After some parliamentary wrangling, Evo signed into law Bolivia’s new Transition Law, which regulates the handing over of power to newly elected autonomous governors & serves as a bridge for a more detailed Law of Autonomies to come later. MAS is officially celebrating the “birth of the era of autonomies” (the banner headline in the party paper, Cambio) & Evo is quoted as saying “mission accomplished” immediately after signing the law. Although the official establishment of regional autonomy—which transfers a total of 36 jurisdictional competencies to autonomous regional/departmental governments—opposition is still unsatisfied & threatens political mobilization (those in Beni have already started). So, what’s going on?
There are two separate, but related issues involved. The first has to do w/ the law’s Article 8, which stipulates that any departmental governor who has been formally charged w/ a crime is temporarily suspended, pending a resolution of the legal case. The idea is twofold: 1) reinforce the government’s anti-corruption efforts & 2) allow the accused to focus exclusively on their legal defense. Politically, this is a hot potato because the three opposition prefects are all under investigation—and possibly facing formal legal charges—from various corruption charges. Moreover, Evo has an established history of using such charges against any & all political opponents (remember, former friends/allies who break w/ his government are suddenly found themselves under corruption charges). Additionally, a number of judicial resignations have allowed Evo to pack the courts in his favor. So the opposition prefects have a reasonable claim that this is (at least in part) a political witch hunt.
But the governors are standing on a matter of principle: that the statute is too “centralist” and doesn’t fully recognize departmental autonomy. Departments should take of themselves, goes the logic. In other words, a Blagojevich should be impeached by his legislature, not removed by the president. In other words, the governors-elect are staking their argument on the unstated claim that Bolivia is now a de facto federal state. To make their case, they point to Evo’s insistence that all nine governors-elect must be sworn in by Evo Morales Sunday, May 30, in Sucre. Again, the governors-elect insist that they should be sworn in by their departmental legislatures, in their own separate ceremonies.
Ignoring the political argument between MAS & its opponents for a moment, we do have here an interesting dilemma. Bolivia is still technically (according to its constitution) a unitary state. But Evo’s celebration of this new law as finally making the plurinational state a reality, as well as the broad scope of powers given to the new autonomous departments, violates the traditional spirit of unitary states. This looks like federalism. In federations, central states have little power over the subnational governments.
Remarkably, Evo is acknowledging this. Looking past Article 8 comes Article 10, which stipulates that governors who must temporarily (or permanently) step down will be replaced by a member of the regional legislature selected by the assembly. Thus, the principled argument from Cossío, Costas, & Suárez are diminished, since the principle of autonomy is protected in the sense that the central state would not name the replacement, but rather the local assembly. So call it semi-federalism, then.
Evo has declared that the state won’t recognize any governors who don’t attend their swearing in. So. The big question now is: How many governors-elect will show up in Sucre for their swearing in?
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