Demonstrators who forced the resignation of Bolivia's president Friday warned the country's interim leader of new street protests unless he takes quick action to nationalize the natural gas industry.
The warning came as an immediate challenge to Supreme Court chief Eduardo Rodriguez who took over from president Carlos Mesa late Thursday and promised general elections before the end of the year in a bid to end weeks of unrest.
Mesa was the second president in 20 months to be forced to resign by the poor masses seeking a greater share of the wealth from Bolivia's energy resources.
PHOTO: AP
While some roadblocks were taken down, thousands of people took part in marches in the capital, La Paz, and a high profile community leader, Abel Mamani, said street protests would start again unless nationalization was started in 72 hours.
Mamani is a leader of activist groups in El Alto, a crowded, impoverished city outside La Paz, which played a key role in ending Mesa's term in office. The groups held a meeting at which they warned of new road blocks and other action unless their demands were met.
"There has only been a changing of the guard," said Miguel Zubieta of the mine workers' federation, highlighting how the authorities had not made any concession on calls for the nationalization of oil and gas reserves.
Evo Morales, a left wing leader of coca leaf farmers, began agitating on the gas issue even before Rodriguez was sworn in. Rodriguez "must nationalize the gas and commit himself to call a constitutional assembly," said the leader of of the Movement Toward Socialism.
Meanwhile, neighboring Argentina, Brazil and Chile looked into alternative sources of gas, should protests in Bolivia continue, especially if protesters repeat their takeovers of pipelines out of the country.
Rodriguez, 49, was sworn in hurriedly in Sucre, without the presidential sash and regalia, before a session meeting of legislators as protesters clashed with police outside. In La Paz, he held meetings with Mesa at the presidential palace and sought to ease tensions that had led Mesa to warn of a civil war earlier in the week.
Some demonstrators lifted roadblocks in a tentative truce after Mesa resigned and Rodriguez was sworn in late Thursday at an emergency session of Congress in the city of Sucre. Rodriguez did not set a date for polls, but the constitution stipulates that he must organize new elections within six months.
For three weeks, tens of thousands of farmers, workers and indigenous people in the Andean country of nine million clamored in La Paz and other cities for the nationalization of the gas and oil industry as part of a more equitable distribution of wealth. The protests began after Congress passed a law last month forcing oil and gas companies to pay extra taxes and royalties. Protesters said that the measure did not go far enough.
Bolivia's crisis pits poorer Andean regions in and around La Paz against the more prosperous eastern and southern plains, where most of the natural gas is located. The political system is dominated by people of European descent while the indigenous majority struggles with grinding poverty.
One miner was killed in the hours before Mesa's resignation and four other protesters died in a road accident, but they were the only deaths reported in the unrest.
Coro Mayta, 52, described as a leader in a militant miner union, was shot dead as he and other miners tried to overwhelm an army checkpoint in the small town of Yotala, just outside Sucre, a union official said on a Quechua-language radio station.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS