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Bolivian president struggles in face of assembly deadlock

Bolivian President Evo Morales is dismissing the importance of a deadlocked assembly struggling to rewrite Bolivia's Constitution, saying that his administration will push forward with his populist reforms on its own.

Analysts on Friday described the comments as a possible prelude to a further expansion of Morales' executive powers -- or a calculated bluff designed to break the months-long stalemate in the Constituent Assembly.

"One day I was talking to [Vice President] Alvaro [Garcia] and some of my Cabinet, and I realized that the profound changes, the real transformations, were not going to be made through the Constituent Assembly," Morales said on Thursday to members of his Movement Toward Socialism party during a two-day convention.

"Instead, the democratic and cultural revolution is the hands of the government, along with the social sectors" allied with his administration, he said.

The comments appeared to downplay the importance of the Constituent Assembly that Morales himself convened in a bid to grant a greater voice to Bolivia's long-oppressed Indian majority.

Political analyst Cayetano Llobet said the comments reflect frustration.

"Morales wants absolute power, and he thought the Constituent Assembly would give it to him. But it hasn't given him that power, and it doesn't look like it will," Llobet said.

Demanded by Bolivians long before Morales took office a year ago, the assembly opened in Sucre on Aug. 6 to great fanfare.

But five months later, delegates have failed to write a single word of a new constitution and a bitter fight for control of the body has polarized the country.

Morales, whose backers hold just over half of the body's 255 seats, contends that a new charter can be written by a simple majority of the delegates, effectively shutting the conservative opposition out of the process. Opposition delegates demand that every article in a new constitution only be passed with a two-thirds vote.

Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian political scientist at Florida International University in Miami, said the president's threat to move ahead with his reform agenda independent of the assembly could be a ploy to bring the opposition back to the negotiating table.

"This is what Evo has been really good at: upping the ante and coming up with all sorts of unexpected moves," Gamarra said.

Conservative delegates have threatened to leave the assembly, and last month protesters vowed not to recognize any constitution written without the two-thirds vote.

The impasse has thrown a wrench in Morales' plans for a larger government role for powerful social movements, indigenous groups and labor unions. He also suggests replacing the Senate with a popular assembly and revising an existing law prohibiting presidents from running for re-election.
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