C.R. & F. Rojas Abogados
  November 9, 2006 - Bolivia

The Constituent Assembly in Bolivia
  by Dr. Manfredo Kempff

Bolivia has just culminated the step that will have the greatest impact in the process of creating a new constitution for Bolivia. On Sunday July 2, Bolivia elected the constituents to the assembly that will be in charge with providing structure and substance to the new constitutional norm. While the possibility exists for various interpretations given the results of the vote, most of which are dependent on one’s political inclination, the entirety of the process cannot be understood without mentioning the developments that brought it to life. Bolivia’s democratic representative system has been experiencing convulsions during these last few years such that one might have thought it was coming to an end. The reasons that explain this unfortunate and complicated situation are many and include the ever greater discontent of the population, poverty and social marginalization, the inability of the Bolivian citizenry to identify with their system of government, its leaders, and its institutions. These factors brought about the necessity to look for exits from this state of affairs, one of which was a change to the Political Constitution of the State then in force by means of a “re-founding” Constitutional Assembly that would be granted the task of forming a new social contract between the different members of society that reflecting the current social and political situation. This change is not necessarily a good one considering that the present constitution is an appropriate one that reflects a centrist and liberal state. Under the new scenario, the goal is to reform the country’s political and institutional foundations based on the supposed plurality of perspectives of those assembly constituents recently elected by popular vote. One of the most common arguments for the justification of the assembly’s existence is that it will assure greater participation in the political and economic decisions of the country by those social sectors that have been historically marginalized. Regardless, the gravest risk is one in which political parties may politicize popular hopes, thereby imposing scenarios that respond more to their personal interests than those of the community. In this sense there exists basically two clearly identified postures of those running for the assembly: one is more moderate and could be classified as reformist, the other is radical and could be called revolutionary, the latter of the two having a concept of the country that is more hegemonic, believing in strong concentrated state power but with a great dispersion of ideas on how to achieve it. From an operational point of view, we can identify three major stages that have taken and will take place within the Constituent Assembly. The first was the law authorizing the convocation of the Constitutional Assembly which was approved in March 2006 and established the operation requirements that would follow. Later we had the election of July 2, 2006 in which the constitutional assembly representatives were elected by popular vote. Finally, on August 6, 2006 the first reunion of the elected assembly representatives will take place in the city of Sucre. They will formally initiate the Constitutional Assembly process that will result in the new Political Constitution of the State. What will constitute the new constitutional basis is still unknown. The expectations are high but what remains clear is that the results of the Constitutional Assembly won’t initiate an immediate and automatic change of Bolivia’s reality, something that many Assembly representatives don’t seem to take into account.