MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia to hold elections

The Bolivian Senate on Tuesday approved the constitutional reforms OK'd by the lower house, setting the stage for early general elections in December which Bolivians hope will do something to defuse the bitter political conflict that has driven two presidents from office since October 2003.

The Senate's decision came after a three-hour session here and in the vote on the matter, the required two-thirds majority was obtained to modify Article 93 of the constitution regarding presidential succession and cutting the terms of the currently-serving legislators.

The conservative and leftist forces that have remained inflexible for several months in defense of their respective demands for provincial autonomy and constitutional change to give Bolivia's Indian majority more power, on Tuesday finally came to an agreement addressing those issues while allowing early elections to proceed.

The agreements in both the upper and lower houses provide that the Dec. 4 balloting for a new president and Congress will be followed next June by election of delegates for a constitutional convention and a simultaneous referendum on giving the provinces much more autonomy from La Paz.

After that step, the rules for the procedure will be announced by provisional President Eduardo Rodriguez, who had expressed his concern because the lack of consensus could have forced him to call an election solely to choose another president.

Demands for a constitutional rewrite to give Bolivia's Indian majority more political clout and for nationalization of the Andean nation's massive reserves of natural gas were the rallying calls for the uprisings by grassroots, labor and indigenous groups that have ousted two presidents in less than two years.

Under the new scenario, the candidates began to lay out their strategies and speak of alliances, not only with other parties, but also with the so-called "citizens' groups" formed to take part in the elections, and the unions that led the latest demonstrations that toppled then-President Carlos Mesa in early June.

Indian leader and lawmaker Evo Morales, the head of the Movement Toward Socialism, announced Tuesday that on Wednesday he would set forth the steps his party would take in the runup to the general elections, selection of delegates to the constitutional assembly and balloting for provincial governorships, scheduled for Aug. 12.

Morales invited individuals, social movements, unions and parties that want to change the laissez-faire economic model currently in effect in the country to ally themselves with his MAS party. He said that discussions on that subject were being carried out with La Paz Mayor Juan del Granado, who leads a party called the Fearless Movement.

At the other ideological extreme, on Tuesday politician Juan Carlos Duran threw his hat into the ring for president as the candidate of the center-right MNR. The party's titular chief is former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who has been living in the United States since being forced out of power by protests in October 2003.

"I want to be a much broader candidate, not only of the MNR," said Duran upon proposing the renewal of his party to take part in the new elections.

Another former head of state, Jaime Paz Zamora, who governed from 1989-2003 and founded the conservative MIR, appears unlikely to seek the presidency as he is already registered as a candidate for governor in Tarija province, his party's traditional stronghold.

In the face of Paz Zamora's presumed absence from the presidential slate, the MIR is considering the possibility of fielding Senate chief Hormando Vaca Diez as its candidate for the nation's chief executive. Vaca Diez, who waived his constitutional right to succeed Mesa, said that he still had not thought about entering the race, but he added that he would indeed remain in politics. In the days between Mesa's June 6 resignation and the June 9 elevation of Rodriguez, then the chief justice of Bolivia's Supreme Court, the prospect of a Vaca Diez presidency was greeted with hostility by Indians, grassroots groups and organized labor.

In a situation similar to that of Paz Zamora is Manfred Reyes Villa, the head of the centrist NFR, who is currently running for the governorship of Cochabamba, where he was once mayor of the likenamed provincial capital.

Reyes Villa said Tuesday that he would remain a gubernatorial candidate if the date of the regional elections continues to be Aug. 12, but if that date changes he would become a candidate for the presidency.

Jorge Quiroga, who served as Bolivian president from 2001-2002 after Hugo Banzer was forced to step down by the cancer that later killed him, has given no indication whether he plans to throw his hat in the ring. But a poll released last week showed him as the prospective front-runner, albeit with only 17 percent support.

Running second in the same poll was cement baron Samuel Doria Medina, who heads the new National Unity party, with 16 percent, followed by Morales with 14 percent. Morales's MAS is the second-largest party in Congress, and he finished second in Bolivia's 2002 presidential election, just behind Sanchez de Lozada and narrowly ahead of Reyes Villa.