JURIST - Paper Chase: Bolivia governors confront president on constitutional assembly vote

[JURIST] The governors of six of Bolivia's nine states vowed over the weekend to break off relations with President Evo Morales [official website; BBC profile] following a move to give Morales' leftist party more power [JURIST report] to rewrite the country's constitution. The six governors, who all belong to opposition parties but represent 80 percent of Bolivia's population, pledged not to participate in Morales' attempts "to change the structure of government, undermine the law and destabilize elected authorities." They also called on activists to demonstrate Thursday in Cochabama, Bolivia's third-largest city.

On Friday, Bolivia's constitutional assembly [official website, in Spanish] approved a motion to make decisions by majority vote - a victory for Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS) [party website], which failed to receive two-thirds of the assembly seats [JURIST report] in July's elections. The vote allows MAS, with 137 of the 235 assembly seats, to easily adopt populist reforms into the amended constitution [current text], although a two-thirds vote will still be needed to approve the final constitutional draft. MercoPress News Agency has more.

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