Bolivian Supreme Court Chief Named President

Eduardo Rodriguez, the head of Bolivia’s Supreme Court, became this Andean country’s president late Thursday after a day of violent protest and civil disobedience that forced a conservative senator to give up his bid to hold the office.

Rodriguez will rule as a caretaker president until an election can be held to pick a new leader in this nation divided by ethnic, social and regional conflicts.

A special session of Congress confirmed Rodriguez as president after Sen. Hormando Vaca Diez abandoned his bid for the presidency in the face of popular protests. Vaca Diez had called for a crackdown on the Indian-led protest movements that have laid siege to several Bolivian cities.

Vaca Diez, as leader of the Senate, had been next in line for the presidency after President Carlos Mesa’s announcement of resignation Monday but faced fierce opposition.

“For the unity of our country, so that the confrontations end, so that Bolivia will return to normality ... I renounce the succession to the presidency,” Vaca Diez said.

Rodriguez’s appointment came at the end of a tumultuous day that included protesters breaking through police lines near the legislators’ meeting place in Sucre, Bolivia’s judicial capital. News reports said that at least one protester had been killed by police Thursday outside Sucre.

Congress had moved the session about 260 miles to Sucre because demonstrators had surrounded La Paz, the seat of government, with barricades cutting off its most important highway links to the rest of the country.

Leaders of Bolivia’s burgeoning Indian-led protest movement had warned that bloodshed would result if Vaca Diez became president. For months, the demonstrators have pressed for social and economic reforms, including the nationalization of Bolivia’s oil industry and a new constitution that would increase the power of the Indian majority.

Vaca Diez and his allies said this week that they would use force to clear Bolivia’s cities and towns of the protesters’ barricades. But Thursday, with fears of civil war growing, a cross-section of Bolivian civic and political leaders said they opposed a Vaca Diez presidency.

The mayors of eight of Bolivia’s 10 largest cities threatened to go on a hunger strike to protest Vaca Diez’s candidacy.

“We are in a terrible moment because Mr. Vaca Diez has been unable to understand that there is a vast popular sentiment against him,” Alvaro Garcia Linera, a political scientist, said before Vaca Diez withdrew his candidacy. “If Vaca Diez were to become president now, he would have no legitimacy whatsoever.”

At the heart of the conflicts here are a series of deepening ethnic, social and regional differences that are dividing Bolivia between east and west, Indians and non-Indians, rich and poor.

Former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was elected with less than 25% of the vote in 2002, on a platform to continue the free-market reforms of his predecessor. Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and former coca farmer who founded the Movement to Socialism party, finished a close second.

Mesa, Sanchez de Lozada’s vice president, became the nation’s leader in October 2003 when an Indian-led rebellion drove Sanchez de Lozada from office. Mesa said this week in deciding to step down that he could no longer govern in the face of the protests.

Under the constitution, Vaca Diez was to replace him, but his appointment had to be confirmed by Congress.

Earlier in the week, it appeared that Vaca Diez had enough support from his fellow lawmakers. On Thursday, however, the center-right New Republican Force said it was withdrawing support for him, as did some members of his own party.

Right-leaning parties joined leftist parties in calling for Supreme Court chief Rodriguez, third in the line of succession, to be named caretaker president. The president of the lower house of Congress, Mario Cossio, was next in line after Vaca Diez, but he too announced that he would decline the post.

Roman Catholic leaders have tried for weeks to mediate the crisis. On Wednesday, they also had urged Vaca Diez to turn down the presidency and call an early election.

Thursday’s congressional session was scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. As hours passed with no session, rumors swept the country. A Santa Cruz television station reported mysterious troop movements “to prevent the social [protesters] from shutting off the city.”

Similar troop movements were reported in other cities.

The joint chiefs of Bolivia’s armed forces read a statement appealing for calm and declaring that the military was in a state of “high alert.” They called for respect for the constitutional process, but also asked Congress to seek a compromise that would avoid bloodshed.

“We exhort the members of the Congress ... to listen to all those sectors that are trying to have their voice heard, so that we can avoid a confrontation between Bolivians,” said Adm. Luis Aranda, the head of the armed forces.

Vaca Diez, from the relatively well-off eastern province of Santa Cruz, gave voice to a growing frustration with months of social protest.

There have been scattered reports this week of middle-class residents taking up arms and confronting the Indians and poor farmers blockading roads and highways.

This week, a group of students from the city of Santa Cruz clashed with the farmers blocking one of the highways leading to the city.

The Indian-led protest movement represents groups with different goals. Morales, of the Movement to Socialism, is a relative moderate who has made no secret of his aspirations to win election as Bolivia’s first Indian president.

Indian leaders in the La Paz suburb of El Alto, a hotbed of radicalism, declared Wednesday that they no longer recognized the authority of the central government. They proclaimed themselves an “Indigenous National Popular Assembly.”

On Thursday, the residents of El Alto marched in central La Paz along with thousands of protesters from many parts of the country.

Helmeted miners from the southern city of Potosi set off small chunks of dynamite as they marched, the explosions reverberating like the sound of distant thunder.

Health workers chanted, “Vaca Diez, to a firing squad!”

A number of women marched with silk flags identifying themselves as an association of “retail merchants of clothing and sundries.”

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Bolivian unrest

Fear of civil war is growing as protests continue across Bolivia over deepening ethnic, social and regional divides within the country.

Population: 8.8 million

64% below poverty line (2004 estimate)

Agricultural products: Soybeans, coffee, coca, cotton, corn, sugar cane, rice, potatoes, timber

*--* Foreign investment: 1999 - $1 billion 2002 - $676.6 million 2003 - $166.8 million *--*

*--* Value of debt: 2002 - $1.8 billion 2003 - $2.9 billion *--*

*--* Ethnic groups: Quechua 30% Mixed 30% Aymara 25% White 15% *--*

Sources: World Bank; CIA 2005 World Factbook; U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Associated Press