November 17, 2022, 4:00 AM
November 17, 2022, 4:00 AM
President Luis Arce signed three decrees to set the date of the next census; the last of them, the 4824, aimed to deactivate the indefinite strike that has been carried out in Santa Cruz since October 22. The extreme measure continues and enters this Thursday the 27th.
“We maintain the indefinite strike and remain alert to what happens in Parliament regarding the law for the census”, declared last night the president of the Committee for Santa Cruz, Rómulo Calvo, at the moment of evaluating the fulfillment of the five determinations that the massive town hall assumed on Sunday.
The magna assembly instructed the legislators from Santa Cruz to propose in the Legislature a project of law ensuring that census data is also applied for the allocation of seats in Parliament based on the new demographic reality revealed by the census. For example, Santa Cruz de la Sierra and El Alto, the two fastest growing cities, hope to have more representatives.
Calvó stressed that the treatment of this standard “is on track, although with different nuances” when the 72-hour deadline granted by the council expires.
In the great assembly also it was instructed that a commission be created to evaluate “the relationship between Santa Cruz and the Bolivian State”. Calvo reported that the profile of the people who will be part of this entity will be analyzed, as well as the conceptual framework that will be discussed. The proposal of “federalism” was the most mentioned so far. In any case, Calvo announced that in the next few hours he will report on the progress in this section.
On Sunday it was also approved to raise a claim so that the other departments join the Santa Cruz demand for a census that generates reliable data for the distribution of resources for the 343 municipalities and 10 universities in the country. The civic announced that he invited his colleagues from the rest of the country to hold a meeting.
The council also gave a deadline to the rest of the departments to join different protest actions to the regional cause. He highlighted the 48-hour strike that took place in Potosí. “The rest of the Bolivian departments have made their priorities clear, which are different and we respect them,” he said and announced that the Santa Cruz institutions will continue.
In any case, the citizens of Santa Cruz met yesterday with national leaders of the trade union sector. Jesús Cahuana explained at the end of that appointment that his sector will support the strike under the terms of the last council. “They are asking that the Chamber of Deputies once and for all approve the law to end the strike. There is no trust in a decree or in the word of the ministers, ”he added.
Also, The Trade Union Confederation of Trade Union Workers of Bolivia will block the roads throughout the country today as a show of support for Santa Cruz. The measure was defined in an enlarged meeting that took place on Monday in Oruro, where it was also determined to provide moral and material support to the hunger strike pickets installed in different cities.
“Us We support the department of Santa Cruz, we ask that the Census be carried out in 2023as requested by our top leader Francisco Figueroa (+)”, said Antonio Siñani, union representative of El Alto.
The fifth point of the council’s mandate was the release of the people who were apprehended “illegally” in the context of the protests on Friday, November 11, when complaints of police abuse also arose. The civic leader stressed that 15 residents have been released, but explained that there are three detainees in the clashes in La Guardia and the Puerto Quijarro border.
“We are not going to abandon them. They are detained for this cause and the council sends us to guarantee their freedom”, concluded the civic.
Earlier, the second vice president of the pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee, Stello Cochamadinis, after meeting with the rector of the Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University (Uagrm), Vicente Cuéllar, and his technical team, said that the Government and the MAS must “grant a legal guarantee” so that the allocation of seats in the Legislature is done in a timely manner and before the national elections scheduled for 2025.
Decree 4824, approved by Arce on November 11, has a single article with two sections. The first determines that the registration date is March 23, 2024 and the second instructs the dissemination of “preliminary results” in September of this year with a view to redistributing resources to municipalities and universities based on the new demographic reality of the country. The norm does not issue any forecast on the allocation of seats and that reactivated the doubts regarding the next elections.
In this context, on Sunday November 13, 20 minutes before the massive town hall that took place in Santa Cruz, The Minister of Planning, Sergio Cusicanqui, announced that the National Statistics Institute (INE) will send the results of the census to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) in December 2024 to prepare the norm with which the seats will be distributed and the 70 single-member constituencies of the country will be delimited.
The Legislative Assembly is made up of 36 senators, four for each department, elected based on majorities and minorities. Therefore, these census results do not impact there. The data does affect the distribution of the 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 60 of which are distributed based on population criteriawhile 63 are elected by direct vote in the same number of single-member territorial constituencies and seven are special for indigenous nations.
Currently, La Paz has 29 deputies; Santa Cruz, 28; Cochabamba, 19; Potosi, 13; Chuquisaca, 10; Tarija, nine; Oruro, nine; Beni, eight; and Pando, five.
With the updated population data, Santa Cruz can win at least three more deputies. The mayoress of El Alto, Eva Copa, anticipated that this city will also win a single-member representative after the new census.
TSE member Francisco Vargas recalled that the Constitution establishes 130 deputies and it is on that basis that the reassignment is made. Without the new population data, it is not yet possible to establish which are the rural and urban regions that may lose seats for the next national elections in 2025.
Based on this scenario, the legal adviser of the Inter-institutional Committee, José Luis Santistevan, and the rector Cuéllar They demanded “certainties” from the Government because the guarantee on the seats is already installed in the Santa Cruz protest.
In fact, Sunday’s town hall approved the requirement of a law so that the Government of faith and guarantee that for the next elections the country will come with an updated electoral map that reflects citizen representation in the Legislative Assembly.
To respond to this command, Opposition legislators and the ruling party presented bills, with an urgent request. The Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS), which controls the decisions in the Senate and Deputies, did not proceed with the appeals for waiving the procedure and chose to send the proposals so that they follow the course without urgency.
“There are about five proposals in parliament, but we believe it is the University that must present a new project (of law for the census with seats) that gathers all those that already exist, and that (the law) be made viable and thus the country move forward, be pacified and that people can return to their homes,” said Cochamanidis. He maintained that the UAGRM can direct a new project that is viable.
The 72-hour term given by the council coincided with the day of the failed census this year. “There are three decrees in force and the census must be guaranteed in such a way that by 2024 we have the official results of the INE so that tax co-participation resources are distributed, but the Assembly itself establishes that the distribution of seats is for the period 2025-2030 and that is non-negotiable,” Santistevan said.
