Carlos Sanchez Berzain Abogado | Estadista | Político | Politólogo
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
Publicado May 6, 2020
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Bolivian people’s civil resistance achieved the departure of Evo Morales who resigned on 10 November of last year. He ascended into power for five years, without the right of reelection and remained there for thirteen (13) years, nine (9) months, and eighteen (18) consecutive days as part of the 21st Century Socialism or Castrochavism. He eliminated the Republic and democracy, massacred, imprisoned, exiled, institutionalized corruption and built a narco-state. With his resignation and flight the dictator fell, but not the dictatorship, because his constitution, laws, governmental institutions, members of the Assembly, magistrates, prosecutors, and a whole entire system -as a governmental and criminal structure- are still binding and remain very much in-place, something that makes it virtually impossible to have democracy and go through a transition.
Chavez and Castro built 21st century dictatorships in the Americas, saved the one from Cuba and installed the ones in Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and elsewhere, dismantling democratic institutions until they were completely supplanted. They updated the Castroist model, created Castrochavism, so they could indefinitely perpetuate themselves in governments and with the assistance of a “functional opposition” they organized “vote-catching” dictatorships in which “people vote but do not elect”.
The almost 14-years of Evo Morales’ regime was not a Bolivian undertaking. Instead, it was the strict application of the Castroist Chavist model that, with a populist discourse and an indigenous façade, intervened in Bolivia and confronted Bolivians against Bolivians. In order to end democracy, he destroyed the Republic of Bolivia and supplanted it with a Plurinational State based on a Castro Chavist concept and structure. They falsified a Constituent Assembly, perpetrated bloody massacres, took political prisoners, sent thousands into exile, and committed fraud.
The Plurinational State’s so-called “constitution” is the cornerstone of the dictatorship. The branches of the government, the competencies, the disguise and simulation of there being division and independence in governmental institutions, the retroactive application of the law, the weakening of the recourses that protect basic individual rights and other violations of human rights are a replica of what is happening in Cuba and Venezuela’s dictatorial institutions and are ample proof.
The dictatorship in Bolivia is based on a counterfeited constitution drafted by foreign intervention, with dictatorial and discriminatory laws that are applied by despicable judges and prosecutors who are subservient to the regime along with legislators who legislate and enforce dictatorial laws that are validated by a Constitutional Tribunal who repeatedly perverts the course of justice and continues to be in existence with impunity and with which the existence of the “rule of law” is impossible. Despicable laws range from electoral guidelines that have eliminated the existence of universal, equal, and secret suffrage, the increase in the illicit coca-leaf harvesting destined by law to narcotics’ production, to laws granting impunity and privileges.
In Bolivia, besides the “dictatorship’s legal-constitutional structure”, one other “territorial-criminal structure of corruption and narcotics’ trafficking” was created, one which controls important areas of the national territory as “free zones” or truly “mini-republics of cocaine” who, not coincidentally, are the “political base” of Evo Morales. The primary sample is the tropical Chapare area of Cochabamba that is controlled by six (6) federations of coca-leaf harvesters’ unions whose leader is Evo Morales. These areas do not recognize the authority of the interim government who, with a good intention it called “pacification”, has been under an -increasingly widespread- suspicion of having “impunity agreements with the dictatorship”.
The facts demonstrate that in Bolivia today, the “bold and brazen boss Evo Morales”, the leadership, the implementers, and beneficiaries as the novo-rich of the dictatorship, all go unpunished. No prosecution of Evo Morales and his accomplices moves forward, no amnesty decrees have been abolished, decrees that allow Evo Morales to continue covering up his crimes and with which he accused and still finger-points his victims, and there continues to be persecuted and exiled. The dictatorship’s constitution and laws have been enacted to guarantee impunity and the two-thirds of the Legislative Assembly, the dictatorship’s prosecutors and judges make sure that is the way it will be so.
The electoral process continues to proceed without a dictator but with a dictatorship, and the dictatorship’s MAS (Movement Towards Socialism in Spanish) political party which should have been disqualified, running with a candidate that should have been prosecuted, is now leading in the polls, and is rushing to a result that at least will guarantee to maintain the dictatorship, the power, and the impunity.
In Bolivia there is neither democracy, nor transition. There is no longer a dictator, yet there is still a dictatorship and while the Plurinational State’s constitution is kept and the Republic is not restored, a transition will be impossible. The preservation of the dictatorship is just about secured and the return of the dictator is a real threat.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.
Published in Spanish by Infobae.com May 3th, 2020
Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.