Bolivia’s Congress on Thursday approved the “overall content” of an electoral law hours after Bolivian President Evo Morales went on hunger strike to protest at opposition lawmakers’ efforts to block the bill.
Lawmakers must still vote on the details of the election reform law, which is seen as helping the leftist president in a general election in December by assigning more seats to poor, rural areas where he is popular.
Morales, the Andean nation’s first indigenous president, started a hunger strike earlier on Thursday, accusing his rightist opponents of blocking the proposal.
“Faced with the negligence of a bunch of neoliberal lawmakers, we have no choice but to take this step [hunger strike] ... they don’t want to pass a law that guarantees the implementation of the Constitution,” he told reporters.
Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), party controls the lower house in the natural gas-rich country, but right-wing parties have used their Senate majority to block dozens of government-proposed reforms since Morales took office in 2006.
Lawmakers traded insults during a heated debate and some opposition members called Morales government “totalitarian.”
However, a majority eventually voted to approve the general outline of the law. Further debate and another vote to pass the details of the measure were set to continue late on Thursday.
Congress still has to vote on how many seats will be reserved for minority indigenous groups in the legislature, whether or not the electoral register will be updated before the poll and if Bolivian expatriates will be allowed to vote.
A new Constitution designed to give more power and rights to the country’s indigenous majority was approved by more than 60 percent of voters in January.
It calls for Congress to approve an electoral law ratifying Dec. 6 as the date for a general election.
The opposition had rejected the bill because it gives 14 seats to minority indigenous groups which, they say, amounts to handing them to Morales, since he champions indigenous rights.
They also demand a new electoral register saying the current census is unreliable.
Across the landlocked country, hundreds of members of indigenous groups and trade unions had joined the hunger strike in support of Morales, Bolivian media had reported.
Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, has been racked by decades of political upheaval. The opposition is split ahead of December’s vote, when Morales will stand for re-election and 166 lawmakers will be chosen.
A poll published in El Deber newspaper this week said that some 54 percent of Bolivians thought Morales would be reelected, far ahead of his closest contender, former Bolivian president Carlos Mesa, with 6 percent.
Morales, a critic of Washington and an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, won sweeping victories in a recall vote in August and the constitutional referendum in January, showing strong backing for his leftist and pro-indigenous policies.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS