Evo takes a gamble

Nowhere in the world are voters more likely to be familiar with the ballot paper than Bolivia, and they are about to go to the polls again. Taking a hint from his closest ally, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's first indigenous political leader, Evo Morales, is to gamble his presidency to escape the quagmire that has formed around his plans to revolutionise the country.

Morales swept to power in 2005 through successfully harnessing the vote of the dirt-poor, Indian-descended classes of the western highlands, and pledging, above all, to evenly redistribute the country's wealth. Like Chavez (and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, who is currently enduring a similar struggle), Morales wants to cement his '21st century socialism' in a a new constitution, the text of which was controversially approved in a session of the consitutent assembly where the opposition was excluded. A number of its clauses - including giving equal weight to the local justice system of the Andean Indian caciques (chiefs), weakening property rights and removing congress' right to elect judges - have provoked ire in the country's eastern states. A country, the opposition claims, where the population was happy to declare itself mestizo (mixed-race), has been divided into two along racial lines by Morales' economic policy.

Last week, Santa Cruz, comfortably Bolivia's wealthiest state and responsible for 30 per cent of the country's GDP, held a referendum on the creation of a regional assembly, essentially to put the brakes on Morales' reforms. Voters overwhelmingly (86 per cent) backed the plan for autonomy, forcing Morales to give the poll some credence, by labelling it illegal and a failure. Seemingly inspired by the unrest in Santa Cruz, three other eastern departments have announced plans for similar votes. And the president's response?

He has called for a vote of his own. His recall referendum, to be held in the next three months, demands that he, his vice-president and the nine state governors must each win more votes and a greater percentage than they did at the 2005 election, or face a whole new election campaign. A similar plan worked very successfully for Chavez in 2004, but it is possible that the impressive size of Morales' 2005 success (53.7 per cent of the vote) may count against him. For the opposition, even a presidential victory is not necessarily a bad thing, as the prospect of a new constitution (which itself must be passed by a popular referendum) remains more remote than ever. In the meantime, there's plenty of voting practice ahead.