I had to look twice at the headline on the BBC News website yesterday: “Bolivian leader on hunger strike”.  Surely they didn’t mean Evo Morales?

They did.  But then, there are not many other Bolivian leaders that get reported on the news here.  President Morales has gone on hunger strike until the Bolivian senate passes a new law.

It all sounds a bit crazy and certainly something that I would not expect to happen in Europe.  Can you imaging Gordon Brown or Angela Merkel going on hunger strike to get their respective parliaments to pass new legislation?  Or indeed any of their predecessors?

So what’s it all about?

Well, if I understand everything correctly, then the law should reform some of the electoral boundaries within Bolivia.  Now, when a country like the United Kingdom reforms their electoral boundaries an electoral commission takes into account social developments such as the number of people living within a given area.  It then makes recommendations to parliament as to the changes.  Ideally this happens in the middle of a Government’s term of office, so as not to affect the outcome of any elections.

In Bolivia’s case, the changes appear to be along ethnic lines and already the media is predicting that President Morales would stand to benefit in future elections from the changes.

The electoral boundaries should be drawn up to make elections as fair as possible, and the elected members of the senate have a responsibility to make that this is the case.  Trying to force the senate into approving those boundaries beyond their will surely has no place in modern democary?

Tags: Congress, Evo Morales, Hunger Strike, Law

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 9:30 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.