REUTERS/ President Evo Morales nationalized four power companies, including a subsidiary of France's GDF Suez. "We're here ... to nationalize all the hydroelectric plants that were owned by the state before, to comply with the new constitution of the Bolivian state. Basic services cannot be a private business. We're recovering the energy, the light, for all Bolivians," proclaimed Morales. He announced that 80% of electricity generation was now state owned and total government control would occur. "It's the state's obligation to compensate investors for their assets ... We made an effort to reach an agreement with the private, multinational companies, but they were unwilling to reach an accord," said Morales. Calling the takeovers "one of the biggest achievements of the cultural revolution," a state official told AFP that Bolivia's state power company was privatized in the 1990s and sold to "neoliberal capitalists for the price of a dead chicken."
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