By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Mar 7 2005 (IPS)

-After just 17 months in power, Bolivian President Carlos Mesa announced that he would offer his resignation to Congress, in the face of relentless social protests throughout the country.

According to analysts, the president is seeking to shore up his popular support, and to reach a broad social pact that would allow him to continue governing.

After Mesa made his announcement Sunday night in a radio and television address, hundreds of people took to the streets to show their support for the president in the central cities of La Paz, Oruro and Cochabamba, while political parties reacted with caution.

Just after midnight Sunday, Mesa left the government palace carried on the shoulders of citizens demanding that he remain in his post and pledging that they would hold a vigil and marches until the Congress refuses to accept the president’s resignation.

Dozens of people remained outside the seat of government waving Bolivian and white flags.

Monday was also the eighth day of a civic strike staged by the residents of El Alto, a sprawling poverty-stricken city next to La Paz, who are calling for the cancellation of a contract signed between the government and the Aguas del Illimani consortium, owned by the French firm Lyonnaise des Eaux.

In addition, Monday marked the first day of nationwide roadblocks headed up by lawmaker Evo Morales of the leftist Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), the leader of the country’s coca growers.

The week of protests coincided with the appearance before the federal prosecutor’s office of ministers from the cabinet of former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, to testify on their responsibility for the violent repression and deaths during the so-called "gas war" of October 2003.

Mesa said he has been besieged by 820 strikes, protests and other conflicts and 12,000 demands from different sectors during his 17 months in office.

Nevertheless, he reiterated the statement he made on Oct. 13, 2003, when the military cracked down on the roadblocks set up in El Alto: "I am not willing to kill, and I will not send out the police and armed forces to remove roadblocks. I am a man of his word, and I will keep it."

Mesa, who was vice president at the time, became president on Oct. 17, 2003 after Sánchez de Lozada’s resignation and abrupt departure from the country.

The former president stepped down in the midst of a massive social mobilisation in western Bolivia protesting plans to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico through Chilean ports.

A total of 67 people were killed and another 200 were injured in the "gas war", according to relatives of the victims.

When Mesa took over the country’s leadership, he pledged to address the social and economic demands put forward by various social sectors.

The main items included the cancellation of the natural gas export plans, the reformulation of the country’s energy policy based on the outcome of a referendum, the review of petroleum contracts signed with foreign companies, and constitutional reforms aimed at granting greater regional autonomy and recognising indigenous rights.

But the implementation of these measures has been obstructed by various factors, such as international pressure, the conflicting interests of the business community and impoverished sectors of the population, and a divided congress with little popular support.

Moreover, the president does not belong to any political party and has governed through constantly shifting majority coalitions.

"I will not play along with the farce of blockading the country," Mesa said Sunday in reference to the nationwide roadblocks announced by Morales, who mobilised his followers after his proposal to increase the royalties paid by the oil companies from the current 18 to 50 percent was defeated in the Chamber of Deputies.

The lower house also rejected a bill introduced by the Mesa administration that would have created an additional 32 percent tax on gas and oil, to be implemented gradually, based on the volumes produced.

The bill it did approve last Thursday would create a 32 percent direct tax on production (IPD), while maintaining the 18 percent royalty on gas and oil production.

Mesa sees the bill that made it through the lower house as unworkable, given the pressure from foreign companies and governments and the multilateral lenders, which are demanding that Bolivia guarantee the estimated three billion dollars in foreign investments made since 1996 in the country’s largest gas and oilfields.

Reserves of 53 trillion cubic feet of natural gas worth an estimated 100 billion dollars, which give Bolivia the second-largest gas reserves in South America after Venezuela, have dramatically changed the history of South America’s poorest country.

"I will not approve a law that places the country at loggerheads with the international community," said Mesa.

In a July 2004 referendum, voters authorised the Mesa administration to modify the terms of the contracts signed with oil companies and to build the infrastructure to allow Bolivia to refine its natural gas, in order to export it "with value added".

The apparently similar stances of Mesa and Morales became distanced as the president began to feel the pressure from foreign interests, which demanded that all contracts signed with Bolivia be honoured in full, and threatened lawsuits and international arbitration that could cost the country up to eight billion dollars.

Morales interpreted the results of the referendum as a popular mandate for the nationalisation of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves, and pushed for this goal to be pursued in Congress, where MAS holds more seats than any other party, with 27 deputies and eight senators out of a total of 157 lawmakers in both houses.

A roughly equal number of lawmakers formed an independent bloc supporting Mesa, thus further weakening the already greatly diminished power of the country’s traditional parties, like the centrist Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) and the centre-left Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), which formerly governed Bolivia.

Congress is to reach a decision within the next few days on whether or not to accept Mesa’s resignation.

Minister of the Presidency José Antonio Galindo said Mesa did not rule out the possibility of remaining in his post until his term ends, in August 2007, but that he would only do so if a national pact was reached that would allow him to govern in peace.

Roberto de la Cruz, one of the leaders of the October 2003 protests who is now a town councillor in El Alto, told IPS that Mesa should remain in the presidency – something he described as a "necessary evil" – although he criticised the president’s lack of determination in meeting the demands voiced by social groups and trade unions in El Alto.

The executive secretary of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) central trade union, Jaime Solares, called the offer to resign a "theatrical move", and said he backed the creation of a transitional government to call early elections within the next six months.

La Paz Mayor Juan del Granado, the head of the Movimiento Sin Miedo civic movement, said Mesa should reconsider his offer to resign.

Since Bolivia was left without a vice-president after Mesa was named president, the first in line to succeed him would be the president of the Senate, Hormando Vaca Diez of the MIR. The next in line would be the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Mario Cossío of the MNR.

But under the constitution, if neither of the lawmakers received two-thirds of the votes in Congress, Mesa would be replaced by the president of the Supreme Court, Eduardo Rodríguez.

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