“The homeland can not be sold off, it can not be touched, nor divided”
Fernando M. López, Agencia Prensa de Mercosur, December 11
The Bolivian president called on the Armed Forces and the people to counteract separatist attempts by those who “are committing a betrayal against the homeland”. Prefects and civic leaders from the “half moon” will protest this Friday.
Bolivia is a facing a new offensive on the part of the eastern conspirators of the ultra right who, for months now, have been looking to finish off the democratic government of Evo Morales in complicity with the US embassy and transnational interests. The recent separatist threats and the convocation for an “open town meeting” for next Friday in Santa Cruz, where “de facto autonomy” will be declared in the richest zone of the country, forced the president to warn in harsh terms that he would not allow any type of territorial fracture.
“Dividing the homeland is a betrayal of the Bolivian people” assured Evo Morales as he headed a graduation ceremony of officials in the Military College of La Paz, where he also exhorted the Armed Forces and people to defend national integrity “with all democratic instruments and the law”.
The head of state recognized that autonomy is a reality and that, in fact, is being applied through the direct elections of the prefects and the administration of 50% of the national budget by the departments. But autonomy with separatist aims, such as that proposed by the prefects and the so-called civic committees of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija, is unacceptable for the government and great part of the population, because it responses to the interests of minority sectors that historically hoarded wealth from the Bolivian people.
“Some of those who can no longer continue accumulating capital like they use to are utilizing any pretext to destabilize the government and foment division”, sustained Morales, adding afterwards that, faced with this panorama, it is necessary to “identify the internal enemies, the sectarians, regionalists, dividers who want to rip apart our mother, Bolivia”.
Out of the four departments which make up the “half moon”, Santa Cruz is the wealthiest because it holds the principal gas and petroleum fields, as well as the most fertile lands in the country. Its prefect, Ruben Costas, the president of the Civic Committee Pro Santa Cruz, German Antelo, and the head of Social Democratic Power (Podemos), ex-president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, are the visible heads of successive conspiracies against the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) government, ever since Evo Morales announced the nationalization of hydrocarbons last May 1.
Costas, Antelo and Quiroga constantly come out to spread their divisive, reactionary, and at times, racist discourse, that characterizes the Andean right.
“Bolivia, like never before in our history, confronts the danger of division, a product of the authoritarianism, illegality and radicalism in which the Constituent Assembly is being conducted; the risk of fragmentation is more evident each day”, said Quiroga on Sunday, after announcing the lifting of the hunger strike that was asking of a two thirds voting system in the Constituent Assembly.
Two days before, whilst the 2nd Summit of the Community of South American Nations was being inaugurated, Costas was calling on his follows to attend an “open town meeting” on December 15, during a speech where he classified Evo Morales as a “disgrace and ignorant” and rejected the legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly.
“At this meeting, we will mark out the path of the ‘Nation of the Lowlands’ and Bolivia. We will all be there, and together we will sing, as always, our shout of freedom, our shout of independence”, affirmed Costas, adding afterwards, in a threatening tone, that “the time of the East, North and South of this homeland has come, and if [the government] does not understand this last message, beware of the consequences”.
The eastern separatists count with the support of the US government in this venture. George W Bush currently find himself very preoccupied with problems in the Middle East, but his direct representative in Bolivia, ambassador Philip Goldberg, entrusted himself with exercising pressure within the framework of tensions with the eastern region, and the recent extension by the US Congress of the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Eradication Agreement (ATPDEA) for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
“The country and the [Bolivian] government have to decided if they not only want to be a strategic partner of the United States, but also friends”, adverted Goldberg on Monday. Washington has found in the eastern separatist leaders its best receptors for its proposal of free trade and a division would assure it a new Free Trade Agreement in the region, after the failure of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA).
The relationship is nothing new. The functionaries, business owners and large landowners from Santa Cruz have maintain excellent contacts with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since 2004, when it put into place the Project Competitive Bolivia in Trade and Business (BCCN). Together with academics from the International University of Florida, USAID carried out a number of intensive courses for state and private sectors in capacitating in methods of negotiations and strategies with a view towards the FTAA.
