Daily life, Bolivian politics, etc

Some updates about my daily life. Work is progressing fine and I am thinking about some further ideas for research. I hope they are fruitful enough to work on them seriously :).

After university I went to the nearby lake to skate for a few hours (two). Now I can skate faster, finally I have the "skating" feeling. When you feel you are gliding over the floor and you stop thinking about how to move your feet around. More speed brings harder falls, but Alexey is cautious and well equipped. No big wounds to regret!!

Next week I am going for short holidays to Dubrovnik, for about nine days. And just before it I will pick up my damaged camera. Expect many new pictures on my blog!

Today I was expecting that some of the Bolivian bloggers would post a thoughtful post about the political situation in Bolivia. I will have to wait a few days until they digest the events. The main event is that today (or yesterday?) was the deadline for the presentation of the political parties for the upcoming election in December. There is much room for analysis because within hours before the deadline, alliances were made and broken. You can interpret this sudden reorganization of political parties ideologically... Well not really, you change your ideology just hours before the deadline? No. The most likely situation is that bargaining got pretty tough between the presidential candidates/parties and the allies.

Currently most of the parties started with a presidential candidate and later they forged alliances with different sectors of society to fill the remaining posts (vicepresident, etc). In this way, they expected to capture the fragmented Bolivian vote. I would like to know the secret deals that they cut in order to capture attractive candidates with a lot of politic capital (read votes). Because of this competition some candidates freely exchanged political parties when they had better conditions.

As a result some organizations(FEJUVE) and parties(FRENTE AMPLIO) could not fulfill the requirements needed to run for presidency. I am worried that no representatives of FEJUVE are allied with a political party. It means that when people in El Alto are unhappy again they cannot act in the parliament and they will block again. I hope I am mistaken.

Some analysts think that such composed presidential formulas will bring about a very inefficient government that will not solve the fundamental problems. Maybe it is true. But on the other hand, these last years we see a need for consensus. A way to achieve it is an effective alliance in political parties. Let's hope we will see them battling in the parliament only.

Not only bad news in Bolivia. Some friends in Cochabamba organized a free software congress. They were successful in bringing together the different free software groups in Bolivia. I have posted some links to blog coverage in almadadenoche, since I am too lazy to copy you can read it there.