followed up his historic victory that made him the country’s first indigenous president with a triumph that will give a greater voice and share of land and resources to the country’s indigenous population. In the throng of miners in tin hats and indigenous women in bowler hats and heavy skirts there was an unmistakable sense of history on the march. After centuries of subservience to the “white” minority, they have mastered the country’s politics and reshaped its guiding documents.
Mr Morales now has the opportunity to increases the role of the state in the economy including tightening central control of the country’s natural resources. The new constitution strengthens the powers of the president and includes a provision that allows Mr Morales to stand for re-election in December. It also protects the coca leaf (cocaine’s raw material), sets the basis for land reform, and grants the regions and indigenous people greater autonomy. Although official results have yet to be declared some 40% of Bolivians do not appear to share Mr Morales’s socialist dream. In fact, opponents claim that the new constitution will impose a dogmatic socialism, curtail human rights and undermine property rights and the rule of law.
As a result, the new constitution has been at the centre of a bitter dispute since its draft was hurriedly approved by a constituent assembly in December 2007. The opposition was excluded from that decision. In response they called a recall referendum last August in a bid to unseat Mr Morales. He emerged with a firmer grip on power: upping the 54% of the vote that he won in the presidential election to 67%, a victory made all the more emphatic by a large turnout.
With a trio of victories under his Andean hat, Mr Morales can feel secure about his popularity at the ballot box. But Bolivia is bitterly divided and the level of unrest in the country is troubling. Mr Morales sees his foes as a racist elite trying to overthrow him while clinging to privileges and denying indigenous Bolivians a rightful share of the country’s natural gas, minerals and land. The opposition accuses the president of trying to divide the country along racial lines.
Mr Morales portrays the political struggle in Bolivia as one between a minority of white (or mixed-race), wealthier Bolivians of European descent, who tend to live in the prosperous tropical lowlands, where the gas and fertile lands are located, and the darker, indigenous people concentrated in the impoverished highland plains. Carlos Mesa, a former president who is aiming for another crack at the job, claims that with the new constitution “the country will be even more chaotic, polarised and more divided.”
The opposition portrays Mr Morales as an autocrat and a puppet of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez. He is accused of leading the country to economic collapse, political mayhem and social chaos. Those feelings have spilled out onto the streets. Soon after the referendum was announced in August, regional governors opposed to the new constitution launched a campaign of civil disobedience that quickly descended into violence, leaving several dead and scores injured.
Despite condemnation of the mayhem the governors remain strong and they managed to push for some modifications to the draft constitution, especially regarding land redistribution and regional autonomy. The rumpus over the constitution is also bringing a more unexpected threat to Mr Morales—from the left. Increasingly, some radical socialists and indigenous groups are turning against Mr Morales for not going far enough. Given the violence that has accompanied the twists and turns of Bolivian politics in recent years Mr Morales should keep his eyes on the streets as well as poring over the results of the referendum.
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