Translated from APM
A Convulsed
Pablo Stefanoni,
A strong downpour of hail unleashed last night in
Because of this, in the Quemado Palace [Presidential Palace], they dedicated themselves to putting at ease the foreign presidents, and Evo Morales travelled to this city of half a million inhabitant to make sure that this window display of his “democratic and cultural revolution” would not be fogged up by opposition groups.
For a few weeks, the fight over the type of voting in the Constituent Assembly – the government wants an absolute majority and the opposition two thirds – moved out from within the walls of the Gran Mariscal de Sucre Theater, but in the last few days the battle has resulted in an escalation of accusations that threatened to end in clear and simple violence. Whilst the “front for the two thirds” increased its hunger strike of more than 800 participants, groups of youth – leaded by the Crucenista Youth Union – violently occupied the offices of Internal Taxes in
On Wednesday, in La Paz, sectors supporting the government gathered in front of opposition television station offices – such as the Santa Cruz aligned Unitel, and PAT which belongs to ex-president Carlos Mesa – to protest against the campaign of “disinformation”. And the writer Juan Claudio Lechin – son of the legendary trade unionist Juan Lechin Oquendo – had to abandon the headquarters of his hunger strike picket at the
The four governors of the denominated pro-autonomy “half moon” – with 43% of the GDP – already find themselves on fast and the governor of
In the midst of the pro-autonomy discourses that border on threats of separatism and terrorised a great part of the population – including in the east of the country – the governor of Santa Cruz, Ruben Cosatas, asked the Armed Forces to not respond to attempts by the government to militarise this agro industrial region in rebellion against La Paz.
Today in
Translated from Clarin
Interview with ex Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy, Andres Soliz Rada, December 5
How would you evaluate the achievements in the hydrocarbon sector this year?
Positive, but with some serious question for the future. The central achievement was the nationalisation of the hydrocarbons, on May 1, which rescued our national dignity. Its central objective consisted off recuperating the ownership, possession and absolute control of hydrocarbons, for which YPFB assumed, in the name of the state, ownership over gas and petroleum, defining the conditions, volumes and prices for the internal and external markets and for its industrialisation. The challenge lies in executing these ideas and in ensuring they do not remain simple statements.
During my term, which lasted from January 23 to September 14, we prioritised the elaboration of a national energy balance sheet, which has been paralysed since 1996, the year in which YPFB was liquidated. A shift in the energy matrix was proposed, with the aim of replacing as much of the internal consumption of gasoline, diesel and LPG as possible, for natural gas. Substitute products should be for exportation, to generate money.
The new hydrocarbon policy considers as strategic the construction of a gas duct from the mega gas fields of the south to Tarija and Mataral, in Santa Cruz, with detailed agro-industrial projects which function on gas, and the Bolivian Gas duct of the West (GABO, Gasoducto Boliviano de Occidente), which would unite those mega gas fields with Tarija, Tupiza (for use in mining), Uyuni (with the aim of industrialising the salt plains), Oruro, Patacamaya (another petrochemical pole), the city of El Alto (bastion of the recuperation of hydrocarbons), La Paz and the entry of gas into Beni and Pando.
In applying the Nationalisation Decree, the Ministerial Resolution 202 of August 2006, was dictated, which ordered Petrobras, Andina and Total to pay an additional $32 million per month, for the additional taxes from 50% to 82% in the mega gas fields “San Alberto” and “Sabalo”. The petroleum companies made their payments, which signified that they where obeying the nationalisation. With the first of the five payments, the president paid a bonus to the school children of the country.
The Ministry pushed forward the decree that transferred to YPFB, as a free holder, the shares of Fondo de Capitalizacion Colectiva (FCC), of the companies
In compliance with the Nationalisation Decree, an audit of the gas fields was carried out, with the aim of determining the real investments and amortisations of the companies, which should have served as the basis on which to sign new contracts. The agreement to expanding the sale of gas to
We elevated to the level of trial of responsibility the process initiated by Juan Carlos Virreyra (ex delegate for Capitalisation [Bolivian word for privatisation]) against those responsible for the illegal entry of Enron into the country. The directorate of YPFB was named and the project of a law for the refoundation of YPFB, as a corporative company capable of emitting bonds in the stock exchange, was elaborated, which would permit it to count on a large number of resources for the industrialisation of gas. We estimate that YPFB should function with the parameters that, in 1990, we outlined in the project for a law of investigation of fortunes, to guarantee its transparency.
