- Title: BOLIVIA: Constituent Assembly given extension to rewrite constitution
- Date: 7th August 2007
- Summary: GENERAL VIEW OF SESSION
- Embargoed: 22nd August 2007 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA5R3EHNYRA8ICTAPB7JS7SUGA9
- Story Text: An assembly rewriting Bolivia's constitution was given an extension on Monday (August 06), the one year anniversary of its inception. The Constituent Assembly now has until December to rewrite the country's constitution.
"We have not postponed or delayed because the Congress passed the law summoning us to work, we did not approve it, they have given us this mandate," Constituent Assembly president Silvia Lazarte said. "They should have calculated this for us and for the Constituent Assembly."
After one year of debate that occasionally deteriorated into fistfights, the Constituent Assembly in Bolivia's constitutional capital of Sucre failed to rewrite the constitution.
President Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous leader, is pushing for a constitution that would empower the impoverished Indian majority, who form his base. Delegates from Morales' party aim to enshrine Andean religions in law and reshape the state in line with Indian traditions.
Delegates from mainly white eastern lowlands, where opposition to Morales is stronger, are fighting to have the new constitution give their provinces more autonomy.
"Well, if there are people who think that the Constituent Assembly is in Murillo Plaza (La Paz) and this is only a theatre we will surely not be able to advance," opposition representative Samuel Doria Media said.
"But if we are allowed to and there is willingness, we can work."
Earlier on Monday, President Morales presided over a National Day celebration in Sucre amidst protests from the opposition.
Last August, Morales attracted thousands of indigenous supporters to Sucre to celebrate National Day, but problems with his project to 'refound' Bolivian in the name of its poor, indigenous majority have strengthened opposition.
Sucre's Constituent Assembly, a key part of Morales' reforms, has been paralyzed by legal problems and internal disputes.
The opposition, centered around Sucre in the eastern part of the country, wants to move the capital out of La Paz, an area where Morales has the support base on the largely indigenous Andean plateau.
On Monday, Bolivian national flags flew where the indigenous flags waved a year ago and a sign reading 'death to the central government' greeted Morales at the 'House of Liberty'.
Morales, an Aymara Indian, has hailed the assembly as the backbone of his "revolution within democracy" to peacefully transform one of the poorest and most unstable nations in Latin America.
Critics say these reforms might breed racial divisions in the Andean country. Bolivia is roughly divided along ethnic and economic lines. The resource-rich eastern lowlands are mostly white while the indigenous majority, who are relatively poorer, populate the western Andean plateau. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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