Today’s La Razón has a brief story on a newly-unveiled proposal for reform of the Bolivian judiciary. The proposal would combine “ordinary” (Western) and “originary” (indigenous) legal traditions, in a parallel system. I saw a similar proposal in April 2004 at an ILDIS-sponsored conference on decentralization. I’ll have to admit that (like others) I wasn’t convinced of its practicability; but it’s certainly an intriguing possibility—especially if it’s not framed as two systems in parallel (as it was then) but as two systems subsumed under a broader constitutional framework (as it is now).
Currently, 140 (of 327) municipal governments already use some form of “originary” justice (it was part of the original Ley de Participación Popular put forward by the first Sánchez de Lozada presidency). There is, as always, conflict w/in the MAS coalition itself on the issue (anyone who thinks MAS is a single entity is sorely mistaken). But the proposal certainly is an interesting one worthy of serious consideration.
A few days ago, another proposal I first saw in April 2004 re-surfaced. Back then, at the conference in Mallasilla, Ivan Finot proposed a model of decentralization that created a new administrative level between the department & the municipality (simply dubbed “regions”); I was in Finot’s working group & backed the proposal. The proposal is now backed by MAS.
The proposal’s certainly not w/o its potential problems. And it’s certainly it is heavily opposed by some of the regionalist comités cívicos. But I don’t think the system is “too complicated” for Bolivia—instead, I think “regional autonomies” at a more “local” level may be able to manage a transition from centralism to federalism (or federacy). It certainly seems a good compromise that would provide for more regional autonomy than currently exists.
