New Bolivian President

The bolivian congress managed together enough members in Sucre to hold a session at 10pm to accept the resignation of Carlos Mesa, the non-acceptance of the presidency of Vaca Diez, and eventually to put Rodríguez Veltzé the president of the supreme court in to the presidency.

This solves the one problem of an extreme backlash of a potential Vaca presidency, and hopefully avoids the threatened military coup. There will be a new election called automatically to take place in a few months.

What happens next? The protests continue. They were never about pushing Mesa out of office, nor forcing new elections under the same corrupt rules. The central demand of real re-nationalization of natural gas and oil remains. The equally real and in many ways more important demand of a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution and bolivian political system will drive the protests forward.

The right wing will continue to push their autonomy measures, which really mean they will end up controlling any nationalized oil and gas wealth instead of letting it go to the central government in La Paz.

So, what happens tomorrow? More protests. I’d suspect at a less frenetic pace. The blockades will probably stay up preventing commerce. The question is now again, will the protesters be able to maintain the blockades, and if so, will the new president Rodriguez use lethal force open the highways.