Bolivia’s Congress on Thursday approved the “overall content” of an electoral law hours after Bolivian President Evo Morales went on hunger strike to protest at opposition lawmakers’ efforts to block the bill.
Lawmakers must still vote on the details of the election reform law, which is seen as helping the leftist president in a general election in December by assigning more seats to poor, rural areas where he is popular.
Morales, the Andean nation’s first indigenous president, started a hunger strike earlier on Thursday, accusing his rightist opponents of blocking the proposal.
“Faced with the negligence of a bunch of neoliberal lawmakers, we have no choice but to take this step [hunger strike] ... they don’t want to pass a law that guarantees the implementation of the Constitution,” he told reporters.
Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), party controls the lower house in the natural gas-rich country, but right-wing parties have used their Senate majority to block dozens of government-proposed reforms since Morales took office in 2006.
Lawmakers traded insults during a heated debate and some opposition members called Morales government “totalitarian.”
However, a majority eventually voted to approve the general outline of the law. Further debate and another vote to pass the details of the measure were set to continue late on Thursday.
Congress still has to vote on how many seats will be reserved for minority indigenous groups in the legislature, whether or not the electoral register will be updated before the poll and if Bolivian expatriates will be allowed to vote.
A new Constitution designed to give more power and rights to the country’s indigenous majority was approved by more than 60 percent of voters in January.
It calls for Congress to approve an electoral law ratifying Dec. 6 as the date for a general election.
The opposition had rejected the bill because it gives 14 seats to minority indigenous groups which, they say, amounts to handing them to Morales, since he champions indigenous rights.
They also demand a new electoral register saying the current census is unreliable.
Across the landlocked country, hundreds of members of indigenous groups and trade unions had joined the hunger strike in support of Morales, Bolivian media had reported.
Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, has been racked by decades of political upheaval. The opposition is split ahead of December’s vote, when Morales will stand for re-election and 166 lawmakers will be chosen.
A poll published in El Deber newspaper this week said that some 54 percent of Bolivians thought Morales would be reelected, far ahead of his closest contender, former Bolivian president Carlos Mesa, with 6 percent.
Morales, a critic of Washington and an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, won sweeping victories in a recall vote in August and the constitutional referendum in January, showing strong backing for his leftist and pro-indigenous policies.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS