Bolivia: Moving the electoral court to Sucre?

The National Electoral Court (CNE) was formed in 1991. Since then, it has overseen every election in Bolivia. Electoral courts are common in Latin America, where a central state agency overseas all candidate & voter registration, campaign regulations, balloting, and vote counting. The court is so powerful, that in the immediate period leading up to an election & until voting is finished, the president symbolically hands over power to the court (which acts as head of state for the 48 hours or so). Throughout my time researching Bolivia, I will say that the court has been one of the most professional, impartial, and transparent bureaucracies in Bolivia.

In line w/ the 2009 constitution, the court is going to be renamed the Plurinational Electoral Organ (OEP) & will be elevated in status to become a fourth branch of government. Essentially, this would replace the abandoned MAS project of a fourth branch for “popular power” (though an argument can be made that an independent electoral court would serve such a function). As far as I can tell, the name change shouldn’t have much of a significant affect on the court’s behavior—and, hopefully, it’s professional personnel—but, as always, the devil will be in the details.

The issue, however, is that legislators from Chuquisaca have raised the possibility of moving the entire electoral court to Sucre (which is already home to the supreme court). This would be a compromise to the earlier demands (during the constituent assembly) to move the entire capital from La Paz (where it moved in 1899) back to Sucre. Beyond regional pride, such a move has economic consequences: Sucre is a relatively small city (~ 250,000 residents); moving a large bureaucracy to the city would have an impact on the local economy.

Personally, I’d prefer the court remain in La Paz. But this is a purely personal preference based on my own research interests. I like being able to work from La Paz (where all the think tanks, NGOs, government offices, etc. are). Since I do so much work on elections (the CNE is the main source of much of my raw data), it would be inconvenient for me, personally, to have to hop back & forth between La Paz & Sucre for the rest of my research career. Of course, my personal preference (or that of other researchers) should have absolutely no impact on national policy-making.

Where the electoral court issue becomes interesting is that it serves as yet another test of the new “regionalization”(or even “federalization”) of Bolivian politics. It’s important to note that even MAS legislators have joined the rest of their “departmental brigade” (as departmental legislative caucuses are called) in making the demand. So has the MAS governor of Chuquisaca, Esteban Urquizu (who, btw, is Savina’s newphew). Whereas the “capitalía plena” demand never managed to extend beyond Sucre’s metropolitan area, now it seems that this more modest demand is mobilizing a broader constituency to defend Chuquisaca’s “regional” interests.