By IANS
Sucre (Bolivia) : At least three people have been killed and more than 130 injured in this southern Bolivian city in three days’ of violent protests against the government’s move to redraft the country’s statute, Spanish news agency EFE reported Monday.
According to National Police chief Gen Miguel Vasquez, a police officer was lynched early Sunday by a mob while two protesters were killed during the day.
Protests since August against government’s refusal to shift the administrative capital from La Paz to Sucre culminated Sunday when the ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) approved of a draft constitution in an assembly session without the presence of the opposition.
While Sucre officially remains the capital of this Andean nation of nearly 10 million people and the home of its Supreme Court, the legislative and executive branches are based in La Paz.
Meanwhile, President Evo Morales, in a televised address, called on the citizens to maintain calm and respect the constitution.
Morales blamed “criminal groups” for the disturbances in Sucre and confirmed the ratification of the draft constitution.
Without speaking much about the deaths, the president called for an “urgent and impartial” investigation to determine who was responsible for the killings.
Earlier in the day, Deputy Social Movements Coordination Minister Sacha Llorenti had blamed the violence on Sucre residents and on the opposition led by former conservative President Jorge Quiroga.
The draft was approved on first debate by 136 of the 138 assembly members present, but an article-by-article vote was still to be held.
According to the Bolivian constitution, the entire text of the draft must first be approved before the delegates vote on the individual articles.
Morales’s MAS party holds 137 of the assembly’s 255 seats after having won 50.7 percent of the vote in last year’s general elections.
The opposition rejected the assembly’s actions and decried Morales for pushing the document through without its presence.
After the draft constitution’s approval, opposition alliance leader Quiroga said the assembly’s actions had been a “shameful dramatization”.
“Approval of the constitution at a barracks, among MAS members, is going to last as long as the decrees of Luis Garcia Meza,” Quiroga said, referring to the man who was Bolivia’s dictator from 1980 to 1981.