Three new developments highlight the importance of regions (departments) Bolivian politics.
The conflict over whether the regional electoral court of Santa Cruz can verify signatures for an upcoming department-wide autonomy referendum (specifically, a referendum on the recent “autonomic” statute) has been resolved in the region’s favor. The National Electoral Court (CNE) directors met w/ directors of the regional courts (which are not independent, but rather administrative divisions) & decided that regional courts had the competency to proceed—and not just Santa Cruz, but all departments.
The move allows departments (perhaps also lower territorial units?) to run their own elections. This is an interesting development. Historically, Bolivia has only had “national” elections. Until the 1994 Popular Participation Law, Bolivians only voted for the president & the legislature. After 1994, Bolivia was divided into 300+ (the number has expanded to 329 today) municipalities—but the elections all take place on a national schedule, on the same date. [There were municipal elections in major cities prior to 1994. But these governments had little power.]
The other development is the “regionalization” of legislative politics. This has been slowly emerging for some time. While the two main parties (MAS & PODEMOS) won their seats disproportionately across regions (MAS in “Andean” regions & PODEMOS in “lowland” regions), legislators within parties are increasingly divided over region. In the Senate, two MAS senators from Santa Cruz & Chuquisaca “defected” & didn’t vote for the MAS candidate to lead the chamber. Their vote would’ve been irrelevant, since the opposition had the necessary votes (see previous post).
Yesterday, the elections for leadership of the House of Deputies were postponed due to regional cleavages w/in both MAS & PODEMOS. Over the past year, PODEMOS deputies from La Paz have supported the government in opposition to Sucre’s demand to move the capital. Meanwhile, MAS deputies from Chuquisaca have backed their region’s demand. Likewise, MAS deputies from Santa Cruz & Tarija have at times supported their region’s autonomy demand (at other times they’ve not). But this is all indication that region has become a pivotal cleavage in Bolivian politics.
The third, is that Evo has been meeting to negotiate w/ the country’s prefects over the issue of autonomy & its compatibility w/ the new draft constitution. Technically, prefects are subordinate to the president. Despite the 2005 prefecture elections, the president is under no obligation to appoint the electoral winners—and he’s empowered constitutionally to remove them & replace them. As Carlos Hugo Molina has pointed out, the fact that Evo is negotiating w/ prefects suggests that he’s recognizing the prefects’ de facto role as independent political actors, not administrative subordinates. Molina calls this a political “transformation”—I think he may be right.