YPFB signed contracts, it recuperated the ownership over hydrocarbons, there is more income, but yet it can’t operate in all parts of the productive chain. How much time is required to be able to do this?
There exist grave contradictions in these contracts. Whilst the contract framed (clause 4-3) and determined the ownership of
The petroleum companies have been able to have recognized the delirious investments that they say they have done and the puny amortizations that they indicated they had obtained in the country. With these figures the formulas for where revenue goes between YPFB and the petroleum companies have been elaborated. The companies say they have invested $3.500 million, which in reality, according to the preliminary results of the audit, have not reached even reached $800 million.
According to the Nationalisation Decree the data from the audits, and not the declaration from the companies, should have been taken into consideration as the basis for the contracts, as backed in the Decree 24335 of
The state petroleum company still does not have a majority in the privatised petroleum companies. You put forward a model of expropriation via a legal mechanism. Did the government study your proposal? Why was it not applied?
On this point, the president was badly advised during his electoral campaign. He was told that it was possible to nationalize without expropriating shares, which lead him to not want to apply article 22 of the constitution that authorizes expropriations after the payment of the corresponding indemnifications. In complying with this article, we suggested that in the Nationalisation Decree the expropriation of the necessary shares be outlined so that YPFB could control 50% plus 1 of the shares of
You argued personal reasons for leaving the Ministry of Hydrocarbons, just as the new contracts were about to be signed. Was there pressure for you to do this? What happened behind closed doors?
It is not the same thing to be the owner of the house or to be invited to someone’s house. I was invited by MAS to join the cabinet, that is why I suffered inevitable limitations. As one example of this, I was never able to designate my vice ministers.
Did the Brazilian government impede
Marco Aurelio Garcia, advisor to Lula, acquired a commitment from Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera to “freeze” Ministerial Resolution 207, in which YPFB, complying with the Nationalisation Decree would take control of the commercialization of crude petroleum that entered into the refineries of Petrobras and ownership over the refined products. Therefore Petrobras’ refineries would stop being responsible for the commercialisation of the products, inside and outside of the country, and instead convert itself into a supplier of services. The vice president consulted me on the issue after having reached this commitment. As a consequence of this, I was obliged to dictate another Ministerial Resolution annulling the first one, which went against my conscious, the reason for which I presented my irrevocable resignation. The presidential spokesperson said that MR 207 was written up without consultation and the presidential advisor, Walter Chavez, classified me as “arbitrary”. The first comment is false, given that the Ministerial Resolution was made known to the president, the vice president, various ministers and the president of YPFB more than one week before it was publicly announced. In
In a new contract, Petrobras accepted to cede commercialization to YPFB and there was no advance in regards to the buying of the refineries nor in the definition of prices. What do you suggest in order to tackle this issue?
The president has demonstrated bravery and decisiveness in expelling the Brazilian company EBX, which tried to install ovens to process iron with vegetable carbon. This same bravery and decisiveness is needed in order to negotiate with Petrobras, under conditions of equity and equality.
You contributed a lot during your term. Did you always have support from the president for your projects and initiatives?
I have had a very cordial and respectful relationship with the president, which from my part continues to exist. My projects and initiatives had the limitation of being an invite of MAS.
The government finishes its term with successes but without having clarified irregularities such as the Hedging contract that Petrobras and Andina had which provoked damages to the country, or the lack of investment that Repsol YPF supposedly incurred, or the exploitation of the San Alberto and Itau gasfield as if they were only one rather than two. How will those cases end up?
The aggravated theft, of more than $171 million that Andina and Petrobras committed, to commercialise gas between them (and behind the backs of YPFB) at set prices, as well as the contraband and tax evasion committed by Repsol, Andina, Chaco and Petrobras are crimes that are being tried in the courts of the country. I proposed, without results, that the contracts with these companies be provision, until the pertinent verdicts were passed down.
