[CubaNews] Bolivia's Morales faces biggest test

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-evo25dec25,1,6724043.story

Bolivia's Morales faces biggest test

Political leaders in wealthy regions, long alienated 
 from his Andes power base, are pushing for more autonomy.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

December 25, 2006


LA PAZ, BOLIVIA â Not yet a year in office, President Evo Morales can
boast of some major accomplishments. He has nationalized the
country's oil and gas industry, overseen sweeping agrarian reform and
convened an assembly to rewrite the constitution.

Polls show the former llama herder and coca-leaf farmer is
maintaining a positive rating of more than 60% in opinion polls, even
as Bolivia has lurched from one political crisis to another.

Bolivia's first Indian president has not backed down from his
campaign pledge to be a "nightmare" for Washington, emerging as
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's closest ally in the region. With
his fiery revolutionary rhetoric and distinctive jackets crafted of
Indian fabrics, Morales has gained great cachet among the left in
Latin America, the United States and especially Europe.

"An indigenous government has extraordinary 'sex appeal,' " said
Carlos Torsano, an independent political analyst here. Torsano notes
that despite Morales' focus on what the leader calls Bolivia's
indigenous majority, polls have shown that most Bolivians, like most
Latin Americans, consider themselves mestizo, or mixed-race people.

And, for all the political adeptness, Morales is now facing his most
daunting challenge.

A political insurrection has enveloped four provinces in Bolivia's
east, north and south, a swath of the country known as the half-moon
that contains much of the nation's wealth, including most of its gas
reserves. Political leaders there, long alienated from Morales' power
base in the Andes heartland and the coca-growing tropics, are pushing
for more autonomy.

Their supporters launched mass demonstrations, civic strikes and
legislative action, culminating in huge protests Dec. 15.

"The road to autonomy is something that our society has been working
toward for a long time, with mobilizations, protests and votes," said
GermÃn Antelo, president of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, the
thriving eastern lowland city that is the heart of the autonomy
movement. "We're not looking to break away from Bolivia. We just want
respect for popular will that seeks autonomy."

What autonomy would mean in practice is unclear, although it probably
would include local governments receiving a larger share of taxes and
royalties from their natural gas. This is not a small thing at a time
when gas revenue is expected to increase by billions of dollars
thanks to new contracts negotiated with foreign energy companies
under Morales' nationalization scheme.

The president has signaled that he regards talk of autonomy as the
first step toward breaking up the country, South America's poorest.
He derides the autonomy movement as the elite's response to his
leftist reforms.

"The fatherland cannot be divided," Morales declared during a
ceremony at the Army Military college here this month. But he
softened his tone after Dec. 15, saying the pro-autonomy movement had
modified its goals. "They no longer advocate division, separation,"
Morales said.

The tension surrounding autonomy has escalated as Bolivia and
Venezuela approved a military assistance pact in November that has
troubled Morales critics and U.S. diplomats.

"If, for some reason, the brotherly revolution in Bolivia was
threatened, and our blood was solicited, we would be here," Julio
Montes, Venezuela's ambassador and a major behind-the-scenes player
here, recently told a gathering of peasants in the Chapare, Morales'
home base.

The ambassador's comments ignited a firestorm among autonomy
supporters, fierce critics of the Bolivia-Venezuela alliance.

"We know that there are Venezuelan advisors in many areas of the
government, and this pact opens the possibility of any kind of
intervention," opposition Sen. Oscar Ortiz told reporters.

Morales supporters have pushed back. "We will defend with blood the
unity of the country," Nazario Ramirez, a proMorales leader in the La
Paz suburb of El Alto said.

Morales has spoken of his own plan for autonomy for indigenous people
without specifying exactly what that means.

The autonomy issue has become entwined with the controversy swirling
around the rewriting of the constitution.

In July, residents of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando and Beni, the four
half-moon states, voted for greater autonomy in a referendum held the
same day a 225-member assembly was chosen to craft a new
constitution.

Rewriting the constitution is widely seen here as a means for Morales
to implement far-ranging reforms and consolidate his power, much as
Venezuela's Chavez used such a convention to cement his hold on the
government.

But Morales won only a slight majority of the constitutional
assembly. His allies are pushing for rules allowing most
constitutional changes to be made by a simple majority rather than a
two-thirds vote, which would ensure passage of Morales' program and
guarantee defeat of regional autonomy.

Predictably, officials from the four states and other Morales
opponents have balked, arguing that a two-thirds vote is required on
constitutional issues.

Like Morales today, Bolivian presidents have traditionally eschewed
consensus and concentrated on pleasing their own power bases. Morales
has basically adopted the winner-take-all philosophy of predecessors
who are his ideological opposites.

"He has shown his intention to exclude his adversaries rather than
try to incorporate them," noted Ricardo Paz, an independent analyst.
"This to me is a very grave error, and one that will lead inevitably
to the failure of his political project."

Neither Morales nor his opponents seem inclined to compromise.
Experts say an outright civil war is unlikely, but skirmishes have
broken out between Morales supporters and autonomy backers.

"Even if there is some mediation possible, I don't see how Bolivia
gets out of it without additional turmoil, if not violence," said
Eduardo Gamarra, an expert on Bolivia at Florida International
University in Miami.

On the streets, people worry that the rhetoric in a country bedeviled
by insecurity could escalate to something worse.

"I think what the president did with the country's hydrocarbons was
good, and I am also in favor of his land reform," said Guillermo
Perea, 38, a La Paz bus driver. "But what lacks in Bolivia is that we
all reach an agreement and the different parties not be so
capricious. We have to look for unity."

*

Special correspondent Oscar OrdoÃez in La Paz and AndrÃs D'Alessandro
of The Times' Buenos Aires Bureau contributed to this report.





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