I’m trying to keep up w/ the escalating tension between the central government & Santa Cruz as the May 4 autonomy referendum approaches. As of the end of this week, the legal maneuvers have started to heat up: The central government has cut off the prefecture’s finances, and is preparing legal actions against the prefect & other regional leaders. In turn, the opposition (which controls the Senate, but not the House of Deputies) is initiating legal proceedings against the head of the national electoral court (the renegade regional electoral organism is moving forward with organizing the vote). All the while, the last remaining member of the Constitutional Tribunal (whose members were purged, or quit, w/ no replacements named) has initiated proceedings against the vice president for overstepping his constitutional powers. And this doesn’t begin to address the problems of social movements & counter-movements. In short, it’s a mess.
I expect the vote to go forward in two weeks. The ballots have already been printed, and the regional electoral court (each of the country’s nine departments has its own electoral court charged w/ overseeing elections) is well prepared. After six national general (presidential & legislative) elections, four municipal elections, one prefectural election, and two referendums, the regional electoral court & its staff have sufficient experience organizing such a process. The issue, of course, is legality (specifically: constitutionality).
While no local election has ever been held w/o nation-wide vote (even municipal elections are held simultaneously in nation-wide electoral cycles), they are not explicitly prohibited in the 2004 constitution. That same constitution also explicitly (for the first time) allows citizen-initiated referendums, though it doesn’t stipulate a legal mechanism for their use.
So far, there have been only two national referendums: The first was the 2004 gas referendum initiated by President Mesa. It was a nation-wide, stand-alone referendum. The second was the 2006 autonomy referendum. Unlike this one, it was a nation-wide vote, bundled together with the constituent assembly election. At first, it was supposed to be “binding” (that is, the results were supposed to form part of the framework for discussing any new constitution). Yet it was declared merely “consultative” by the government. More problematic, as the fact that while the pro autonomy vote lost at the national level (by a 57-42 margin), the voters in four departments (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija) voted for autonomy by wide margins.
Things began to disintegrate after the constituent assembly process broke down. A draft constitution was approved under controversial (and clearly less-than-ideal) circumstances. At first, the central government was preparing to move forward on a referendum to approve the new constitution. Facing considerable resistance from an increasingly stronger political opposition, such a vote has been indefinitely postponed. Meanwhile, the issue of regional autonomy is moving forward. The issue, which is in many ways a reaction to the 2003 gas war (it emerged as an opposition lightning rod soon after).
It doesn’t look like the issue is going to go away any time soon. And, barring a radical departure from the current direction in Bolivian politics, it looks as if the May 4th referendum will go forward, no matter what. I don’t doubt the outcome. In 2006, 71% of Santa Cruz residents voted for regional autonomy; I doubt that number has gone down since then. What is uncertain, is how far the central government is willing to go to prevent the vote, how it will respond to the vote, and how regionalist leaders will react to any central government decision.