What other issues of importance still pending have remained unresolved this year?
The necessity of fixing a new price to sell gas to Brazil, which can not be inferior to that which Argentina pays; advances in the projects for industrialization; the construction of large gas ducts to the interior of the country; and the installation of gas to the homes of all Bolivians.
The negotiation with
The issue of the liquid extraction plant and the formula via which the base rate for exportation of $5 per million BTU would vary were the most complicated issues with the government of Kirchner.
The premise of gas for Bolivians was not achieved. What is the challenge for next year?
Applying in full the Nationalisation Decree, with the aim of avoiding the frustration of the Bolivian people.
Do you want to add any additional comments which you consider pertinent?
Translated from La Prensa
Pachakuti Movement on the Current Situation
Bolivia is currently living through the consequences of a process which began in 2000 and 2001, with the indigenous uprising and blockade of La Paz, the “Water War” in Cochabamba, and the “Gas War” in the provinces and city of El Alto in 2003. Evo Morales and the MAS represent the reformist wing of this process.
Given the exhaustion of the indigenous and popular masses, of the workers and the middle class, MAS has utilised this energy for the purposes of its own electoral triumph in 2005. Its duty was to comply with the mandate which motivated the popular uprising. Nevertheless, once in government, and despite having a majority in parliament and the Constituent Assembly, it has been characterised by inconsistencies and weaknesses in the tasks of decolonising this territory and structuring a new system of social justice. All its measures have been carried out attempting to maintain the privileges of the oligarchies and those groups from the neoliberal order that hold power.
That is why its measures, including those which government propaganda has tried to present as revolutionary, are mediocre, conciliatory or insufficient regarding the demands to reconstruct this country. Only popular pressure has pushed this government to put a radical varnish on its policies.
We shouldn’t forget that this government agreed to the type of autonomy proposed by the elites, and approved the two thirds majority for the Constituent Assembly. The problems which Evo Morales and its administration are currently facing are the fruit of its reformist weakness and of its inconsistency in applying the mandate coming from below.
The Movimiento Pachakuti (MP, Pachakuti Movement) is the initiator of this historic process, beginning with the leadership of Felipe Quispe during the mobilisations of 2000, 2001 and 2003, that is why it has the responsibility to defend it and deepen it, in front of the threats of secession from the national territory and retreating on the objectives of nationalisation of hydrocarbons, foundation of a new state, and elimination of all social discrimination, of gender and ethnicity. The current government is insufficient; the people must obtain full political power.
In front of the incoherence and lack of vital force coming from the MAS bureaucrats, the Pachakuti Movement defends national unity with a state model that guarantees the identity of all its inhabitants, founded on a political project of transformation based on the principles of our originaria societies, vitalised with the push coming from the working social classes and social sectors committed with a project of a just, egalitarian and reciprocal society.
La Paz, December 9. 2006
Felipe Quispe, National President of MP and members of the plenum of the National Political Committee of MP.
Bolivia is currently living through the consequences of a process which began in 2000 and 2001, with the indigenous uprising and blockade of La Paz, the “Water War” in Cochabamba, and the “Gas War” in the provinces and city of El Alto in 2003. Evo Morales and the MAS represent the reformist wing of this process.
Given the exhaustion of the indigenous and popular masses, of the workers and the middle class, MAS has utilised this energy for the purposes of its own electoral triumph in 2005. Its duty was to comply with the mandate which motivated the popular uprising. Nevertheless, once in government, and despite having a majority in parliament and the Constituent Assembly, it has been characterised by inconsistencies and weaknesses in the tasks of decolonising this territory and structuring a new system of social justice. All its measures have been carried out attempting to maintain the privileges of the oligarchies and those groups from the neoliberal order that hold power.
That is why its measures, including those which government propaganda has tried to present as revolutionary, are mediocre, conciliatory or insufficient regarding the demands to reconstruct this country. Only popular pressure has pushed this government to put a radical varnish on its policies.
We shouldn’t forget that this government agreed to the type of autonomy proposed by the elites, and approved the two thirds majority for the Constituent Assembly. The problems which Evo Morales and its administration are currently facing are the fruit of its reformist weakness and of its inconsistency in applying the mandate coming from below.
