BOLIVIA: Reform Gives Civil Society Chance to Join Electoral Fray

By Franz Chávez Reprint | | Print |

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Feb 25 2004 (IPS) - The face of politics in Bolivia will change dramatically this year as a result of the constitutional reform that for the first time allows citizens to run for office without the backing of a political party.

New personalities and civil society groups, such as those that gained notoriety during last year’s popular uprising, will have a place in local and national elections as a result of the new constitution enacted by President Carlos Mesa.

“The reform puts an end to the monopoly of the parties and establishes that citizens’ groups and indigenous communities can field candidates,” congressional deputy Antonio Peredo, vice-presidential candidate for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in June 2002, told IPS.

“This reform is an historic step, but it is not the end,” said Mesa as he announced the constitutional reform during a ceremony last week in which the only political leader present was MAS chief and former presidential candidate, Evo Morales, lawmaker as well as leader of the Bolivian coca growers’ movement.

Mesa himself is among the new personalities in Bolivian politics. He was elected vice-president and has led the country since his running mate Sánchez de Lozada resigned last Oct. 17, forced out by massive protests in the so-called “natural gas war”, which claimed 70 lives, according to humanitarian organisations.

The popular uprising, concentrated mostly in the western region, expressed the strong opposition of peasant farmers and other segments of society to an announced five-billion-dollar government project to export natural gas to North America via a pipeline to Chilean seaports.

The October protests had an underlying current of animosity towards Chile, which many Bolivians consider an enemy since Bolivia lost its ocean outlet to that country during the 1879 War of the Pacific. Tentative discussions are under way between La Paz and Santiago about some form of Bolivian access to the Pacific.

Prior to the reform, the Bolivian constitution stated: “Popular representation is exercised through political parties or coalitions formed by parties,” and only the parties possessing legal status could put forth candidates for public office.

But now the national law says, “Citizen groups and/or indigenous peoples may propose candidates directly for president, vice-president, senators and deputies, constituent assemblies, councillors, mayors and municipal agents, in equality before the law, and complying with the established requirements.”

MAS lawmaker Peredo suggested that the major parties did what they could to prevent grassroots participation in municipal elections in order to keep down the “currents of thought” that had been excluded from the democratic system until now.

“The traditional parties have only themselves to blame for the widespread rejection of the people, expressed in polls and in October’s mobilisations,” commented the deputy, adding that the immediate task is to try to recuperate a minimum of credibility for the parties, with sights on elections in December for 314 mayors and city councillors across the country.

In the last general elections – June 2002 – 14 parties participated and 4.1 million Bolivians were registered to vote, though only 2.9 million cast ballots. The MAS Morales-Peredo ticket came in second in the presidential race.

Under the new constitution, the political parties will chare power with the “micro-politics of dozens of labour organisations, which themselves will run into conflicts when it comes time to choose candidates,” sociologist and political analyst Joaquín Saravia told IPS.

One consequence of the new rules of the game will be the loss of hegemony of the powerful COB labour confederation, given that many of the trade unions that comprise it will field their own candidates, he said.

Furthermore, in the farming communities of the Bolivian west, there will be electoral disputes between unionists and representatives of other citizen groups, Saravia predicted.

In rural areas of Bolivia’s high plateau, agrarian unions coexist with socio-cultural structures known as “ayllus”, headed by traditional leaders known as “mallkus”, and legally recognised under the 1994 Popular Participation Law.

In the east, indigenous organisations have, until now, focused their efforts on defending territory and natural resources, though they do already have a representative in Congress, a MAS lawmaker.

The new context for political action by civil society forces has an important precedent in the radical leader of the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement, Felipe Quispe, a congressional deputy and president of the Confederation of Bolivian Campesinos (peasant farmers), said Saravia.

The labour organisations with biggest membership, and therefore with greatest potential for success in fielding their own candidates, are those that represent informal vendors, ranging from those who sell sweets on the street to smugglers of home appliances.

Other groups that wield weight in the social arena are public school teachers, urban transportation workers and farmers, including those who grow coca, which has traditional uses in Bolivia but is also the main ingredient in cocaine.

Through the “natural gas war”, several civic leaders gained name recognition in the regions that are demanding greater autonomy: the department of Tarija, in the south, and Santa Cruz, in the east, are rich in fossil fuels.

The principal leader of COB, Jaime Solares, told IPS that many of the negative traits of Bolivian political life will not change just because new candidates and groups are joining the fray.

“Every productive system has its mode of operations, and capitalism has corruption as a source of sustenance,” he said.

Expert Saravia predicts that, at least in the short term, the new political viewpoints in the electoral arena will not resolve the deeper problems that are expressed in the fact that 65 percent of the Bolivian population lives in poverty.

Since the restoration of democracy in Bolivia 21 years ago, four parties have alternated in power: the now defunct MNRI (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement of the Left) winning the elections in 1982, MNR (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) in 1985, 1993 and 2002, ADN (Nationalist Democratic Action) in 1997 and the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) in 1989.

The re-democratisation process was associated with the same actors remaining in power, directly or through alliances, and especially in the cases of former presidents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (MNR), who served two terms, Jaime Paz Zamora (MIR), one term, and former dictator Hugo Banzer Suárez (ADN), who stepped down due to health reasons and his term was served out by his vice-president, Jorge Quiroga Ramírez, also of the ADN.

Another president during that period was Víctor Paz Estenssoro (MNR), who has governed the nation more times than anyone else: following a revolution in 1952 and by popular vote in 1960, 1964 and 1985.