Bolivian President Evo Morales has ended his six-day hunger strike as Bolivia's Congress, after nine hours of sometimes furious debate, conceded to pressure to change the election code.
The changes, primarily designed to provide Bolivia's indigenous people with some voting clout, have been touted by Morales' opposition as a move to allow the president to run for a second five-year term. Morales was elected in December of 2005 by a more than 50-percent majority, according to exit polls.
Under the new election code, seven new seats have been created for indigenous people in the 130-seat lower house of congress, and provisions have been made to allow Bolivians living abroad to vote. This adds about 2,300,000 potential new voters to the rolls, many of them living in Argentina. Bolivia currently has approximately 4 million eligible voters.
A new constitution, approved by a nearly two-thirds majority of voters in late January, gave indigenous people rights to their own territory and language, and even provided for regional, indigenous systems of justice, but these constitutional changes were without teeth unless electoral seats (and districts) were also created to provide the voting muscle behind such rights.
Up to now, right-wing opposition leaders have stalled passage of this election reform bill, which is seen by some as helping Morales gain reelection by allocating more seats to poor, rural areas where he is popular. The aim of these opposition leaders is to create a seat of power within state governments from which to control Bolivia's abundant natural resources, including natural gas, minerals and land - areas currently dominated by international business interests.
The new ruling sets a December 6 deadline for elections that will likely appoint Morales president for another five years, but this move - according to Morales supporters - is designed not to create a permanent, titular head of state but to prevent the wealthy, senate-controlled opposition from gaining control of the country's legal process and, by extension, its wealth.
Morales, South America's first indigenous leader, has faced opposition from the senate since he came to power, largely over social reforms that Morales sees as essential to elevating the lives and wellbeing of Bolivia's indigenous people. Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, sits on gas reserves estimated at 52.3 trillion cubic feet and potentially worth $120 billion. Morales has consistently cautioned colleagues to avoid violence yet not become "instruments of neo-liberalism" (referring to the spread of globalization and the U.S.'s role in it).
Bolivia's energy sector was privatized in the 1990s, with all reserves held by foreign companies located primarily in Brazil, Spain and Argentina. In May of 2007, a buyback deal with Brazilian-owned Petrobras transferred control of some of that gas back to Bolivia. In January, Morales also nationalized Empresa Petrolera Chaco S.A. Chaco was formerly controlled by Pan American Energy LLC, a company 60-percent owned by the UK's BP PLC.
Morales' 2006 land distribution bill took possession of private land holdings the size of Nebraska from a handful of wealthy families in Bolivia's thinly populated eastern section and passed them on to indigenous people. This was the same year the president co-opted several mining interests held by Swiss mining group Glencore International AG with plans to eventually nationalize all mining operations.
Morales, called a dictator by some (though he has never been charged with personal corruption), is slowly whittling away at the seats of wealth and power within Bolivia, a process the West sees as promoting political destabilization, though Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, cut from the same revolutionary cloth, has vowed to support Morales and is keeping a close watch on the country's progress with an eye to his own future leadership.
Other articles you might enjoy:
Should Access to Clean Water Be a Human Right?
Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Part III)
Get Celsias headlines on Twitter! Check us out: Celsiastweets
