Meanwhile, the government has still given out very little information about the deal. It may be that we will never be told (in the 3rd world these agreements often have confidentiality clauses, but those countries usually don't have progressive governments).
I admit to feeling uncomfortable about the secrecy. This may be Bolivia's most important decision in a 50 year period and Bolivians fought long and hard in the "Gas Wars" for a better deal (actually, they fought under the slogan of leaders like Morales and Felipe Quispe, for nationalization). The public should feel they have some role in the decision and, above all, one can't build a long term movement without some degree of popular participation.
[In a global context, Wolfowitz, Blair and the G8 are making a big push on "transparency" over the *use* of petro/gas income by "developing" countries (the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI) and their are joined by Soros, Transparency International, etc.
Yet these groups carefully exclude calls for transparency and "civil society" participation in the assessment and approval process of contracts with private companies. 90% of 3rd world oil production remains nationalized and the push for such privatizing contracts (Production Sharing Agreements, which is what 100% of Bolivia production will still be subject to) is one of the "West"s highest priorites - so the World Bank and official finance agencies are usually key participants in these non-transparent contracts. They could improve the rules with one stroke of a pen.]
I won't cross post my comments on a sister list about the details we know so far about Bolivia (which were a bit more detailed than what I posted last week on pen-l). But I have just seen a blog of an energy analyst from the Open Center in Cochabamba which provides an assessment similar to mine on some of this (but Pen-l heard it first :-) )
[http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2006/11/bolivia-and-foreign-oil-companies-sign.html#comments]
Read the 3 comments as well.
Paul
Louis P. forwarded from Counterpunch:
Evo Morales' Complete Victory Over Big Oil
The Progress in Bolivia
By NEWTON GARVER
I have previously argued that Evo Morales might best be described as a
genius ......
