Push to extend Bolivian presidency continues after paternity scandal.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Some of the social organizations that have backed the administration of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera in Bolivia are calling for a new referendum on constitutional reforms that would allow the president to run for reelection (NotiSur, July 31, 2015, Jan. 22, 2016, and March 11, 2016). But it appears that opposition from the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) and from key officials who continue to support of the government but who believe that this is not a good time for such a referendum, will not allow the effort--spearheaded by a group of women agrarian workers or campesinas--to be anything more than a trial balloon.
The group, the Confederacion Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia Bartolina Sisa (FNMCB-BS)--named after an 18th century Aymara heroine and the wife of Tupac Katari, the leader of an indigenous rebellion against the Spanish empire--announced their proposal on May 22. Two weeks later, the proposal was essentially rejected. Nevertheless, influential analysts such as Ludwing Valverde, president of the Colegio de Politologos, an association of political scientists, believe that the idea could mature and be picked up again as October 2019 approaches and Bolivians get ready to elect their next president.
Las Bartolinas, as FNMCB-BS members call themselves, made their proposal known just three months after the Feb. 21 referendum that split the country 51.3% against vs. 48.7% in favor of reelection (a difference, in absolute numbers, of 136,482 out of 5.5 million votes). Government officials accepted the results but attributed them to a "dirty campaign never before seen in Bolivia."
During a television program that aired two weeks before the referendum, journalist Carlos Valverde had accused Morales of having refused to recognize a son he fathered with a young businesswoman named Gabriela Zapata, and of having paid for the mother's silence by awarding a multi-million-dollar public works project to the Chinese engineering firm CAMC, which she headed. Morales came to his own defense, saying Valverde was "an agent serving the United States" and pointing to a meeting between
the journalist and Peter Brennan, charge d'affaires at the US Embassy, weeks before Valverde made the accusation on his TV show.
Bolivian Cabinet Chief Juan Ramon Quintana later noted that Carlos Valverde "was a paramilitary between 1976 and 1980 during the dictatorship of Gen. Hugo Banzer (1971-1978 and 1997-2001) and recycled himself as national head of...
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