Thousands of leftist supporters of Bolivian President Evo Morales, including Indian groups, labor unions, and coca farmers, burnt furniture and official records in a state capitol demanding the resignation of a governor supporting conservative opposition. They also vowed to blockade highways leading into Cochabamba about 140 miles southeast of La Paz even as police failed to dislodge the protesters.

Pelting stones at the police and staving off the police, the protests injured 22 people, several of them journalists covering the event. Morales’s officials labeled the police action excessive and dismissed the state police commander barely two hours after he took office. Blaming the violence on “acts of repression” against “the social sectors” who were “demonstrating peacefully,” some officials even suggested that the Central government will take control of the state to stem the violence.

There has been increasing protests against Governor Manfred Reyes Villa who was a former presidential candidate and still considered a future candidate in national politics. Villa has publicly accused Morales of manipulating the rewriting Bolivia’s constitution demanding along with other conservatives that changes require a 2/3rd majority but Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism party want a simple majority.

Villa also demanded a second referendum so Bolivia’s nine states would get greater autonomy from Morales’s central government. Nationwide elections in July rejected this demand but continue to still divide the nation as four western highland states rejected the measure while four eastern states favored it.