La Paz – Bolivian President Evo Morales has begun to focus his administration on holding a constitutional assembly, his main election promise, and an autonomy referendum, the ideas for both of which sprang from bitter regional disputes.
The congressional approval of laws giving the green light to structural reform came Saturday evening after a period of intense negotiations and the conclusion of a political agreement among the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party and opposition forces.
According to the two approved laws, which will be promulgated on Monday, the public on July 2 will elect the members of the constitutional assembly and vote for or against the creation of an autonomy regime.
The assembly will have 255 members, 210 of whom will be selected from the country’s territorial districts and 45 who will be chosen from the nine provinces.
The assembly members will begin drafting a new constitution in the city of Sucre, Bolivia’s constitutional capital, on Aug. 6, which is this South American nation’s independence day.
The lawmakers decided that the autonomy referendum will be binding only in the provinces where the public opts for installing a system of decentralized governance, as will be stated in the question to be put to the voters.
The referendum will state, however, that autonomy will be subject to “the administrative regulatory aspects and the economic-financial resources set forth in the new constitution” that emerges from the assembly.
The speed with which the laws – debate on which began only last Wednesday – were approved was the result of pressure exerted by the National Electoral Court, which had set the beginning of March as the deadline for completion of the calendar for preparing for and holding the vote.
After Congress approved the laws, Morales congratulated the legislators calling their move another step on the road toward his longstanding dream of “joining and unifying the Bolivian people” and securing the country’s “second (national) liberation.”
Bolivia attained its independence in 1825.
“Here the cultural and democratic revolution starts, here the true change awaited by the Bolivian people begins,” he said.
The constitutional assembly was proposed by former President Carlos Mesa, who governed from 2003-2005, when he assumed office after the resignation of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada amid a serious social crisis. That social – and governmental – crisis called into question the legitimacy of the prevailing political system, which had been in place since democracy was restored here in 1982.
Mesa could never get the plan off the ground, however, and also had to resign due to social pressure in June 2005, clearing the way for the political transition that ended with the national elections in December in which Morales won an absolute majority.
The legal text approved by Congress states that the assembly will be “independent and exercise the sovereignty of the people … is not dependent upon or subject to the governmental branches and has as its single aim the complete reform of the Constitution.”
Its work will not interfere with the activities of the existing governmental branches, which will continue to operate normally.
“It will meet continuously and uninterruptedly for not less than six months nor longer than one year” and, once its task is finished, the resulting constitution will be submitted to a popular referendum for approval “within a period of not longer than 120 days,” the law adds.
One of the new aspects of the electoral process to be held on July 2 will be that Bolivians living abroad will be allowed to vote.
The convening of the assembly by Congress puts an end to the disputes on whether or not to hold it.
Those disputes arose among Morales’s Socialist government, opposition conservative political forces and the regions, especially the prosperous eastern province of Santa Cruz, which was the main area pushing for autonomy and where Morales has his lowest levels of public support.
