Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

The agreement was reached on October 20th. A nationwide referendum has been authorized for January 25th. NIMDs partner in Bolivia, La Fundacíon Boliviana para Democrácia Multipartidaria (FBDM) played a crucial role in the development of this agreement – essentially bringing together the moderates from both sides and facilitating a progressive dialogue.

President Morales and his indigenous government, is now in office for almost three years. His party, the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS), won the elections with an absolute majority in 2005. This victory meant the end of the four or five political parties that had dominated Bolivian politics for the past 25 years. MAS – in reality a broad-based coalition made up of trade unions, coca framers, indigenous people and socialist intellectuals – won the election with broad support of the population, who wanted to break with the old political establishment.

Opposition from Media-Luna

The new government started successfully with the nationalization of the important gas industry, but soon found itself struggling on a the critical issue of the proposed constitution. From the beginning the parliamentary opposition – in particular PODEMOS of former President Tuto Quiroga – obstructed and hindered the process from the beginning, especially in the Senate, where the opposition has a majority. After a challenging and problematic period in the Constituent Assembly in 2007, Morale’s party approved the text for the Constitution without the support of the opposition in Parliament. Inevitably this has had an extremely polarizing effect on the country. Yet, it soon turned out that Morales’ main opposition came from regional forces, the civic committees composed of mainly large landowners and the old political oligarchy in the four departments in the East: Santa Cruz (large scale agriculture), Tarija (gas winning), Beni and Pando.

These departments, the so-called Media Luna, had already voiced, through popular referenda, a strong preference for more autonomy. This demand duly became the rallying point for the opposition. In response, Evo Morales organized a recall referendum on August 10th, at which citizens could confirm his position and the positions of the country’s nine governors. Once again, the results – confirming both Morales and the four main opposition governors were confirmed – were more polarizing than clarifying.

Time for talks

Over subsequent years, the trusts between both sides has frequently been damaged. Radicals from both sides dominated the debates. The rank and file of MAS wanted to convert their election victory; the old political elite and modern white economic elites from Santa Cruz and Tarija remained entrenched in their non-acceptance of the indigenous population. Constructing a sustainable dialogue towards a new representative Constitution, in such a dramatically polarized political context, was never going to be easy.

After violent confrontations broke out in Pando on September 11th, UNASUR and other international organizations called on the government and other civic committees to begin negotiations. Needing a two third majority in Congress in order to be able to organize the referendum to approve his Constitution, Morales signed up to the talks. In the Cochabamba department three commissions were set up organized around the main issues of conflict: autonomy, land ownership and tax on income on gas. However more conflict erupted on October 5th – disturbing the talks and making a peaceful solution seem less likely than ever.

Major Agreement

But then came October 20th 2008. On this day, after long negotiations Congress reached a decisive compromise on the text of the Constitution. The historic agreement includes the following provisions:

• A referendum for approval of the Constitution will be held on 25th of January 2009;

• Elections for (vice) presidential and parliamentary elections will take place in December 2009.

• Evo Morales can only be elected once, instead of the two terms the proposed constitution would permit if enacted.

• There will be three levels of autonomies in the country: departmental, municipal and indigenous.

• The innovative concept Social Control, which in the initial proposal of Constitution was considered as a “super-power”, is now proposed to have a legislation function next to the other already existing powers.

The significant role of FBDM

As the Bolivian paper la Prensa pointed out on 2 November mentioned in the media two key players created the path for this agreement: the MAS minister and former member of the Constituent Assembly, Carlos Romero and the senator of PODEMOS, Carlos Börth. Both moderate politicians were actively involved in several activities organised by FBDM. For instance, on request of FBDM, Romero and Börth cooperated in a comparative analysis of the new constitution and the autonomy statutes of the departments. The purpose of this analysis was to give a comprehensible overview of the issues of conflict and to make a comparison. “In the end, this publication was frequently used as the basis for the dialogue and resulted also in process-advancing ‘secret’ and ‘closed’ meetings, according to Senator Börth (La Prensa, 2 november 2008)”.

For years, FBDM’s mission has been to deepen and strengthen democracy in Bolivia by organising an ongoing variety of workshops, meeting, presentations, research and publications focused on reaching consensus and agreements. Most of the time this takes place in a public setting, but even more important also in an informal, closed setting. This is often necessary because of the extreme polarisation of the political landscape. Now the agreement in Congress is reached, this information is made public for the first time and is therefore also an important milestone for the work of FBDM.

Hope & caution

2009 will be another electoral year in Bolivia and there is every likelihood of a re-emergence of polarized politics – at least for a time. And yet, the October agreement means a lot for the emancipation of the indigenous people and can be considered nothing less than a democratic revolution. It may indeed indicate a new beginning for Bolivia. However, there is remaining reason for caution - even if the population of Bolivia approves the new constitution this January, it will not solve everything. Evo Morales is still not President for all Bolivians. Entrepreneurs and other key groups still distrust him. Bolivia is still prominent on the list of most risky countries for foreign investment and it still is one of the poorest countries of Latin America. Still it has a long way to go.