[NYTr] Bolivia: The Constituent Assembly Crisis

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

CubaNow - Oct 1, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=10&item=3419&c=2


Bolivia: The Constituent Assembly Crisis

By Jaime Padilla

Cubanow.- The right is willing to use any means to impede the process
of change begun by Bolivia´s President Evo Morales, and bring an end to
the Constituent Assembly against the wishes of the majority of
Bolivians.

Faced with such provocation Bolivians have mobilized in defense of the
Assembly and in support of their government, as well as demanding an
explanation of the problems faced in the departments of Chuquisaca and
La Paz.

Last Monday a huge gathering in La Paz rejected the transfer of the
government to Sucre, while thousands of indigenous people began a
Social Summit in Sucre in support of the Constituent Assembly, which
has been paralyzed over the last three weeks for lack of guarantees.
The people are insisting the Assembly be reopened and that the new
Constitution be quickly approved by December 14.

As always, it is the same group that finds a thousand ways to disturb
the political process in Bolivia. The Comité Cívico Cruceñista
(Cruceñista Civic Committee), together with the oligarchy and the
owners of the mainstream press, agitate in constant confrontations with
the government. Thus it was at the end of August that these committees
from six of the nine departments and supposedly acting "in defense of
democracy", accused Evo Morales of acting above the law and called for
a work stoppage.

Both Santa Cruz and Cochabamba have lived through recent violence and
vandalism. Beni and Tarija witnessed some incidents, but the work
stoppage was quiet in Sucre and Cobija (Pando). The president of the
Cruceñista Civic Committee, Branko Marincovic said that the stoppage
was "a success and a demonstration that the government should be held
to account and should straighten out its act". But he omitted to
mention that thugs from the Cruceñista Youth Union took to the streets
armed with sticks to force citizens to obey the stoppage.

Days later these same thugs were sent to Sucre, disguised as indigenous
people to act as agents provocateurs. This and other similar acts that
were ultimately repeated in Santa Cruz, are not remote incidents, but
part of a confabulation. The Cruceñista Committee has an enormous
capacity to interfere in matters that do not concern it. It does not
recognize the Regional Labor Office or decisions of local government,
but manipulates other civic entities. Its arrogance was evident during
open meetings on autonomy conducted before one of the weakest local
governors in the country, Carlos Mesa, who yielded to the pressure of
the autonomist movement. Other regions such as Tarija, Beni, Pando and
Chuquisaca (the Media Luna region) were also submitted to the same
treatment.

How should we evaluate this situation?

It is not the Cruceño people that generate the conflict, but the
ideologues of the regionalist brainchild: the Camba National Liberation
Movement - an ally of retrograde sectors in the country and supported
by the U.S. Embassy that seeks to divide Bolivia.

And all this is not for naught. In a text published on their website
(www.nacioncamba.net), they proclaim: "To date, the racist politics
promoted by the mob State have benefited only the Andean ‘colonists’
with no fewer than two million hectares of the better Cruceña lands,
and that they were favored with generous international cooperation
programs, and received technical support and basic infrastructure.”
Nevertheless, "the Cambas have not benefited with even with a square
meter of their own land, and their just demands are ignored by the
parasitic bureaucracies of the Altiplano".

They’ve left off their struggle against the oil companies and the law
of administrative decentralization, and now seek their own autonomous
government "for the legal and formal recognition of our Cruceño
Nation-state". The Cruceñista Civic Committee, the Camba National
Liberation Movement and the Cruceñista Youth Union are branches of the
same tree that has no concept of Bolivian unity - or simply do not want
to understand it - and use their peons to measure the reaction of the
Bolivian people. However, time is not on their side.

Let us see how they operate.

The simple-minded mayor of Santa Cruz, Percy Fernández, who has stated
that Bolivia should be divided, called for the Media Luna region to
separate from "the Colla nation", and conform to the “Nation of the
East", while the Cochabamba Prefect, Manfred Reyes Villa, continues to
demand Evo’s resignation. Reyes Villa has an unpleasant past in the
dictatorships of Luis Garcia Meza and Hugo Banzer Suarez.

