Bolivia's 9 Governors Agree to President's Referendum

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Dec. 6 -- Evo Morales has always maintained that the cornerstone of his presidency would be a new constitution that fundamentally alters the country's social order.

But that cornerstone has become a sharp wedge between Morales and his opponents, who accuse him of trying to consolidate power and weaken dissent. Now, both Morales and political opposition leaders say they are ready to break their paralyzing impasse by betting their jobs: They'll let voters decide who among them stays in office.

Morales said Thursday that he delivered a bill to the Bolivian Congress calling for a series of popular votes -- one to decide whether he will remain president, and others to determine the fates of each of the country's nine governors, six of whom are among the president's harshest critics.

Details of the votes remained vague. But Morales said that if he does not receive more ballots than he received when he was elected with 53 percent of the vote in 2005, he would immediately call for new elections. He said the governors would be held to the same standard in their respective regions.

Morales also reiterated that his efforts to rewrite the constitution would not be postponed as a result of the referendum -- a stance that kept tensions high among opposition members.

"The constitutional reform is not going to stop," Morales said during a televised interview with Venezuela's Telesur network. "Next week we are going to have a new constitution for the Bolivian state."

For the past 16 months, a 255-member assembly charged with presenting a new constitution for voter approval has been mired in bitter infighting. Facing a Dec. 14 deadline to present a constitution to voters, Morales's supporters -- who hold a slim majority in the assembly -- gathered in a military compound last week to approve a rough draft. The opposition didn't participate.

According to the law creating the assembly, the draft constitution needs two-thirds support from the assembly before it can be put to voters. Although Morales's supporters have vowed to push ahead with their proposed changes with or without the opposition, the future of the draft remains uncertain.

Immediately after the participating members of the assembly announced last week that they had approved a rough draft of a constitution, opposition members clashed with police in violent protests. At least three people died and hundreds were injured. Each side accused the other of provoking the bloodshed.

Four of the country's nine governors traveled this week to the United States, where they told the United Nations and the Organization of American States that Morales was abandoning democracy.

The governors welcomed Morales's call Thursday for the series of popular votes, but some voiced reservations about the plans to continue with constitutional changes. Manfred Reyes Villa, the governor of Cochabamba, said he feared that the referendum might be a ploy to distract the country from the constitutional crisis. While voters concentrate on evaluating individual candidates, he said, Morales's supporters could take advantage of the chaos to push forward a new constitution.

"If this is not an act of deception, then let's move forward with it and let's do so as soon as possible," said Reyes Villa, who spoke in an interview from Miami.

Morales, who is of Aymara Indian descent and is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, began his political career as a union leader for the country's coca farmers. Like his closest ideological allies in South America -- Hugo Ch¿vez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador -- Morales says that "re-founding" his country's constitution is necessary to improve economic equality and give more political clout to the poor and indigenous populations.

Voters in Venezuela rebuffed Ch¿ez's proposed constitutional changes Sunday, and some of Morales's opponents said that has strengthened their resolve to block his project. On Thursday, residents of the northern state of Beni surrounded a Venezuelan jet landing at a local airport, throwing stones at it in protest of what they described as Ch¿vez's influence in Bolivia.

"The vote on Sunday in Venezuela showed that the people of South America want to stand up for democracy and that we won't stand for losing our individual liberties," said Eduardo Paz, a leader of Santa Cruz's industrial trade association, who was participating in a hunger strike Thursday in protest of Morales's proposed constitutional changes.

The draft approved by Morales's supporters would allow the federal government to control more of the state revenue now overseen by governors. Long before Morales took office last year, regional leaders in places such as Santa Cruz and Beni had called for increased regional autonomy from the government in La Paz, the capital, giving rise to fervent autonomy movements that have advocated independence from federal control. The constitutional proposals have deepened those divisions.

The preliminary draft would create a unicameral legislature, which means the Senate -- where Morales does not enjoy majority support -- would be eliminated. The draft also had included a provision allowing the president to be reelected indefinitely, but Morales's assembly members dropped that provision last week. They now say the reelection issue would be subject to a separate referendum.

Ra¿l Prada, a member of the constitutional assembly from Morales's party, Movement for Socialism, or MAS, said Thursday that he is confident that the president would survive a national vote. But some of the governors -- including Reyes Villa -- might lose their jobs, he said, for trying to destroy the government.

"That is what they're doing now, trying to bring the government down, using the national news media in order to do so," Prada said. "But MAS still has a lot of support, in rural areas throughout the country and in the political strongholds of La Paz and El Alto, where traditionally most national political decision making happens."

Since Morales's election in 2005, analysts said, his support has eroded slightly, particularly among those in the middle class. But some speculated that by setting the benchmark for the referendum as raw votes instead of percentage of votes, Morales could have a better chance at winning approval.

"I think it makes a substantial difference, because he can concentrate on registering voters and getting to the polls a much larger portion of his campesino base," said Jim Schultz, director of the Democracy Center, a research group based in Cochabamba.

Special correspondent Evan Abramson in La Paz contributed to this report.