The Movimiento Pachakuti (MP, Pachakuti Movement) is the initiator of this historic process, beginning with the leadership of Felipe Quispe during the mobilisations of 2000, 2001 and 2003, that is why it has the responsibility to defend it and deepen it, in front of the threats of secession from the national territory and retreating on the objectives of nationalisation of hydrocarbons, foundation of a new state, and elimination of all social discrimination, of gender and ethnicity. The current government is insufficient; the people must obtain full political power.
In front of the incoherence and lack of vital force coming from the MAS bureaucrats, the Pachakuti Movement defends national unity with a state model that guarantees the identity of all its inhabitants, founded on a political project of transformation based on the principles of our originaria societies, vitalised with the push coming from the working social classes and social sectors committed with a project of a just, egalitarian and reciprocal society.
La Paz, December 9. 2006
Felipe Quispe, National President of MP and members of the plenum of the National Political Committee of MP.
Bolivian Congress Passes Agrarian Reform Legislation in Spite of Heightened Regional Tensions
Prepared by the Andean Information Network
On November 29 the Bolivian Senate approved the law modifying
During his campaign Morales promised to redistribute 23 million hectares within five years. The new law stipulates that land that is not currently serving an economic or social function may be allocated to indigenous or campesino communities with insufficient or no land. The legislation follows the basic land tenure principles specified in the existing Bolivian constitution, which does not legally recognize massive landholdings (latifundia) and grants the state the right to expropriate and redistribute land[1]. The law provides economic compensation to landowners. Bolivian officials clarify that the initiative will primarily focus on properties larger than 120 acres. Although the
Land debate occurs in heated political context
In early November, members of indigenous groups launched a march from the lowlands and other rural areas to
The battle over land reform occurred at the same time that the Morales administration proposed accountability legislation and a mechanism to censure the actions of the independently elected departmental prefects. Six out of nine prefects, or governors, represent opposition forces and the traditional political elite, and have been consistently at odds with the administration. These officials and their supporters said they would reject any attempt to control their actions from the central government.
Preexisting tensions also soared over the Constitutional Assembly, as several hundred opposition representatives, assembly delegates, and civic leaders launched a hunger strike to demand that each article of the new constitution be approved by a two-thirds vote. The law structuring the constitutional assembly vaguely states that “the new constitution must be approved by a two thirds vote.” MAS officials have pushed an initiative through the assembly stating that individual constitutional articles can be passed by a simple majority of over fifty percent. (MAS controls 54% of the Assembly’s seats). As a result of frustrations over the simple majority decision and heightened regional disputes, a crowd heckled and threw stones at Morales after a presentation at
The pitched battle over agrarian reform
Land reform is one of the most contentious political issues and one of the focal points behind the regional rift between the highlands and eastern lowlands. Although the mainstream press characterizes most lowland residents as descendents of Europeans, the great majority of this region’s population is indigenous or migrated from the highlands. A significant portion of the small economic elite, who consider themselves white, whom benefited from unscrupulous gifts of land by previous military or traditional party governments, staunchly oppose the land redistribution initiative.
During the past week statements by both sides have exacerbated the conflict. On November 23, government press officer, Alex Contreras, published a list of fourteen families, many linked to traditional political parties, ex-ministers and current PODEMOS representatives, who he said owned a total of 7,732,090 acres of unused land with no productive use, and claimed that over 90 percent of the nation’s land suitable for agriculture had been given away by political elites between 1953 and 1992. (El Diario
The Bolivian press reprinted information that
As tensions heightened, opposition senators boycotted congressional sessions in protest, provoking threats from Morales to pass the agrarian reform legislation by Supreme Decree. The central government avoided this potentially disastrous political move by passing the reform through the senate in a late night session. Three opposition votes, two from legally elected alternates, joined the MAS block to pass the new law. The three representatives were the only opposition party members present for the vote. The opposition immediately claimed that MAS had bribed the three senators into voting to pass the laws, but the government expressly denied the accusation. The shift in position of these three opposition representatives highlights a lack of cohesion in opposition parties, which are a conglomeration of defunct traditional parties and other interests. Their surprise decision to facilitate the law’s passage averted potential acute social conflict.
