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Last Updated: Jul 31st, 2011 - 17:29:39 |
Recall over, Bolivia eyes constitution vote
By Simon Gardner
Aug 11, 2008, 14:59
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LA PAZ (Reuters) - Confirmed in office in a landslide recall election vote, Bolivian President Evo Morales now plans to push through major constitutional reforms early next year that will further antagonize his rightist opponents.
The reforms would give more clout to Bolivia's indigenous majority, enable Morales to run for re-election and undermine provincial autonomy drives, They have driven a deep wedge between Morales and some of the country's regional governors.
"We should start 2009 ... by calling a referendum on whether to approve the state's new constitution policy," Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana told state television on Monday.
With four pro-autonomy governors who oppose Morales also winning Sunday's recall vote, Bolivian politics remain deadlocked. Some fear more of last week's violent protests.
The governors who are blocking Morales' socialist reforms, are furious he has cut their share of windfall natural gas revenues and accuse him of governing only for his supporters.
Quintana said: "If we can't reach substantive agreements ... then we must address all those issues which divide us to a referendum -- issues like re-election, the compatibility of autonomous governments, land issues."
Such a vote would be highly divisive in a Bolivia already polarized along economic and racial fault lines between Morales' Indian power base in the impoverished west of the country and resource rich provinces in the east.
After winning Sunday's referendum with over 75 percent support according to unofficial results, Ruben Costas, governor of Santa Cruz province in Bolivia's agricultural heartland, promised his supporters regional autonomy and dismissed Morales' planned constitution.
Morales called for dialogue with the governors but his overture is likely to fall on deaf ears.
"It is very probable we won't be able to find harmony between (regional) autonomy statutes and a new constitution," said Quintana. "That's why we need a new referendum on the new constitution."
Morales hoped the recall vote would undermine the governors' autonomy drives. The country's first Indian leader and a former coca leaf farmer, he won more than 60 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results -- far more than the 53.7 percent he was elected with in December 2005.
At least two governors, including Manfred Reyes Villa, the anti-Morales governor of Cochabamba in Bolivia's coca-growing heartland, lost in the recall vote. Reyes Villa said the vote was illegal and is refusing to step down.
Quintana said the government would decide on how to proceed with getting rid of him and naming an interim replacement once the results are official in a week or so.
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