Other mediocre players in national politics are the opposition leaders
of Poder Democrático Social (Podemos or “We Can”), Jorge Tuto Quiroga,
and of Unidad Nacional (UN or National Unity), Samuel Doria Medina, and
a writer that seeks prominence, Juan Claudio Lechín. Businessman Doria
Medina was entrusted with organizing a hardly credible hunger strike
during discussions relating to the two thirds issue in the Assembly. It
appears that they agree with the old adage that the end justifies the
means, employing a media campaign that ignores the process of
transformation taking place in the country.

The acts of provocation are subtly subordinate to a strategy designed
against the rebuilding of Bolivia. They invent a climate of
instability, with the sinister intention of causing a break in the
nation’s democracy as the best way to exclude the social and indigenous
movements and bring about social confrontation.

MAS senator Antonio Peredo Leigue recently commented that this campaign
by the opposition was "a matter of repeating and repeating the same
lie, until it becomes a reality. Listening to the same rumor over and
over makes us disregard it, and thereby allows it to continue being
spread without contradiction. We tire of their falsehoods and so allow
their continuous diffusion. However, there are groups - the ones that
have the economic power - that believe these rumors. Worse still, they
contribute to them."

For diverse sectors of Santa Cruz, the situation in the city with the
mobilizations and acts of violence has become very worrying, because
retaliation is being taken against those who do not share the extreme
right-wing position, thus hardly providing a framework for democracy.

Constituent Assembly in Check

Because of clashes between police and student/citizen protestors, the
directors of the Assembly shut down sessions of the Constituent
Assembly on September 6. The debate over the nation’s future capital is
today a banner that rallies the opposition and the air around the
Constituent Assembly has become stale under the influence of the
Cruceñista Civic Committee with its demand for the transfer of the seat
of national government.

Thus the enemies of the people have managed to introduce into the
Constituent Assembly process alien elements as to the transformation of
the State, autonomy and the demand for Sucre to become the capital. If
these intransigent and irreconcilable positions by the civic leaders of
the departments of La Paz and Sucre are not abandoned, the Constituent
Assembly will fail and die.

The Call for Dialogue and Responsibility

President Evo Morales reiterated his call for dialogue to resolve the
issue of the seat of government, "to demonstrate the will to channel
the conflict.” However, he has been unable to reach the conservative
sectors which prefer to use sticks and secession because they lack
popular support. In response to this flurry of conspiracy, Prensa
Latina News Agency reported the celebration of a summit of the social
movements and the proposal that a high level commission reinvigorate
the Constituent Assembly. The mobilization of indigenous peoples and
other social sectors is permanent and they have been declared
guarantors of the Assembly.

"For us, the Constituent Assembly represents life or death, and lives
have been lost over it. Everyone in Bolivia knows what has been
happening. Who it is that wants the Assembly to fail. Which social,
economic and political groups that not want the major change: the
landowners, large businessmen and the large estate owners in the East
of the country", says Damian Condori, executive secretary of the
Federación Unica de Campesinos de Chuquisaca (One Farmers Federation of
Chuquisaca).

The mainstream international media inflate the conflict in Bolivia,
presenting the government of Evo Morales trapped in a dead end and
demanding - in their stories – respect for democracy, for institutions,
and a call for social calm.

The clashes in Sucre cannot be compared with “Black February” during
the water and gas wars that caused the fall of Goni Sánchez de Lozada
and Carlos Mesa. They are, says the president of the Comisión de Visión
de País (Commission for a National Vision) and Constituent Assembly
member, Félix Cárdenas, a necessary friction in the defense of which
rights must be respected. "One must assume that no change will be free
of pain, but nonetheless should be as less painful as possible."
Cárdenas maintains that the Constituent Assembly is not a tea party
where kisses, hugs, and sweet words are exchanged in the name of all
Bolivarians. No. "In the Assembly we are people who defend the
interests and aspirations of the poor, the excluded, of those that do
not have work today, and will not tomorrow. There are also those who
defend the interests of the oligarchs, of the landowners that hold
100,000 hectares of land acquired illegally during the military
governments while the farmers barely own two or three hectares. The
right-wing currently demands a dialogue based on respect for law and
democracy. "Look at them! They were beaten on December 18 but yet place
conditions on the victors – the minority never imposes conditions the
majority. ..”