GLOBAL COLUMN© BY TED CORDOVA

Bolivia's daring democratic recovery

Bolivia's president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada -Goni as he is popularly known- is implementing an imaginative policy to face such cronic social problems as poverty and the emergence of potential narco-terrorism. Dialogue instead of bullets, economic development instead of civil war; a US Dollar based economy instead of the weak, fickle inflation-risky Bolivian peso, are some initial basic measures as he starts his second constitutional period of five years. The first one in the nineties was only four.

After years of unstability and inept governments, Bolivian new democracy is already a positive experience of two uninterrupted decades.

Bolivia is staging a process of consolidation of democracy and modernization under Goni's free market program of modernization of the Republic in the frame of a Global world economy.

Bolivia, geographically the heart of South America, is regarded as an important "bridge" between the Andes ridge and the Amazon basin. It's also a connection between Mercosur and the Andean community both largest regional economic integration grups in Latin America, with a population of almost half a billion.

Long higways and a raiload linking the Atlantic coast to the Pacific will crisscross Bolivian territory.

Furthermore, Bolivia is building the infraestructre to become an important provider of natural gas (lpg) which will be exported even to California, thru ducts overpassing the gigantic Andes mountains.

Pumped to tankers from Peruvian or most possible, Chilean ports on the Pacific, Bolivian gas will become anessential energy producer in the global framework.

For landlocked Bolivia, this gas operation will confirm its "maritime condition" and access to the Pacific.

BIP