The bill's approval last Saturday in the Chamber of Deputies put an end to Santa Cruz's 36-day indefinite strike. Nov. 29, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@boliviaprensa

La Paz, December 1 (RHC)-- Bolivian senators have approved legislation that calls for the National Census to avoid the Constitutional Committee's procedure and enter directly into the consideration of the plenary.

The bill was approved during the Eighteenth Ordinary Session of the Senate.  The initiative is called Law for the Application of the Results of the Population and Housing Census in the Financial and Electoral Areas.

The Executive Branch will carry out the new distribution of tax co-participation resources as of September 2024, based on the official population data of the Census to be issued by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

In addition, the INE will send to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal the official population data of the Customer to prepare the bill for the distribution of seats, according to Article 146 Paragraphs V, VI, and VII of the Political Constitution of the State and the Electoral Legislation in force, which would be applied in the next General Elections in the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The recent approval in the Chamber of Deputies with a two-thirds vote ended Santa Cruz indefinite strike that lasted 36 days.  The strike resulted in the deaths of at least four people, dozens of human rights violations and economic losses totaling over one billion dollars.

According to the Bolivian Constitution, the Census that determines the distribution of resources among the country's regions must be carried out every ten years.  It was initially scheduled for November 16, 2022, since the last one was in 2012.

However, the Government postponed it to 2024 for technical reasons.  The opposition movement came to accept the postponement of the date after weeks of conflict, but demanded a law to set the date.