Bolivian President Resigns as Protests Spread

[Say_What]

<clips>

La Paz, Mar 7 (Prensa Latina) Amidst sweeping people´s protests, Bolivia´s President Carlos Mesa is resigning after 17 months in office. He´s submitting his resignation to Congress on Monday.

"I have reached a limit in my work," Mesa told the Andean nation of 8 million on radio and television Sunday night, adding that his government had faced 820 protests since taking office in October 2003.

Protesters nationwide are demanding changes in rules governing Bolivia´s vast natural gas resources, which will soon come on the stream.

The antigovernment demonstrations are basically organized by the Movement to Socialism party (MAS), led by Evo Morales.

If Congress accepts Mesa´s resignation, it could form an interim head of state or call for new elections before the executive term ends in 2007, according to Presidency Minister Jose Galindo.

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={41762292-B4EC-4C08-AA38-BFFE7570757F}&language=EN

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More in a related article from Mercosur mentioning Morales

<clips>

Bolivian president offer his resignation today.

...Morales, a congressman who is also the leader of the nation's coca leaf growers, has announced a nationwide roads blockade unless Congress passes legislation increasing taxes levied on foreign oil companies from 15 to 50 percent of their sales. .

Mesa said "the international community rejects such a law." .

Morales appeared surprised by Mesa's announcement, which he called "a blackmail by the president." He said his party, the Movement Toward Socialism, was to meet on Monday to make a decision on Mesa's announcement. .

U.S.-backed eradication of Bolivia's coca leaf, the base ingredient of cocaine, depends on a moderate government like Mesa's. Many of the president's would-be challengers decry meddling by the United States and say the coca crackdown has deprived thousands of poor farmers of their livelihoods.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=5209

[Warpy]

1. Bolivia changes goverrnments

more often than most of us change our minds. Eventually they'll get one that is genuinely interested in real reform, their rich people will scream "communism!" and the US government will intervene in all it's hamfisted glory.

[Say_What]

2. All ready for the next Bolivian confrontation.

<clips>

...However since the current administration started in 2002 (Sanchez de Losada took office August 2002) and three years have not yet elapsed in the case of Mr. Rodriguez, he would be constitutionally mandated to call new president and vice-president elections.
But the 27 Senators and 130 Deputies by simple majority can vote to confirm Mr. Mesa who has a strong urban support.

Anticipating this possibility Evo Morales leader of the opposition and head of the strong Indian and unions’ movement that is promoting the street unrest described Mr. Mesa’s resignation as “political blackmail”.

The president’s spokesperson Jose Antonio Galindo rejected Mr. Morales claims and said that pushing oil royalties from 18 to 50%, (as demanded by the radicals) is non sustainable in any part of the world, “the oil industry, oil corporations, international organizations and countries such as United States would simply not accept such rules of the game”.

...But Felipe Quispe, leader of the Aymara Indians, another radical group, warned that if Congress ratifies Mr. Mesa the protests will continue with road blocks, economic strangling and occupation of police stations, Army barracks and town halls.

“(Mr. Mesa) is a servant of the multinational corporations, and it’s no good having a man who has sold the country as president”, highlighted Mr. Quispe adding the only possible solution is a transition government headed by he president of the Supreme Court.
“People have lost faith in Congress. Too many dollars have circulated in Parliament and too many Congress members have been seduced by multinational corporations’ dollars”. “With new elections Bolivians will finally be self ruled by an eagle-nosed Indian faithful to our own communitarian model”, forecasted Mr. Quispe.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=5220

more discussion in LBN for the few of us who are intersted...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1292135#1293605

[bemildred]

3. It's going to be interesting. Mesa lasted longer than I expected.

Notice how it's the money and neo-colonialism issues that
are pushing the agenda, again.

[Say_What]

4. Think the 50% royalties figure supposedly wanted by Morales is accurate

or just more bullshit by the press trying to discredit him and the MAS?

[bemildred]

5. I don't really know.

What I've read in the past was more along the line that the
indios want to use the gas themselves, to keep warm and cook
and things like that. They are not really all that hot to
be europeanized, or to sell it off to make a bit of money,
so if the 50% number is supported, I expect it's put that high
on purpose, it's no threat to them to have the globalists refuse
the deal.

But I can't say I've seen that number before or anything like it.

[aneerkoinos]

7. RENATIONALIZE!

That is what the social movements really want, undoing the corrupt regimes sell-off of national wealth to foreign corporations.

Narconews is the place to catch-up what is going on and what is the story behind the story...

[bemildred]

9. That too. nt

[aneerkoinos]

6. and longer ...

The parliament unanimously rejected the resignation, Mesa stays:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/3/8/215918/6198

(Evo Morales' party because they saw it as "extortion").

[bemildred]

8. This current little fandango is just warming up.

Mesa's fate is far from decided. The most interesting
feature right now is the story that various other LA leaders
have offered him rhetorical support. I suspect even such
as Kirchner and Lula are not anxious to get their citizens
of non-european descent aroused.

[aneerkoinos]

10. Worth to remember

There is also Brazilian oil corp sharing the hydrocarbon loot in Bolivia.

And I have growing suspicion, that unlike European social democracy, which today has nothing to with socialism and all to do with market fundamentalism with "human face", in Evo Morales' party 'The Movement Towards Socialism', the word socialism actually might mean something, as the roots of the party ideology are in the indigenous communitarean societies and participatory democracy instead of only representative.

It's the same'o same'o, supranational corporations (aka "International Community") against interests of local people (=socialism). And Mesa stands right between the Titanic and the Iceberg...

[bemildred]

11. Yeah, I think Morales is closer to the indigenous movements in

Ecuador and Peru than people like Kirchner and Lula.
Indian culture is sort of inherently "socialist" from
what I read, they have never really got into greed on the
European scale.

[nerddem]

12. hmm...

i don't know, i've been following morales for awhile, and i don't quite trust him. i kind of see him as a demagogue to tell you the truth. don't get me wrong, i'm part aymara myself and go back to bolivia often so i certainly sympathize with the indigenous movements, but i just don't know about morales. i think if he ever got to power he'd be too beholden to the coca growers in the valley

[bemildred]

13. I have no opinion about him personally.

What little I've seen does not impress me all that much.

On the other hand, I don't expect that he got to be the leader
that he is for nothing, and you don't really get enough
information about him personally out here in TV land to form
a firm opinion.

Edit: I should say "thank you" for taking the time to tell us
what you think, you seem closer to the situation than most of
us here.

[aneerkoinos]

14. Leadership

I don't think the issue here is about any person. Social movements are not controlled by or dependent of any leaders, leaders are just their mouthpieces and play a role in the tactical planning. Strategic goals of the movements come from bottom up. (Same goes of course for corporation interests (aka "The International Community"), except the "bottom" is corporate interests, not human interests.)

Personification of politics is just corporate media's attempt to blur and hide the real issues, which all relate to conflict between human dignity and corporate greed.