The 21st of February Bolivia once again defeated dictator Morales

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
february 27, 2018

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) In Bolivia, the 21st of February of 2016, the regime conducted a referendum to approve Evo Morales’ indefinite reelection with a YES, the same tactic carried out in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. The Bolivian electorate, however, said NO and that day was recorded in the chronicles of history as “21F”. What has transpired since then replicates what Hugo Chavez did after loosing his referendum of 2007. Evo Morales hatched a “despicable ruling” and his Constitutional Tribunal declared his human right to pursue and manipulate his “democratic” indefinite reelection. The 21^st of February of 2018, with an overwhelming national civic work stoppage and massive demonstrations of protest, BOLIVIA once again defeated the coca grower dictator, warning him to abide by the original NO of 21F.

The destruction of democracy in Bolivia is marked by the toppling of democratically elected President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada on 17 October of 2003, followed by the granting of “amnesty” to the conspirators and plotters who passed from being the culprits to become the accusers, witnesses, and judges of those who they had toppled. In 2004 they supplanted the Law of Need of Constitutional Reform to counterfeit the constitutional validity of a “Constituent Assembly”. Evo Morales was sworn to the presidency in January of 2006 for only one five-year term and with a specific constitutional prohibition of continuous reelection. He convened his constituent assembly and following a series of massacres, assassinations, imprisonments, exiles, and fraud, he eliminated the Republic of Bolivia and in 2009 established in its place the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

In the Plurinational State’s constitution his craftiness led to the inclusion of a clause whereby a President may be consecutively reelected once. Immediately thereafter Morales called for elections and in the same year, 2009, was sworn in as the Head of the Plurinational State. Thus, and dating back to 2009, the separation and Independence of the branches of government disappeared. Morales took control of the Legislative Branch and designated and subordinated all members of the Judicial and Electoral Branches. The “Rule of Law” disappeared through a series of “despicable rulings” that violate Human Rights, such as the ruling that allows for the “retroactivity of the law” in order to persecute the leadership of political opponents. The judicially mandated political persecution was now officially institutionalized.

Evo Morales was supposed to hand over the Presidency in January of 2011 but, with the creation of a Castroist Chavist Plurinational State (a copy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) he consecutively reelected himself for the first time in 2009 with the obligation to hand over the presidency in January of 2014. With his control of the Judicial Branch, however, he hatched a ruling using the flawed argument that “since the Plurinational State of Bolivia was created in 2009, that year’s election was his first, because his original election in 2005 to the extinct Republic of Bolivia does not count” and in 2014 was reelected consecutively for the second time for a third presidential term.

With a similar agenda already carried out in Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, as soon as he was sworn in for his third presidential term in 2014, Evo Morales declared the need of his indefinite reelection and with that in mind, called for a referendum election on 21 February of 2016. According to his estimates, this would be an easy victory especially when this referendum was taking place before the people began to feel an unavoidable and imminent economic crisis looming as a result of the corrupted narco-state government.

The defeat of the 21F referendum is for Evo Morales the loss of continuing to pursue any sign of simulation of democracy. It brought with it the generalized reaction of the people who, in a sustained and growing fashion and beyond political parties and beyond the figures of political party opposition with questionable independence from the regime, have made the compliance of the NO from the 21F a national objective, calling for “the restoration of democracy” and the “restitution of the Republic of Bolivia”.

Bolivian people have again defeated Evo Morales and his regime this recent 21 February of 2018. This defeat has been so overwhelming that the regime has even contrived the use of fake news on the judicialized political persecution against former President Sanchez de Lozada.

Evo Morales is seen by Bolivians as a dictator and head of a de-facto government that becomes more illegitimate with the passing of time, a government that has foreign intervention from Cuba and Venezuela. The regime’s efforts are focused on manipulating information, instilling fear in the population, pressuring and bribing sectorial, regional, and functional leaders to calm and demobilize the people and to collectively ascertain “United States imperialism as the foreign enemy” and “neo-liberalism and the right as internal enemy”.

By the Bolivian people’s decision, Evo Morales and his regime are but another of the Castroist Chavist dictatorships that are now falling apart.

Published in Spanish by Diario las Americas on Sunday February 25th, 2018

Translated from Spanish by: Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.