Key Aspects of the New Legislation:
*As in the 1996 law, land without a social or economic use is subject to expropriation.
*The definition of economic and social use includes areas left fallow for crop rotation, ecological reserves and areas and projected growth of agricultural enterprises.
*Although opposition, foreign government officials and others expressed concern that the requirement that land have a socio-economic productive use would eliminate environmental protection on nature reserves, like the 1996 legislation, it includes ecological functions and conservation as valid land uses, even if they do not have an additional social economic function.
*Small properties, campesino farms and indigenous communities are exempt from property taxes.
*The newly conformed national agrarian council will determine landholding and expropriation policy The council includes indigenous federations, government agencies and ministries, and CONFEAGRO, the
*There will also be departmental councils.
*Grants the government the ability to expropriate or revert land by eminent domain or for incompliance with the required social economic function and established a detailed administrative process to carry this out.
*Grants the government the right to expropriate land identified as illegally obtained as a result of the survey process.
*Allows the government to expropriate land without compensation when its use violates existing constitutional norms.
*Establishes an appeal process for expropriations, owners must be paid in full a monetary (or if the owner prefers, land) compensation calculated based on the market price and taking into account improvements and investments that the owner has made. Land cannot be expropriated before full payment. Also part of a property can be reverted back to the state.
*Protects small properties and indigenous communal lands from expropriation.
*Provides due process guarantees for affected landowners and if the land is mortgaged, the lending individual or institution has a right to participate in the process.
*Prohibits land grants to government and agrarian reform officials, their families, and government contractors.
*Expropriated lands will be granted exclusively to indigenous or native communities with insufficient land based studies.
*The on site inspection process will take place every two years after the title has been granted. This gives all those large landowners time to create an economic or social function for their property, such as buying cattle. These inspections will focus on properties larger than 120 acres.
*Creates an additional 0.25 percent surcharge to the tax base already set for agricultural land. The law mandates that municipalities must use at least 75 percent of these tax revenues for improvements in rural basic infrastructure and healthcare.
In spite of fiery political rhetoric from both sides and misrepresentation in the Bolivian and
-----------------
End notes
[1] Constitución Política del Estado. Bolivia. Articles 22, 165, 167.
[2]For background information on Agrarian Reform efforts in
Confrontation in Bolivia over Agrarian Reform
Roger Burbach November 30, 2006
The government of Evo Morales and the indigenous social movements of Bolivia have won an historic victory with the passage of an agrarian reform law that calls for the "expropriation of lands" that "do not serve a just social-economic function." According to Miguel Urisote, the director of the Land Foundation, an independent research center in La Paz, "this is a blow to the latifundias, the large estates where many Indians often work in slave-like conditions."
Morales sent agrarian reform legislation to the Bolivian Congress just over half a year ago. It passed the Chamber of Deputies where Morales' party, the Movement Towards Socialism, or MAS, has a majority. But then it was stymied in the Senate where the right wing opposition has a majority of one. Protesting the impasse, thousands of Indians descended on La Paz from the four corners of the country.
Delia Duran who started marching twenty days ago from the eastern department of Santa Cruz, the strong hold of the large landowners, said: "We are tired of working for the families of the rich. When are we going to be able to work for ourselves? We want our own property, we have nothing, we live in huts made of straw and plastic."
Fearful of this mass mobilization, the right wing parties abandoned the Senate two weeks ago, depriving it of the quorum necessary to conduct any business. Backed by the demonstrators, President Morales declared that if the Senate "does not want to change the law, the people will rise up to change it by force." He threatened to issue an executive decree enabling him to expropriate lands by fiat.
But he did not need to take this dramatic step as the rug was pulled out from under the absent Senators. Under Bolivian law each Senator has a substitute who is entitled to vote if the designated Senator is absent or unable to attend Senate sessions. Three of these substitutes switched sides. They went to the Senate, forming a quorum along with the MAS Senators and passed the agrarian reform legislation. Another critical law dealing with the petroleum companies operating in Bolivia was also passed. Forty -four new contracts with the companies were approved, ceding more revenue to the government and recognizing the state's basic control over the country's natural gas resources.
