La revolución continues. And no Che! Had this happened under Nixon, there'd be slaughter. As bad as Bush is, the US government has lightened up on people power.
LA PAZ.- Thousands of Bolivian miners have traveled from the highlands to the city of Sucre, the Constitutional capital of the country, to force Congress to call early general elections.
Bolivian President Carlos Mesa has invited Argentina, Brazil and the UN to send observers as the current crisis continues. The miners made the trip in buses and flatbed trucks from Oruro and Potosí, in the southeast and south of the country respectively, according to the President of the Oruro Province Federation of Mining Cooperatives, José Luis Chorolque. The Bolivian Congress is to meet on Thursday at 14:30 in Sucre to decide whether to accept or reject the President's resignation. Congress is meeting in Sucre given the massive street demonstrations and the lack of security in La Paz.
If Mesa's resignation is accepted, the order of succession is as follows: Senate President Hormando Vaca Díez, Speaker of the House Mario de Cossío, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Eduardo Rodríguez. Rodríguez is the only one of the three who can call early elections. Bolivians demand that Vaca Díez and Cossío refuse the post because their policies do not serve the majority of the people, said Mr. Chorolque. The miners also demand that the third official in the line of succession, Justice Rodríguez, call elections within 90 days and the nationalize hydrocarbon, natural gas and petroleum deposits. Carlos Mesa and the social sector have asked Vaca Díez and the Speaker of the House, Mario Cossío, to step aside in favor of Supreme Court Chief Justice Eduardo Rodríguez so that early elections can be called.
The Bolivian President has asked Argentina, Brazil and the UN to send observers before the deep crisis rocking the country worsens. Bolivia is traversing one of the most critical junctures in the history of the republic, wrote President Mesa in letters sent to Argentina's Néstor Kirchner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Secretary General Kofi Annan. In the letters, Mesa expresses the hope that that Congress will take a trascendental decision in favor of democracy, political stability and the future of the nation which finds itself in social upheaval and social polarization. The appointment of one or several special observers from Brazil, Argentina and the UN would be a gesture acknowledging the importance of Bolivia in a regional and hemispheric context, concludes Mesa.
Meanwhile, groups of Indian demonstrators have occupied seven oilfields in the Province of Santa Cruz operated by the Spanish-Argentinian corporation Repsol YPF and by British Petroleum.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2005/06/09/internacional/1118277529.html