Bolivia names new president
Thursday, June 9, 2005 Posted: 11:55 PM EDT (0355 GMT)
SUCRE, Bolivia (AP) -- Bolivia's high court chief rose to the presidency late Thursday after two congressional leaders refused to assume the post, clearing the way for possible early elections that officials hope will curb violent protests.
The action came as lawmakers gathered in an emergency session and rapidly accepted the resignation of President Carlos Mesa.
The rejection of the top post by the two congressional leaders of the House and Senate automatically gave the job to Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Rodriguez, who had been third in the line to the presidency.
The important developments took only minutes during a session called after a day of raucous street demonstrations in this historic colonial capital some 450 miles southeast of La Paz.
Earlier, protests forced Congress to suspend an emergency session intended to elect a new president as the armed forces chief threatened military intervention if the rioting seriously escalates.
Hundreds of miners and farmers clashed with riot police outside the whitewashed hall where the session was to have been held as the weeks-old unrest registered its first death.
Senate leader Hormando Vaca Diez, who was in line to become president, had already announced in a televised news conference that he would reject lawmakers' efforts to name him president in hopes that that would bring an end to the spreading protests.
The House leader second in line for the presidency, Mario Cossio, also said he would decline the job and called Congress to meet swiftly to find an exit to the country's crisis.
"I would decline irrevocably the presidency," Vaca said. He also accused opposition leader Evo Morales of sending protesters into the streets to block lawmakers from carrying out their duties and urged him to lift the protests immediately.
The lawmakers had moved their session from La Paz to Sucre in a failed effort to avoid the protests that have effectively shut down La Paz.
Much of Bolivia has been paralyzed for weeks with strikes, highway blockades and oil field takeovers that forced the last president to offer his resignation Monday.
Those taking to the streets Thursday vowed to drive out Vaca Diez as his replacement and Cossio as next-in-line, saying they were demanding a caretaker figure who would call early elections.
Helmeted officers fired volleys of tear gas at protesters, the acrid white gas mixing with black smoke belching from tires lit by the demonstrators.
The head of the armed forces, Naval Adm. Luis Aranda Granados, warned both sides to avoid violence and said the military was prepared to safeguard democracy.
"As long as there is no break in the constitutional and democratic system, we will continue to safeguard this entire process," Aranda Granados said.
He urged lawmakers to respect the "will of the people."
Paralyzed nation
The demonstrations and road blockades have spread to many cities in the stricken Andean nation of 8.5 million people, as an eclectic opposition coalition of highland Indians, labor activists, leftist students and coca-leaf farmers has crippled South America's poorest country.
The restive opposition is clamoring for broad changes that would give more political power to the poor majority, nationalize the oil industry and move away from U.S.-backed free-market policies.
"We will win! We will triumph!" a column of club-wielding peasants from the coca-growing lowlands chanted as they snaked through cobblestone streets in La Paz on Thursday.
Other groups followed the farmers: disgruntled miners in hard hats, ill-paid teachers, and Indian women from the teeming hillside slums of nearby El Alto in black bowler hats with babies on their backs.
Segundo Oviedo, a 45-year-old farmer from Cochabamba wearing a tattered farm cap, said the poor were fed up after decades of rule by members of the country's elite failed to improve their lot.
"What we are demanding is wholesale reform in Bolivia," he said.
First death reported
The miners' leader was killed as his group made its way to the Sucre protests. The miners said he was shot as their truck caravan approached soldiers on a highway. Government minister Saul Lara confirmed the death but said the circumstances were under investigation.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would send Jose Antonio Ocampo, undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, as his personal envoy to Bolivia. The timing of the trip depended on "developments in the country," he said.
"Bolivians should resolve their differences peacefully and democratically," Annan said.
The crisis has reverberated from the high mountain plains of La Paz to the tropical lowlands. Activists have seized several oil field installations, crippling the national economy. La Paz has run short on gasoline and food as the city of 1 million idled under a public transportation strike.
Strapped hospitals are sending non-critical patients home. Mountains of trash are accumulating uncollected. Inmates at one prison near La Paz were reportedly running short on food, and hundreds of people lined up for scarce bread and cooking gas.
Hungry peasants looted an outdoor market in La Paz on Thursday, carting away sacks of potatoes and other vegetables.
Leftist opposition leader Evo Morales lashed out at Vaca Diez, saying he was a wealthy landowner and part of the "mafia of the oligarchy" that has ruled Bolivia for decades. He warned against attempts by the military to break up highway blockades.
