from today's El Comercio

Babelfish trans. - cleaned up the worst of it - too busy to do a good job, but the basic info comes through. We need to watch this closely as the outcome will have a huge impact on Ecuador.

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Evo Morales accepts referendum to determine whether or not he remains in power

The Bolivian president accepted the challenge that the Senate posed to him, that approved a referendum in next the 90 days that will determine if the chief executive, the vice-president and the nine departmental prefects will remain or leave theirs positions.

Morales, who has the ability to veto that law, preferred to leave to the front and Thursday at night, few hours after the approval of the law in the competing Senate, he said in a message from the Presidential Palace that “what better than that the people decide the destiny of the country”.

The chief executive emphasized the necessity “to define in the ballot boxes and not with violence, within the framework of consitutionality”, the present political crisis that exists in the country and that faces the central government in some regions.

He indicated that this consultation will allow the population to choose between “who do good work and who make bad” without the need for violence. In saying referendo the mandates of Morals and vice-president Alvaro the Garci'as Linera (who conclude in January of 2011) could be dismissed if the votes received by both in the election of December of 2005 are surpassed, that were 1 544 374 (53.74% of the total).

The same logic (a vote more than that received individually in the last election) will be applied for the revocation of the prefects of La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija, Beni, Bulging, Chuquisaca, Potosí and Oruro; the first six, ample opponents of the agent chief executive.

The acceptance of Morals represented a turn of 180 degrees from the first reaction of the government, expressed by the presidential spokesman, Iván Cinnamons, that accused the senators “to want to generate major uncertainty or instability” with the approval of the project of law of revocation.

Morales is in an uncomfortable situation, after the referendum of the region of Santa Cruz, fortress of the opposition, that Sunday approved by 85% its statute of independent government, an example that will be followed in the next weeks by the departments of Beni, Pando and Tarija.

Referendum in Santa Cruz, the richest department of Bolivia, caused that the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, said Thursday in Caracas that his government “will not remain with arms crossed”, if damage to that country becomes and alerted that “there it could begin what the Che Guevara said: ' a Vietnam, two Vietnames, three Vietnames in America Latina' ”.

Before being approved the law of referendos, Morals called to a dialogue with the competing prefects as of Monday, to deactivate the political crisis, without still it has received answer. It was own the Morals that in last December, in the middle of the turbulence by the approval of a constitution project that did not count on the approval of the opponents, proposed that its mandate was put into play and the one of the prefects.

The figure of referendo revocatory presidential is not contemplated in the present Constitution, but even so the House of Representatives, with pro-government majority, approved the norm that slept five months before the Senate dusted Thursday when the country lives a different conjuncture.

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ebear