AP News, July 18th, 2007
President Evo Morales' backers in an assembly rewriting Bolivia's constitution have proposed allowing the populist leader to seek re-election for an unlimited number of consecutive terms.
Bolivian law limits presidents to two nonconsecutive five-year terms. But delegates are debating a change to the rule in the Constituent Assembly, convened by Morales last year to write a new framework giving greater political voice to Bolivia's long-suffering indigenous majority.
Delegates from Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, on Friday presented a proposal that would allow Bolivia's president and vice president to be "re-elected consecutively by the will of the people." Local media first reported the proposal Wednesday.
MAS delegate Eduardo Garcia said term limits amount to "the revocation of the presidential mandate."
Morales was elected in 2005, but has said he will call new presidential elections once the new constitution is complete.
Opposition leaders called the proposal an attempt to extend Morales' rule indefinitely.
"MAS insists in their intention of replacing Bolivian democracy with a totalitarian political system," said Jose Antonio Aruquipa, a delegate for the conservative opposition party Podemos.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, a key Morales ally, has also proposed doing away with presidential term limits as part of constitutional reforms, which would allow him to run again in 2012 and beyond. Chavez has said any changes to Venezuela's constitution would have to be approved in a popular vote.
MAS holds a slim majority in Bolivia's Constituent Assembly, which is scheduled to complete the new constitution in December before putting the draft to a popular vote.
