Ciao!

No one region is against regional autonomies. Even Evo Morales said that regional autonomies would greatly benefit the country. However, many are against the proposal that is supported by the wealthy and powerful in Santa Cruz and Tarija.

President Carlos Mesa is not supporting the Hydrocarbons Law that was approved by Congress, yet the Civic groups are only criticizing him. How about the Santa Cruz Congressmen who approved the Law?

According to the Constitution, the President can only call one Referendum during his term, and he has been supporting autonomies be addressed in the Constitutent Assembly. There, at least, it can be discussed with the entire country and see how this decentralization can benefit entire country, not just a small pocket of oligarchs.

Points well taken. I was surprised at the cocalero announcements myself. And I do think there's a lot of irresponsible behavior on both sides. But is the constitution really clear on that? There's some debate as to whether other referendums can be called by groups other than president. It'd be a good compromise, at least. After all, everything post-October was rather a cobbled together para-constitutional solution.

Eduardo, can you point me to the constitutional provisions that limit only one referendum per presidential term? It's not in the recent constitutional amendements (which even introduced referendums), unless you mean Article 231.IV, but that only refers to constitutional amendments, not referendums (unless I'm mistaken). But some special "codigo" dealing w/ referendums may've been passed that I missed out on; if so, do let me know (and I'll look into it). Because it seems odd to limit Bolivia to only one referendum every 5 years!

I agree w/ you that the autonomías question could easily be handled at the national constituent assembly, but there's no reason a symbolic gesture can't be made. And since it's unclear A) how constituents will be chosen and B) how they will vote, I can understand the desire to have a popular mandate calling for regional autonomies (something I think would pass in all nine departments). Point is, the government should just call a national referendum on the issue (and even others, like the coca issue, for example) and use that to take the heat off itself and defuse some crises — though that means giving up some central control.

I was referring to a comment made by Ministro Jose Galindo. He stated that although the President cannot call a Referendum (limited to 1 per term), other groups may call a Referendum, although I don't know the process. I was just going off of his comment.

As far as I understand it, the president isn't limited to how many referendums he calls. Neither are other groups. Although I know there were discussions/questions because of worries there'd be too many. Also, many were debating the uses of municipal-wide referendum, or regional wide ones (like in mancomunidades). Basically, the idea of US-style "proposals" or "citizen initiatives" (which I think are a good thing).

Honestly, I think Mesa's trying to keep the issue under wraps because he's a very "old family" member of the centraligentzia (if you will). But that's my impression of mesa, given from the little I know of him personally.

The real problem, I think, is that the gas referendum supposedly answered questions, but ended up just opening a can of worms (how to interpret the results?). What questions to put in an autonomia referendum? And how does that fit w/ the "October agenda" that dictates a constituent assembly comes next.