BOLIVIA: Violence erupts in Bolivia after new constitutional draft is passed

Violence rages through the city of Sucre after Bolivia's constitutional assembly approved a new constitutional draft. Clashes and violence broke out in the Bolivian city of Sucre on Sunday (November 25), one day after a new constitutional draft was passed by the controversial Constituent Assembly. The city of Sucre, where delegates were meeting until Saturday in a military compound, was ravaged by fires and violence in protest of the constitution. Mobs of residents and university students took over the streets, torching buildings, cars and tires and sacking a police station. Over 100 people are injured and local media report three dead since Friday. National police chief Miguel Vasquez said one of the dead was a police officer and he had decided to pull the police out of the city. "We've been brutally attacked," said Vasquez. "There are various injured police officers. This morning one police officer was assassinated in Sucre. Because of that, because of the lack of security, the Sucre police will abandon the capital of the republic, because of the lack of security." Demonstrators are protesting the draft which was approved mainly with votes from President Evo Morales' party as most opposition representatives boycotted the debates when they were moved to the army compound. Protests over the capital began in August, forcing the assembly, which sits in Sucre, to suspend debates for three months and prompting the assembly's governing body to move sessions to an army facility on Friday. Since then, protesters clashed with police in demonstrations outside the compound, demanding assembly delegates name Sucre Bolivia's "full capital," and move the seat of government and Congress to Sucre from La Paz, a bastion of support for Morales. Delegates were whisked out of the city under armed guard and the Constituent Assembly was suspended on Saturday. Morales' supporters have staged huge protests in recent months opposing calls for the capital's relocation, and thousands of them traveled to Sucre this week pledging to "defend" the assembly. Critics say Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president, is governing only for his Quechua and Aymara power base in the west of the country, ignoring the needs of the middle class in urban areas like Sucre and other relatively prosperous cities in the east. But Morales said on Sunday that the protests were based on racism. "I'm sure of that-- that some groups will not accept that an indigenous peasant is president," he said. "That's the basis of this. As they have said permanently: we have to get rid of the Indian, knock down the Indian." His critics have renewed their call for "civil disobedience" in the eastern regions, where anti-government sentiment is strong, and vowed to disregard the new constitution. Former President Jorge Quiroga who leads the opposition party, accused Morales' government of ineptitude. "They continue with a war rhetoric of looking for conspiracy when what exists is ineptitude, incapacity and cruelty by the government that is causing the people of the Bolivian city of Sucre to suffer," he said. The protests come amid a power struggle between Morales and his conservative rivals, who want more autonomy for the regions they govern and who also support the capital switch. Nominally, Sucre is the South American country's capital, but it is home only to the top courts, while the legislature and the seat of government have been in La Paz for over a century. The draft for the new constitution, a key campaign promise of leftist President Evo Morales, will need to be discussed in detail and then ratified by a majority of Bolivia's population. It is unclear when the Constituent Assembly will meet again to discuss the new constitutional draft article by article.

ITN Source | November 26, 2007

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