In the last month the Bolivian bourgeoisie and right wing has launched a huge counteroffensive against the Morales government, involving strikes by right wing students and street battles between left and right.
Two central issues have provoked their revolt - the nationalisation of the gas and oil, and the fight over the Constituent Assembly.
The latter has been the most immediately inflammatory question, because the right understands full well that if the Constituent were able to give to itself the right to change the constitution, then in effect it would have the right to overrule the Congress and take the political power. The governing MAS (Movement towards Socialism) has a clear majority in the Assembly, so the right wing has demanded that a two-thirds majority be required to change the constitution gives them an effective veto. It now appears that the government has been split on requirement. effectively put the a mass base. Palace. this issue, and that the vicepresident Álvaro García Linera has forced a capitulation to the right, conceding the two-thirds
The government has also nationalisation of oil and gas on hold, arguing that Bolivia lacks the expertise to run these industries alone and that it does not have the money to pay
All this is very bad news for the left, the working class and the mass social movements. The fight against imperialism and local capital has been stalled; and despite the militancy of the masses there is no alternative leadership with a clear line and
In this article PABLO STEFANONI traces the division of the MAS which have led to the current impasse. Stefanoni is co-author (with Herve do Alto) of the recently published Evo Morales: From Coca to the SEPTEMBER 21 - The two clashing political lines of the Evo Morales government are today treading on muddy territory that has put a brake on - and put in doubt - the government's line of march. The resignation of Andres Soliz Rada as hydrocarbons minister has put in relief the lack of governmental homogeneity on the nationalisation of gas and petroleum.
So much so that the deadlock the Constituent Assembly, which convened on August 6, threatens a premature loss of prestige for those who have the mission of writing a new constitution for Bolivia, which will construct the pillars of a second, "postcolonial" republic.
The exit of Soliz Rada appeared as a door-slam, and revealed evidence of various problems that the Morales administration faces. Two of them: the deficit of political coordination between lne ministers and the president - which has already been admitted to in the government's self-evaluation - and the powers of ministers being chipped away, with their wings clipped by the centralisation of the decisions in the hands of Morales and his vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera. That's how Soliz Rada explained it when he said that he could not even name his own collaborators. (Above) Evo Morales speaks at the UN. (Right) Police get heavy with striking Bolivian transport workers
On top of this is another deficit that Soliz Rada did not mention: the absence of spaces for political debate inside of the government, and an empiricism that shines, at the moment, for its improvisation. Within this scenario, Soliz Rada was accused of tackling debates that could not be had out inside the executive through the mass media.
1 nere are two explanations on the table to justify all these and other difficulties that have confronted the process of democratic and cultural revolution MAS's UTSI eight months of government: the first is the right-wing plot with US support, the second problem is one or an administration made up of a political personnel without experience in the management of a state. Some even risk claim that the problem is the indigenous president's "white entourage".
But are these two responses enough — if they are true to explain, for example, why Morales, from Havana, denounced North American intrigues to overthrow him, while Garcia Linera was in the United States, appealing to their good sense so that Washington would renew the preferential TaTT for Bolivian products within the framework of the ATPDA (Law for Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication), the trade agreement with the Andean countries in exchange for their participation the fight against narco-tratficking and the cultivation of coca?
In front of this, many fall into the temptation of looking for internal political lines within MAS and the government. That is why terms such
"guevarismo", "indigenismo" and "liberation theology" are bandied about, types of magic formulas with scarce correlation to reality.
The truth is that MAS is not a party but rather a diffuse and unstable confederation of ideological factions. City/countryside, originarios (first indigenous peoples)/invited (non-indigenous people invited to be part of the unionists/intellectuals.
"Where the trade unions tunction well. there is not need for a parallel [political] structure", explained Morales from the cocalero regions of the tropics of Cochabamba.