By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Aug 19 2004 (IPS)

Mayors in Bolivia are demanding life insurance as a condition for staying in their posts, as the campaign for the December municipal elections gets underway. Their demand took formal shape after a mayor accused of corruption by local residents was killed by an enraged mob in the central square of an Andean highlands town.

By The Association of Bolivian Mayors (AMB) is calling on the government to provide life insurance for mayors and their families, which would pay 45 percent of their monthly salary, according to a project that they asked the executive branch to introduce to Congress as a draft law.

The salaries of mayors, which are based on municipal revenues, can range from 50 to 2,800 dollars a month.

The AMB proposal began to be drafted after the June kidnapping and murder of Benjamín Altamirano, the mayor of the Andean town of Ayo Ayo, whose body was burnt in the central square.

Local authorities in other small towns have been replaced as a result of pressure, threats and violence.

But Julio Mallea, the director of the “Community Justice” programme in the law school at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, a public university, said he doubted that the life insurance proposal would have any effect on the causes of the instability and lack of governability in the rural villages and towns.

In 1994, the central government began to distribute public funds among Bolivia’s 314 municipalities, in accordance with the law on “popular participation”, which allots financing based on the number of inhabitants registered in the last census.

But the decentralisation measure, which was supposed to bring about a revolutionary development of remote villages and towns through the transfer of funds and decision-making power to long-neglected local governments has become the focus of heated controversy.

The administration of President Carlos Mesa reported last week that the accounts of 50 municipal governments have been frozen because of the failure to present the required expenditure reports, while accusations of embezzlement of public funds by local officials have multiplied.

The traditional political parties as well as new indigenous organisations that have gained legal recognition will participate in the December municipal elections.

Sociologist Rubén Ardaya, an expert in municipal affairs and a former deputy minister, defends the decentralisation of funds and decision-making authority, which he says has produced results, but blames the traditional parties – the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN) party – of “standing in the way of the new decentralised country.”

“I accuse the MNR, MIR and ADN of the murder committed in Ayo Ayo,” he told IPS, saying the three parties that have governed since the restoration of democracy in October 1982 failed to bring the organs of justice and law enforcement to the remote rural communities.

Ardaya said the thirst for justice felt by the people of Ayo Ayo and other municipalities, who have long accused local authorities of corruption but whose allegations have fallen on deaf ears, is comprehensible, although he underlined that he did not see the murder of Mayor Altamirano as justifiable in the least.

“The people in our villages and small towns are demanding equality, and want to be treated as equal citizens by the political parties, the justice system, and law enforcement officials. And when that does not occur, they are filled with a sense of impotence and rage, which is sometimes directed against the only visible face of the state, the mayor,” said Ardaya.

Earlier this month, a judge in the town of Pucarani ordered the arrest of Francisco Quispe, the mayor of the rural town of Achacachi, west of La Paz, for embezzlement of public funds.

However, many other accusations of corruption have been ignored by the justice system.

Bolivia’s indigenous people, who make up more than half of the population, do not trust the legal system, which has long failed to protect them, and identify it with corruption and manipulation by those who hold economic power, Mallea told IPS.

The jurist heads a group of university professors who so far have provided training to 8,000 “orientators”, 200 “conciliators” and 300 legal specialists in rural communities, with the aim of raising public awareness on legal rights.

Although he pointed out that the Bolivian constitution now recognises the application of community justice based on indigenous traditions and customs, he believes there is an urgent need to train orientators who are familiar with both the ordinary and indigenous systems of justice and forms of punishment.

Violence that has occurred in the context of the enforcement of indigenous forms of community justice in the Andean highlands region, which sometimes takes the form of public lashings, violates other individual rights and the person subjected to the traditional form of punishment can turn to the ordinary courts, thus generating a conflict between the two systems, he said.

A researcher of traditional indigenous customs, Mallea underscored the Aymara Indians’ respect for life, and said their justice system does not provide for the death penalty.

He said community justice procedures involve a scheduled public meeting in the central square, in which the community deliberates on the case.

The meeting is preceded by an offering to ask permission from the Earth goddess, Pachamama, under the symbol of a stone struck by a lightning bolt, and coca leaves are distributed on a multi-coloured piece of fabric, he described.

The punishment varies according to the accused person’s degree of responsibility, and can take the form of a whipping and recommendations for reinsertion into society. In the most serious cases, the individual can be banished from the community, and their possessions seized.

But in the case of Ayo Ayo, the traditional community justice procedure was not followed, Mallea stressed.

He agreed with Ardaya, saying the transfers of funds to local authorities and the “meddling of political parties” in city governments have also led to a “decentralisation of corruption.”

The Mesa administration is studying the situation and drafting a bill to harmonise the ordinary and community justice systems, based on respect for human rights. Under neither of the systems would capital punishment be allowed for common crimes. (Bolivian law provides for the death penalty only for exceptional crimes.)

“Both systems must continue to evolve in order to achieve real justice,” says a report by the local non-governmental organisation “Citizens Working for Justice”.

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