Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
June 19, 2020
(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The Bolivian nation is victim of a political, social, and economic crisis, further aggravated by the Coronavirus that is taking it to the point of confrontation, misery, and the dictator’s come back. Dictator Evo Morales, resigned but the dictatorship still holds power through the legal constitutional structure that was put in place by force, a structure that guarantees him impunity and grants him authority without responsibility. In Bolivia, the dictator was ousted but not the dictatorship and there is neither transition, nor democracy. To end the dictatorship and regain democracy, we must go back to the “rule of law” with the Republic of Bolivia.
The so-called Plurinational State’s constitution is not Bolivian, it is a model and a text imposed by Chavez and Castro’s (Castrochavism) transnational group for the indefinite permanence of Evo Morales in power. It originates with “October’s Agenda” following a coup d’état and it was applied with the counterfeiting done to existing legislation addressing the need for constitutional reform, dated 8 of August of 2002, law 2631, that in turn deceitfully introduced legislation for the total reform of the Constitution, something which was strictly prohibited. The Republic of Bolivia’s Constitution, in its Article 230 allows only “partial reforms” in other words, only “amendments” to the Constitution. So, by imposing the “total reform” by way of the “Constituent Assembly”, law 2631 counterfeits not only the existing law addressing the need for change and was not envisioned to be used in this deceitful way, but it adulterates and supplants the very text of the Constitution.
The Constituent Assembly -inadmissible in the Constitution- was convened by Evo Morales through Law 3460. It began usurping functions and a year after it was set up, following a massacre at La Calancha, was moved to a military garrison in the city of Oruro in spite of the fact that its term of existence had legally expired, -it was already ceased for exceeding the term for which it was convened. Through law 3941, promulgated on 21 October of 2008, congress ascribed to itself the rights of the citizenry and through one other act of usurpation, empowered itself “to make necessary adjustments” to the text of the Constitution submitted by the Constituent Assembly. In this way, Evo Morales’ constitution was drafted by Castrochavism’ s Spaniard attorneys in the city of La Paz.
This blatant abuse could have been stopped at the National Senate where, in 2008, the opposition was majority, but instead they agreed and approved Law 3941 to forge the text. As it was, while the people, civic leadership, and Governors from Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, Pando and the leaders from La Paz, Oruro, and Potosi were defending the Constitution and The Republic, the “functional opposition” proclaimed the “new constitution” through which the “continuous reelection of Evo Morales was permitted” was immediately applicable and that it was “an instrument of unity for the Bolivian people”. This fallacy gave Morales impunity for the massacres at El Porvenir, Cochabamba, Las Americas Hotel, the “terrorism” cases, the repression with assassinations, persecution, political prisoners and exiles.
The 7th of February of 2009, a date in which they imposed the Plurinational State, is the date whereon the dictatorship in Bolivia was institutionalized. It supplants the Constitution of 1967, amended in 1994, and disavows the Republic of Bolivia. It changes the name of the branches of the Republic in order to void and again staff them, thus ensuring the control of power to make Bolivia a narco-state. It imposes elements of confrontation to wreck the “Bolivian Nation”, eliminates the universal suffrage by making disappear the citizens’ equality and it establishes dictatorial mechanisms to hold power with a discourse of revindications. Nothing more than an extension of Cuba and Venezuela’s constitutions.
The Plurinational Constitution is VOID OF FULL FLEDGED RIGHT by mandate of Article 31 of the Republic of Bolivia’s constitution that orders: “VOID ARE THE ACTS OF THOSE WHO USURP FUNCTIONS THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR, AS WELL AS THE ACTS OF THOSE WHO HAVE JURISDICTION OR EMPOWERMENT THAT DOES NOT COME FROM THE LAW”.
This condition of nullity is effective as soon as the dictatorial acts of force that motivated and sustained them cease. According to jurisprudence, the existing constitution in Bolivia today is that one from 1967/94 and the President is in the obligation to so declare it by a Presidential Decree.
The Bolivian peoples’ mandate to the Interim President is THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY and such transition starts by ceasing the dictatorship’s usurper legal constitutional framework and going back to the REPUBLIC OF BOLIVIA. This is how the dictatorial state ends. Until such a time and way, the “Rule of Law” is regained, the government is but the continuation of the dictatorial regime because it acts under the rules of the dictatorship and elections will be nothing more that another act of the “vote-catching dictatorship”.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy
Published in Spanish by Infobae.com Sunday, June 14, 2020
Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.