MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Congress rejects Mesa's call for early elections.

Bolivian lawmakers on Thursday rejected as legally “unacceptable” a proposal by President Carlos Mesa to hold early elections.

In a declaration it approved on the matter, Congress said that Mesa's request "lacks all legal basis and is contrary to the Constitution." But a majority of legislators went even further, censuring the president for inability to govern and for his alleged intention to dissolve Congress by advancing the general elections by a full two years to this August.

After more than five hours of debate, the declaration against Mesa's proposal was subjected to a show-of-hands vote and approved by more than two-thirds of the 119 members present for Thursday's special joint session of both chambers of the 157-seat body. Speaker Hormando Vaca Diez ignored one legislator's call for a formal role-call vote and proceded to adjourn the session.

Legislators from both the traditional and leftist parties joined forces to maintain the existing arrangements.

Mesa did offer his resignation last week, saying that leftist protests were making the country ungovernable, but Congress overwhelmingly rejected it and the president appeared to emerge stronger.

As an independent lacking support from his own political party in Congress, Mesa became inclined to ask for the moving up of the vote because he had found it impossible to place a "moderate" stamp on the energy reform.

His government blasted the oil and gas bill passed early Wednesday by the lower house.

The Andean nation's energy minister, Guillermo Torres, said that the bill, which must still be approved by the Senate, cannot "go out like that and has to be corrected." The energy minister was referring to the creation of a new 32 percent tax on extraction of natural gas by all oil companies that would take effect immediately and could not be offset by the payment of other taxes.

These provisions differentiate the bill from the initiative proposed by the Mesa government, which was seeking a gradual increase in taxes, adjusted for differences in the size of fields, and incorporating possible deductions based on the payment of other taxes.

According to Torres, the legislation passed by the Chamber of Deputies was at heart "the same" as that proposed by the leftist opposition, which sought imposition outright of a 50 percent royalty on gas and oil production. The minister said both the scenarios - whether called tax or royalty - likely would be viewed as confiscatory, and illegal, by energy companies.

The powerful opposition party Movement Toward Socialism, along with organized coca-leaf growers and labor unions, have been staging road-blocking protests in several parts of the country to push for the royalty hike. Prior to Wednesday's lifting of the barricades, the actions stalled thousands of trucks, slowed exports to a trickle and kept produce from markets.

Bolivia's 53 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, the biggest in Latin America after Venezuela, have attracted multinational energy companies that have invested billions. But those companies have temporarily shelved further projects while awaiting final resolution of the legislative overhaul of their industry.

Those opposed to Mesa's proposals - including the powerful organization of coca-leaf growers and grassroots Indian groups from the highlands, the very elements that unseated Sanchez de Lozada - fear that foreign companies would loot Bolivia's natural wealth with no benefit for the poor majority.

Despite large deposits of gold, silver, oil and gas exploited over the centuries, Bolivia is still South America's poorest country.