Forced by demonstrators to leave La Paz and meet in Sucre to discuss President Carlos Mesa's resignation, Bolivia's Congress yesterday could face the same music, as protesters vowed to take their fight all the way to the country's political capital.
Evo Morales, a leftist leader of coca farmers and one of the most influential protest leaders, called on Quechua Indians in the Sucre area, 740km southeast of La Paz, to prevent the meeting, set for 10:30am.
Protesters will tighten their blockade of roads leading to Sucre, Morales said Wednesday, adding that militant area miners were heading towards the city. Some 2,000 Quechua Indians were also heading to Sucre from the city of Cochabamba, a top Morales lieutenant said.
PHOTO: AP
Mesa, who resigned Monday, warned in a speech Tuesday that Bolivia was so polarized it was heading towards civil war.
"Let us avoid lost lives, let us avoid a violence that devours us all," he said, calling for early elections. He also warned that Bolivia was "on the brink of civil war."
Felipe Quispe, an Aymara Indian protest leader, seemed to relish the idea. "That is much better, because that way we can define (the future of) this country with weapons," he said in an interview with a Peruvian radio stations.
"There is a racial battle between whites and Indians," he said. "It was high time for us (Indians) to take power, that the invaders return our territory," he added.
Demonstrators are demanding new presidential elections, the nationalization of the oil and gas industry and constitutional reform to establish regional autonomy.
Mesa called on Senate leader Hormando Vaca Diez -- first in line to succeed him -- and House of Deputies leader Mario Cossio to resign in order to facilitate early presidential elections.
If both step aside that would allow Supreme Court chief justice Eduardo Rodriguez to become interim leader and call for early elections.
Congress could also reject Mesa's resignation, as it did on March 7, when he also offered to step down amid popular unrest.
Mesa served as president for 20 months, after his predecessor Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was also driven from office by protests over control of Bolivia's gas reserves.
A successor would serve out the remainder of Sanchez de Lozada's term, through August 2007.
Bolivia's social meltdown pits the poorer Andean regions surrounding La Paz against interests in the modern, relatively prosperous eastern and southern plains, where most of the natural gas wealth is located.
The government has raised taxes on oil and gas companies doing business in Bolivia in a bid to quell discontent, but protest leaders vowed demonstrations would continue until their goal of nationalization is met.
In eastern Bolivia, protesting Guarani Indians took over three oil fields belonging to British Petroleum and four belonging to Spain's Repsol, a spokesman for a group representing the 20 foreign energy concerns operating in Bolivia said.
Protesters earlier took over a pipeline station on the border with Chile, cutting off crude exports to the northern Chilean port of Arica.
The political system is dominated by people of mostly European descent -- many descending from 16th century Spanish conquistadores -- oriented to global markets. But grassroots activism has stirred demonstrators in the majority indigenous Aymara and Quechua nation of 8.5 million to a greater share of their country's wealth.
Bolivia, South America's poorest country, has the second-largest gas reserves in South America, after Venezuela.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS