[Marxism] Washington Post denounces Morales refusal to cave in to opposition

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

And note the coup-hopeful lie about Chavez accepting the referendum results
only under military pressure.
Fred Feldman


WASHINGTON POST
editorial

Crackup in Bolivia?
Evo Morales's attempt to push through a constitutional rewrite threatens to
split the country.

Friday, December 14, 2007; A38

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez may have been forced to concede defeat in a
constitutional referendum this month, but his eccentric project to
accumulate power lives on. Mr. Chavez, who according to multiple independent
reports announced the vote against his "Bolivarian revolution" only under
pressure from the Venezuelan military, has already said he will try again.
Meanwhile, two of his populist followers, in Bolivia and Ecuador, are
pressing ahead with copycat constitutional coups. Ecuador's Rafael Correa
and Bolivia's Evo Morales both say their aim is to give more power and
resources to poor and indigenous people. As with Mr. Chavez, that translates
in practice into the aggregation of presidential powers and the removal of
current limits on their tenures in office.

The power grabs were breeding stiff resistance even before Venezuelans
demonstrated that Mr. Chavez's "21st-century socialism" could be rebuffed.
Now the focus has shifted to Bolivia -- where Mr. Morales has provoked a
provincial rebellion that some fear could lead to a civil war.

A former coca farmer who has allowed himself to be overtly tutored by Mr.
Chavez, Mr. Morales convened a constitutional convention 16 months ago, only
to see it stall because of strong opposition to his radical proposals to
redistribute property and wealth and to potentially make himself
president-for-life. Last month, his followers responded by voting through a
constitutional draft at a meeting that excluded the opposition; the action
provoked demonstrations in which at least three people died. On Sunday, the
document was given final approval by another rump session that ignored a
legal requirement that a two-thirds majority of the convention vote in
favor.

Leaders of four of the six Bolivian provinces with elected opposition
governors responded by announcing a plan to declare autonomy tomorrow. The
resistance is centered in Santa Cruz, Bolivia's richest city and the center
of the country's energy industry. Having just presented the opposition with
a fait accompli, Mr. Morales had the nerve to call the autonomy proposals
"illegal, unconstitutional and separatist," and his interior minister
threatened to use force against the provinces.

Mr. Morales would be better off absorbing the lesson just taught to Mr.
Chavez -- that Latin Americans aren't willing to give up their freedoms for
a strongman's socialism. He has proposed holding a referendum on his own
tenure in power next month; he should hold it, and put his divisive
constitution on hold.





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