Carlos Sanchez Berzain Abogado | Estadista | Político | Politólogo
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
July 3
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) An unequal fight is going on today in the Americas that is being fought by the people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia struggling to exit from the dictatorships created and controlled by the Castroist regime from Cuba, whose people have never stopped fighting against the tyranny since almost sixty years ago.
The fight by Venezuela’s people is the most noteworthy and evident due to; the importance of the country who with its money and oil funded the re-creation of the Castroist craziness, and the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis that its dictator Maduro has taken it to. The Nicaraguan fight, almost ignored in these past few years, has turned nowadays into a crisis due to the decisive presence of the people on the streets protesting the brutal repression and crimes committed by its dictators Ortega/Murillo.
Bolivia’s dictatorship uses a strategy to try to pass unnoticed and to continue simulating the existence of a democracy there and the achievement of inexistent economic gains, just as Venezuela and Nicaragua did until they could no longer hide their crises. Dictator Evo Morales forces and deceives Bolivians with an electoral process that only is a series of crimes to perpetuate himself in power. In this context, and on the basis of the experiences endured by the people from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, I wish to send my compatriots the following message:
“Bolivia is under a dictatorship today. A look at the objective reality shows it to be so. There is no separation and independence of the branches of government because dictator Evo Morales controls all the power of the government, the Rule of Law is inexistent because the dictator has turned himself to be the undisputed law, there is political persecution and there is no freedom of the press. There are politicians who are persecuted, imprisoned, and exiled. There are NO chances of free, fair, and clean elections based on universal suffrage due to the control the regime exerts at every level, ranging from the people’s personal identification, their registration into the electoral system, the rigging of the electoral system, the appointing of electoral authorities, and the removal of any possibility of free political association.
Through a referendum on 21 February of 2016, Bolivia ordered Evo Morales; not to run again in forthcoming elections and to leave the government. As an act of defiance and disobedience of the people’s mandate, the dictator placed himself above the law and above the will of the people and continued to pursue the Castroist Chavist agenda -of which he is a part of- replicating, once again, what had been done in 2008 by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, what had been done by the Ortega’s in Nicaragua, and what dictator Nicolas Maduro has just done in Venezuela. Morales, with his Constitutional Tribunal and those despicable judges, got a ruling that enables him to run in the 2019 elections and that simply shows and proves but one more of so many crimes he has committed against our homeland, against Bolivians, and against freedom in our country.
This is why Bolivia, today, has one only objective which is to regain the homeland. This means to recover democracy and recover the Republic. To recover the conditions for democracy so that there may be free elections.
Reasons why, from my exile, I wish to make three proposals to the Bolivian people:
First, we must recognize the dictator for what he is. Point him for his corruption, for the economic crisis that he is taking Bolivia into, the same pathway of Cuba and Venezuela. Point him for the violations, abuse, and excesses that he commits that are crimes, because Bolivia’s dictatorship is one more of those Transnational Organized Crime’s dictatorships gathered around Venezuela and Cuba. Point him for the narcotics’ trafficking that has caused that Bolivia nowadays be known as a “narco-state” within the international community.
Second, what I propose is a project for national unity that has nothing to do with ideology, political parties, personal, regional, or sectorial ambitions. It is about doing what was done in the decade of the seventies to regain democracy; regain democracy first and afterwards, vie for the power of government. To form an allegiance for democracy that will enable the majority of Bolivians to be against dictatorship and defeat it.
Third, I propose for everyone to have an awareness there are no elections in a dictatorship and that whomever plays along in the elections’ games of Evo Morales for 2019, the only thing they are doing is that they are being used as pawns for the dictatorship and that when the dictatorship falls, such “functional opposition” will also fall with the dictatorship.
The message is very clear, there are no elections in a dictatorship and we Bolivians must unite in order to regain our homeland that is now captive”
Published in Spanish by Diario las Américas and Infobae on Sunday July 1st, 2018