Bolivians are divided over a proposal to hold new presidential elections as early as next year. Oppositionists fear president Evo Morales will use the vote to prolong his rule.
Bolivians could go to the polls in 2008 after the Constituent Assembly finishes rewriting the country’s constitution, Morales said in a surprise announcment on Friday. The assembly is slated to conclude its work in August and a referendum on the new constitution is tentatively scheduled for December.
The assembly has not begun debating changes to the electoral system, but Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party has been floating the idea of changing the way Bolivians elect their president.
The MAS favours a mechanism for Congress to choose the president if no one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. MAS members have also brought up the possibility of eliminating the prohibition on immediate presidential re-election.
“The decision is up to the assembly, but I think that there is agreement that there should be new elections once the constitution is finished and approved,” Leonida Zurita, an alternative senator representing the MAS in Cochabamba department, told Emerging Markets yesterday.
Opposition leaders and constitutional lawyers are concerned about the possibility of early elections. They fear that Morales, who was elected president in December 2005, could follow in the footsteps of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who both stood for re-election early after assemblies were convoked and new constitutions adopted.
“This is the new method used in Latin America . It is a new take on the classic model of undermining constitutional order to remain in power,” Juan Urioste, a constitutional lawyer, said yesterday.
Fujimori shuttered his country’s legislative and judicial branches in 1992 and rammed through a new constitution the following year, allowing him to be re-elected in 1995. His followers “reinterpreted” the constitution for him to stand again in 2000. He won in a fraud-filled election in May of that year, but resigned in a corruption scandal a few months later.
Chavez was elected in 1998, orchestrated a constituent assembly the following year and called elections in 2000. He won that contest, triumphed in a referendum on his mandate in 2004 and was re-elected again in 2006. Chavez’s supporters now want another change that would allow him to stand for office, and serve, indefinitely.
Morales, who enjoys approval ratings above 60%, said last week not only that there could be new presidential elections, but also that Bolivians could choose new municipal and departmental authorities. This has raised additional concern that he is trying to add to his party’s power, because of his recent battles with regional governors.
The most notorious case is that of the central department of Cochabamba , where Morales allies led protests early this year to force out Governor Manfredo Reyes after he backed a referendum on regional autonomy.