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Constituent Assembly to re-found
Bolivia
BY
ANIBAL ARRARTE DUTILH —Granma International
staff writer—
ONE of the major issues and promises of Evo Morales’
political campaign was the formation of a
Foundational and Sovereign Constituent Assembly to
re-found the Bolivian nation.
The creation of this Assembly was backed by an
overwhelming majority in the elections last December
18.
The Indigenous, Native and Campesino Unity Pact,
along with other organizations of civil society,
convened the country’s indigenous peoples,
campesinos, neighborhood councils, miners, trade
unionists, construction workers, industrial workers,
artisans, transportation workers, women, youth,
intellectuals, and all social sectors to the social
summit for a Constituent Assembly in the city of
Santa Cruz, February 15-17, 2006.
What has become a decisive political battle for the
Bolivian transformation process began with the
presentation on February 7 of a government proposal
calling for the election of a constituent assembly.
The text was delivered by President Evo Morales to
Vice President Alvaro García Linera in a ceremony in
which the president emphasized the objective of
re-founding Bolivia and freeing the country from
neoliberalism. To this end, he stressed, the
Constituent Assembly project has unlimited
possibilities, without being reduced to a mere
package of reforms as sectors of the right would
like.
The proposal that the president submitted to
parliamentary and social debate puts forward the
election of the Assembly on July 2 and its
installation on August 6 in the south-central city
of Sucre, Bolivia‘s historic capital.
It explains that the Assembly’s function is to
change the structures of the state, to unite and
integrate national territory, eliminate
discrimination, recover Bolivia’s natural resources
and transform the republic’s history of
discrimination, plunder and submission.
The proposal establishes that three assembly members
be elected for each of the 70 electoral districts, a
level at which the governing Movement Toward
Socialism (MAS) received a wide majority in
December’s general elections.
After winning over the opposition in at least three
new departments of Bolivia: Beni, Pando and Tarija,
which had threatened to block the project, Morales
achieved national unity and a majority approval in
Congress.
The election is scheduled for July 2.
The Bolivian government affirmed that the enactment
of the law marked a great day of vindication for the
indigenous peoples that would lead to a new era of
justice and plenitude.
In the opinion of analysts, it is a notable
political triumph of the government, given that the
Assembly is of vital importance in its transforming
project.
NATIONALIZATION PLAN ANNOUNCED
The Bolivian government has announced its plan to
recover control of the large state companies that
were privatized between 1995 and 1996 during the
first term of ex-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
The nationalization plan will affect 10 companies:
three oil ones, three electric, two railroads, one
telecommunication and one airline, reported ANSA.
In order to assume control of these10 companies,
Minister of Planning Carlos Villegas announced that
the state is to assume 51% of the shares of each, by
adding the purchase of 1% of the shares held by
private associates to the 50% base that already
belongs to the state.
"We want to buy (that 1%), but if they do not want
to sell it, we will take decisions of another nature
in order to ensure that the Bolivian state can
exercise its right to 51% ownership," explained
Villegas.
The process dubbed "de-capitalization" that occurred
during 1995 and 1996 involved the five main state
entities of that period, some of which, in
association with private capital, created another
five companies according to their specialization
within the sector.
The private investors received partial
administrative control of each privatized company as
a guarantee on their investments.
Once
the majority of the shares are recovered by the
state, it will have the capacity to make decisions
within each company.
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