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Bolivia approves holding constitutional referendum

Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Tuesday he could “go to the cemetery happy” after Congress approved holding a referendum on his new constitution empowering the nation’s long-oppressed Indian majority.

Bolivia’s first indigenous president wiped away tears as he waded into a crowd of tens of thousands of delirious supporters who had packed the capital’s narrow streets to demand lawmakers pass the proposed charter, which now goes before voters on Jan. 25.

“Now we have made history,” Morales told miners, farmers, and oil workers from across the country who packed La Paz’s central plaza, where Indians were forbidden to set foot until the 1950s.

“Honestly, I could go to the cemetery happy because now I have fulfilled my commitment to the Bolivian people,” he said.

Morales, elected in 2005, has dedicated his administration to installing a new constitution drawn from Bolivia’s traditional indigenous values and expanding the state’s role in the economy.

But his campaign has met fierce resistance from the more mixed-race, middle and upper classes in Bolivia’s lowland east, who view the new framework as a Morales power grab that ignores their demands for greater provincial autonomy.

Lawmakers tried to address those concerns in a long list of 11th-hour edits to the draft that significantly expand provincial governments’ powers while curbing several of Morales’ ambitious reforms.

“This is not the constitution we would have wanted,” said Jorge Quiroga, leader of the conservative opposition party Podemos, which has long resisted Morales’ constitution. “But we’re the opposition, and it’s the best we can do from here.”

The constitution is expected to easily pass January’s vote, buoyed by Morales’ popularity and polls showing voters wanting an end to more than two years of political grandstanding, failed negotiations and street riots over its 411 articles.

Constitutional talks had all but stalled until Morales on Monday agreed to seek only one more five-year term in exchange for opposition lawmakers’ support of the document. Lawmakers had disagreed over whether the new framework would have allowed him to run for a possible third term.

The president said the trade-off was worth delivering the legal recognition demanded by Bolivia’s indigenous peoples years before he came to power.

Besides, he said, “new leaders coming up like mushrooms” from the country’s lower classes would take his place.

“What did they say? ‘Evo, president for 20 years! President for 50 years!’ Some exaggerated a bit: ‘Evo, president for 500 years!’ No. They were wrong, unfortunately,” he said. “But I understood the message: that the workers and indigenous people must govern this country.”
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