MAS adjusts it proposed constitution for evaluation by the grassroots

La Prensa, August 31

In the zona Sur of La Paz, 16 MAS constituent assembly are drafting the last articles of its project for the Political Constitution of the State which, on September 10 in Sucre, they will put to the consideration of the social movements, confirmed the national head of the MAS bench, Roman Loayza.

Hotel Oberland, in the locality of Mallasa, was transformed into the center of operations of the MAS leadership group, where integrants of the technical-judicial commission are working on the final project for the constitution, which will be presented to the MAS bench in Sucre next week, revealed La Paz constituent delegate Raul Prada to La Paz.

He clarified that the document is a proposal that will afterwards have to earn the approval of the movements aligned with MAS and the other parties with a presence in the assembly.

“MAS worked in the 21 commissions, it has collected the texts from the legal advisors and for now we are working on the drafting of the constitutional text”.

According to the coordinator of this commission, Carlos Romero, the MAS leadership convoked the opposition parties with the aim of advancing in the elaboration of a joint proposal. Nevertheless, the initiative was rejected and so they decided to draft the text on their own, taking into consideration the majority, minority and unanimous proposals that came out of the commissions.

On Sunday, La Prensa revealed that vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera called on MAS to mobilize 100,000 campesinos and indigenous peoples to form a vigil outside the assembly. These “vigilantes” have until September 10 to arrive in Sucre, when a cabildo [open town meeting] where the text being drafted up by the members of the technical-judicial commission in La Paz will be approved.

Roman Loayza explained to this newspaper that the members of this commission should conclude its work by Sunday September 1, and has already planned for the MAS delegates to go to Sucre the following week where the final text will be read out.

According to Carlos Romero, the drafting of the text is “difficult” because 700 articles were approved. Therefore, “we need to eliminate repetition, duplication and to fill gaps”. He affirmed that once the job was finished, spaces of dialogue with social movements, and other political forces and actors that are immersed in these issues.

He clarified that this document was not MAS’ final word, although to elaborate the proposal the reports of the commissions were taken into consideration. What it is, rather, is a “legal recommendation” of how the project could be structured, but it requires a mechanism of legitimization.

Later on, Romero put forward that the directorate should broaden out participation to the presidents of the commissions “because it was these constituent delegates who gathered together the proposals from the regions and their companero delegates”.

He affirmed that it was not possible to deal with 700 articles and, therefore, they had decided to reduce the number to 300, a number that he considered “ideal”, taking into consideration that in the current constitution there exists 234 articles.

“We should incorporate collective rights for the third generation, the deepening of the territorial structures of public power within the framework of departmental autonomies, therefore it is inevitable that the number of articles increase”.

Proposals from the document

According to Raul Prada, the document published on August 15 is the work of one of the technical groups of the three that are working in Sucre: “we are working on the final proposal here”.

The constituent delegate explained that the MAS project proposes a plurinational state with political-adminstrative decentralization and departmental and indigenous autonomies.

Moreover, it accepts economic pluralism but strengthens communitarian strategies. “We are a communitarian and social state, the axis is in the plurinational, non-federal state”.

Regarding natural resources, these “should be the domain of the Bolivian people and its social management should be in the hands of the indigenous people and the state”.

MAS proposed that the legislative assembly have only one chamber and with less than 157 representatives, and it foreshadows the direct election of originario authorities.

In the same manner, it includes the reelection of the president and the vice president, together with the revoking of mandates for all national, departmental, territorial and municipal authorities.

Podemos accuses MAS of violating the regulation

Democratic and Social Power (Podemos) will not participate in any convocation by MAS to endorse a constitution which is drafted outside what is established in the general regulations of the constituent assembly, the constituent delegate Carlos Alberto Goytia said yesterday.

“This work that is being carried out cannot be presented as a full text because all the parties are not participating in its drafting, a regulation exists which is once again being violated by MAS in a renewed demonstration of its political brutishness”. He affirmed that the internal norms of the forum establish that the plenary of the assembly should hear the reports from the 21 commissions and only afterwards begin to draft an official text, therefore” he affirmed “what MAS is doing with its 16 assembly delegates and its Spanish advisors is not with the regulation”. He also revealed that they did not receive any official communication from MAS, “but we would not have accepted anyway, because the regulations states that the constitutional text be approved in full by the plenary and here a dozen constituent delegates have assumed the representation of the 255 members”.

He also explained that no official Podemos proposal existed, because they presented their proposals in the commissions, whose reports should be read in the plenary to be approved by the whole assembly as established in article 70 of the internal norms.

The head of the national MAS bench, Roman Loayza assured that the minority has to respect the majority vote of the people because, if not, it will be “the force of the people” which will oblige them to and will impose the constitutional text.

He warned that the indigenous peoples who struggled to obtain the assembly and a new social pact “cannot renounce their historic demand”.

Translated from La Prensa