(will delete if already diaried) Evo Morales the first indigenous President of Bolivia has come out victorious in a recall referendum. He garnered over 62% of the vote. Bolivians have said YES to democratic socialism!
Voters vigorously endorsed President Evo Morales on Sunday in a recall referendum he devised to try to break a political stalemate and revive his leftist crusade, partial unofficial results showed.
More than 62 percent of voters in this bitterly divided Andean nation ratified the mandate of Morales and his vice president, Alvaro Garcia, according to a private quick count of votes from 900 of the country's 22,700 polling stations.
The 53.7 percent by which Bolivia's first indigenous president won election in December 2005 had been the previous best electoral showing for a Bolivian leader.
Morales had proposed Sunday's recall in a bold gamble to topple governors who have frustrated his bid to redress historical inequities in favor of Bolivia's long-suppressed indigenous majority and extend his time in office.
This is a victory against the failed policies of neo-liberalism in Bolivia....
Morales speaks.
Capitalism wants to make us all uniform so that we turn into mere consumers. For the North there is only one development model, theirs. The uniform models of economic development are accompanied by processes of generalized acculturation to impose on us one single culture, one single fashion, one single way of thinking and of seeing things. To destroy a culture, to threaten the identity of a people, is the greatest damage that can be done to humanity.
Implement true asymmetric negotiations in favor of developing countries in which the developed countries make effective concessions.
· Respect the interests of developing countries without limiting their capacity to define and implement national policies in agriculture, industry and services.
· Effectively reduce the protectionist measures and subsidies of developed countries.[6]
· Insure that the right of developing countries to protect their infant industries, for as long as necessary, in the same manner that industrialized countries did in the past.
· Guarantee the right of developing countries to regulate and define their policies in the services sector, explicitly excluding basic services from the General Agreement on Trade in Services of the WTO.
· Limit the monopolies of large corporations on intellectual property, foster the transfer of technology and prohibit the patenting of all forms of life.
· Guarantee the countries’ food sovereignty, eliminating any limitation to the ability of the States to regulate food exports and imports.
· Adopt measures that contribute to limit consumerism, the wasting of natural resources, the elimination of greenhouse gases and the creation of waste that harms Mother Earth.
In the 21st century, a "Development round" can no longer be about "free trade", but it rather has to promote a kind of trade that contributes to the equilibrium between countries, regions and mother nature, establishing indicators that allow for an evaluation and correction of trade rules in terms of sustainable development.
We, the governments, have an enormous responsibility with our peoples. Agreements such as the ones in the WTO have to be widely known and debated by all citizens and not only by ministers, businessmen and "experts". We, the peoples of the world, have to stop being passive victims of these negotiations and turn into main actors of our present and future.