Federico Fuentes
Nine months after the popular revolt that ousted the previous president, the Bolivian and international media are trumpeting the result of the July 18 referendum on Bolivia's natural gas industry as a win for President Carlos Mesa.
Mesa had urged a Yes vote to all five questions in the referendum. Although results will be finalised on August 4, it seems that all five questions received a majority of Yes votes. Mesa ruled out the option of nationalising gas, the key demand of the October 2003 "gas war" and favoured by 81% of Bolivians according to opinion polls.
Much of the media coverage has also pointed to the defeat of the radical left, spearheaded by the Bolivian trade union federation (COB) and the confederation of peasants' unions (CSUTCB). Despite calls for voters to a boycott the referendum by both organisations, balloting went ahead with minimal disturbances, achieving the required 50% plus one turnout necessary to make the result valid.
Some commentators are claiming that Mesa's victory seems to have signalled the end of a cycle of mass revolt by large sections of Bolivia's workers and peasants. With Bolivians seemingly preferring the ballot box to the street protests, the referendum turnout and result appears to indicate that most Bolivians are prepared to give Mesa the opportunity to implement his plans. These plans include asserting greater government control over private oil and gas companies' exploitation of Bolivia's estimated 52.3 trillion cubic feet of gas.
However, the early results of the referendum also indicate that Mesa's breathing space will be very narrow.
Of the 5.1 million Bolivians of voting age, 640,000 did not enrol to vote, while a further 1.8 million stayed home on polling day. Thus almost 50% of the voting-age population choose not to vote, many as a result of the calls for abstention by COB and CSUTCB leaders. This was despite government declarations that voting was compulsory, under threats of fines, restrictions on abstainers' right to open bank accounts or obtain passports.
Many of those who campaigned in favour of a boycott were told they could face up to five years' jail.
The government sent 30,000 troops and 20,000 police officers into the Altiplano region, home to many of the Indigenous peasants who were crucial to last October's rebellion, in a clear attempt to intimidate potential abstainers.
Support shaky
Looking at the figures of voter turnout, which the corporate media has seized on in order to claim that Mesa has won a huge victory, the government's support still looks shaky. Although the first three questions look set to pass with a majority of around 75% or more of those who voted, the last two questions may pass with only the slimmest of margins.
The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), headed by coca growers' leader Evo Morales, had urged its followers to support the referendum, but to vote Yes only to the first three questions. Such an outcome would allow for the repeal of the 1996 Hydrocarbon Act which privatised Bolivia's gas resources, the return to state-ownership of hydrocarbons at the "well head" and the re-establishment the state oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos.
In urging a Yes vote for the first three questions, Morales claimed that their approval would be a clear sign of support for nationalisation, albeit "without expropriation or confiscation". Thus many of those who voted on July 18 did so with the intent to vote for nationalisation.
Between 10.7% and 12.3% of votes cast for each question were spoilt, many having "nationalisation" written across the ballot. A further 9.1% to 15.8% of ballots cast left one or more of the questions unmarked. Overall, it seems only around 30% of those who voted ticked Yes to the last question, approving the export of gas to promote domestic industrialisation. Winning approval for this question was seen as vital by Mesa to retain the backing of the foreign-owned gas companies.
Only 26% supported question four, allowing Mesa to use gas as a bargaining chip to negotiate with Chile for access to the sea. Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879-1884).
Divided left
Mesa's ability to come out as the "victor" in the referendum was in large part due to the divisions within the left that the referendum was able to sow. The two paths chosen by the left — the boycott called for by the COB and CSUTCB and the "critical support" position of the MAS — brought the previously relatively united left into conflict.
The tension reached its high point in the two weeks prior to the referendum, when Morales was expelled from the COB as a "traitor", while MAS leaders called for the jailing of Jamie Solares and Felipe Quispe, leaders of COB and CSUTCB respectively.
For the MAS, the referendum was seen as a "conquest of the October insurrection", and therefore needed to be supported as a step towards nationalisation. The MAS accused those who called for a boycott of allying with the far right, which hopes to destabilise the Mesa government and create the conditions for a military coup.
Morales' left critics believe that his near victory in the 2002 presidential elections, and the MAS' hopes of winning the municipal elections later this year and the presidential election in 2007, have led the MAS to shift to the right.
The COB and CSUTCB argued that the referendum was only a means by which Mesa could try to consolidate his neoliberal government. This view was shared by Bolivia's Indigenous Aymara representative to the UN, Nolasco Mamani, who was quoted on July 13 by the Econoticiasbolivia.com website as saying: "The referendum of July 18 is designed for external use so that interventionist governments and international bodies can use it as a legalistic device. Those who wrote the referendum have contrived that the main thing is not the questions, much less the percentage reached by each reply, but rather that it takes place at all so as to have legal validity. This fact will serve so that the government can argue that what was left out of the questions has been accepted by the electorate by the simple fact that they took part in the vote.
"The holding of the referendum achieves its central objective: the legalisation of oil companies' control of the country's hydrocarbons."
The Mesa government poured US$800,000 into the Yes campaign. The International Monetary Fund, which made a US$120 million loan contingent on the referendum passing, along with the private oil and gas companies and the US and Spanish embassies, declared their support for the referendum.
Since July 18, Mesa has argued that he has a clear mandate to move ahead with his hydrocarbon policy, which will see greater government control, but not nationalisation. Similarly, although some of the 78 current contracts held by the private gas companies can be reviewed, none are expected to be. Most of these contracts — signed under the previous government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada — give Bolivia only 18% of the profits from gas exploitation as opposed to the previous higher level of 50%.
Oil and gas market analysts were quoted in a variety of corporate media outlets as considering the result "a relief for companies with investments in the region".
"This is undoubtedly a victory for Mesa", said Jorge Lazarte, a Bolivian political analyst quoted by Reuters on July 19. "But the government has only overcome its first obstacle. Now these referendum proposals must go to Congress and that will be another battle. The difficulties may have just begun."
These sentiments were echoed by leading Bolivian daily La Razon, which in its July 19 editorial said "the mother of all battles will be fought from today onwards", a reference to the Bolivian Congress's attempts to translate the referendum result into legislation.
Two-thirds of the lawmakers are members of the pro-privatisation, neoliberal parties, while Mesa has no formal political party affiliation.
Morales was quoted on Bolivian radio stations on July 19 as stating the MAS party would "continue to fight until the hydrocarbons are under the proper and absolute control of the Bolivian people... If Mesa does not respect the result of the referendum, then we will be in the streets again to defend the vote of the people."
Luis Choquetijlla, a prominent COB leader, demanded the government "move on with the nationalisation of those natural resources that were confiscated from us in the past and return them to our hands together with our strategic companies". Quispe has pledged that the CSUTCB will continue the struggle for nationalisation.
From Green Left Weekly, July 28, 2004.
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