Unsettling times in Bolivia
Posted on Wednesday, Sep 6, 2006 at 11:51 AM in Bolivia
The excellent MABB tells us that Things are Getting Ugly in Bolivia. My native country is in the midst of rewriting the Consitution and it is turning into a divisive process.
The main message is that the Constitutional Assembly is in serious crisis. There are calls from the separatists in Santa Cruz (la nacion camba) to form a regional assembly. The people in the Andes, are so worried that they decided to go to Sucre to make sure the assembly continues its work. They have threatened the assembly members with community justice if they don't do what the "people" want. The assembly itself is having trouble meeting and doing its work.
Meanwhile, the government is violating civil liberties and dur process as it cracks down on opponents and high ranking figures from previous governments.
To date, the Morales team has announced plans to prosecute some 150 people who held high-level jobs in previous governments including five ex-presidents for crimes ranging from "genocide" to "espionage" and "destruction or deterioration of state assets."
Yet the government has provided scant evidence to back the accusations, relying instead on news conferences and public harangues. In the Nogales case, an ambiguous video of people removing stacks of money from a bank vault was leaked to TV networks in June and broadcast widely.
says