The opposition is outraged, claiming fraud and that the government bought off the substitute Senators. But according to Teresa Morales of the Center for Strategic Studies in La Paz, "the substitutes come from the north, the poorest region of Bolivia. Two of the substitutes are themselves participants in indigenous movements and they responded to pressures from the grass roots."
Just as important as the agrarian reform law is the struggle that is occurring over the Constituent Assembly that was elected earlier this year to draft a new constitution and to "refound" the country's governing institutions. The Movement Towards Socialism controls 54 percent of the Assembly's delegates, and along with allied parties and social movements it has over 60 percent of the votes. Meeting since July, the Assembly has accomplished nothing because the right wing parties are insisting that a two- thirds vote is necessary to approve any of the planks of the new constitution. MAS asserts that a majority is sufficient to work on the new constitution and that only the final draft must be approved by a two-thirds vote. Then it will be submitted to the population for majority approval in a national referendum.
Last week MAS and its allies decided to start drafting the different parts of the constitution with a simple majority. The right wing opposition immediately began to tie up the sessions, with some of its delegates proclaiming a hunger strike, saying they would not leave the building where the assembly meets. In four of Bolivia's nine departments, the opposition has taken control of local civic committees, even calling for secession from the Bolivian state if the Assembly uses the majority voting rule. Morales responded by declaring that another mass march like the one for agrarian reform might be needed "to put order in the Constituent Assembly."
The opposition however continues to fragment. Several assembly delegates from right wing parties have announced that they will now participate in its sessions and collaborate with MAS and the social movements. According to Miguel Urisote of the Land Foundation, "the large landowners and the agro-industrial interests of Santa Cruz are loosing their economic and political clout. Their anti-Indian and racist policies are being rejected even by some of their traditional allies. The agrarian reform law and the Constituent Assembly are opening the road to a new Bolivia."
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas, CENSA, based in Berkeley, CA. He has written "The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice," and is currently working on a book on the social movements and the new left in Latin America.
Bolivian Senate ratifies military pact with Venezuela, approves oil contracts
Bolivia's Senate ratified a military agreement with Venezuela and approved nationalization contracts with foreign oil companies during a hastily called session that ended early Wednesday morning.
Lawmakers ended a weeklong boycott Tuesday night and passed President Evo Morales' sweeping land reform bill, then remained in the chamber past midnight to approve a vaguely worded accord signed by Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in May.
The treaty would create closer ties between the armed forces of the two leftist governments and have Venezuela help Bolivia construct a military base in the northern city of Riberalta and a river port on its border with Brazil.
While the agreement easily passed the House months ago, opposition leaders here have questioned provisions that propose cooperation in areas such as "control of armament and disarmament" and "democratic control of forces."
Senators last month passed a separate agreement calling for oil-rich Venezuela to help out its cash-strapped ally by purchasing US$100 million (€76.01 million) in Bolivian treasury bonds.
On Tuesday night, the Senate also ratified contracts with international companies according to the terms of Morales' May 1 nationalization of Bolivia's petroleum industry.
The agreements, signed last month, grant Morales' government a majority share of the foreign companies' Bolivian revenues and control over their operations in the country.
Companies signing contracts include Brazilian state energy giant Petrobras, Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF, the French company Total SA, and British Gas.
Bolivia's natural gas reserves are South America's largest after Venezuela's.
The conservative opposition party Podemos, which led the boycott to block Morales' land reform plan, holds 13 of the Senate's 27 seats. With help from two senators from minor opposition parties, Podemos had earlier prevented the body from reaching a 14-seat quorum.
Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, has 12 Senate seats.
But Tuesday night, one Podemos senator returned to the chamber to vote for land reform, joined by assistants filling in for two other opposition senators.
With the additional support in the Senate, MAS also approved the Venezuela treaty and nationalization contracts.
Opposition leaders have accused Morales' government of bribing the senators' assistants, a charge the president has denied.
Morales' agrarian reform law grants his government the power to seize unproductive land for redistribution to Bolivia's landless poor.
Reposted from International Herald Tribunal
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