Civil resistance, return to the Republic, and having a government of unity to end the dictatorship in Bolivia

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The triumph of the Bolivian people who succeeded in getting the dictator to resign, has become a crisis. The dictator left but not the dictatorship who continues controlling the country. The government that was supposed to be of transition towards democracy, is but a weak and challenged temporary government. New elections that were supposed to be free and fair are but more of the same, ensuring the dictatorship’s win with an opposition that continues to be functional, as part of the impunity, and business as usual status quo. There is extreme fear, indignation, and insecurity, there is a health crisis, and social, economic, and political crises. Bolivians can only recover the path to freedom by reactivating their civil resistance to go back to the Republic with a government of national unity that will stop the dictatorship.

The betrayal to the mandate of transitioning towards democracy, demands going back to civil resistance. The on-going national crises can only be dealt with by returning to the Republic. The dictatorship’s continuity is the return of the dictator and the perpetuation of the dictatorship based on a “bogus legal-constitutional system” and on a “territorial criminal control system” that have turned Bolivia into a narco-state.

Eight months after Evo Morales’ resignation, in Bolivia there are still none of the essential components of democracy: 1. There is no respect for “human rights and fundamental individual freedoms” because there are still politically persecuted and exiled based on legal rules for impunity fallaciously applied as amnesty. 2. There is no “rule of law” because the government continues to abide by a fraudulent constitution of the so-called plurinational state that supplanted with counterfeiting, force and violence the Constitution of the Republic of Bolivia. 3. There will not be “free and fair elections” because the concept of “universal suffrage” is not applied since “there is no equality” among citizens. 4. There isn’t a “regime of plurality of political parties and organizations” because the next election will be conducted using solely the voters’ registration the dictatorship’s system accepts. 5. There is no “separation and independence of the branches of government” because all of them are controlled by the dictatorship through officials it can manipulate and through a spurious legal-constitutional apparatus.

What was supposed to be a government of transition is but a fragile temporary government subjected to an intense and well-oiled international campaign to delegitimize it, operated by Castrochavism to benefit the fugitive dictator. The spectacular start of President Jeanine Añez tenure, marked by the Bolivian peoples’ hope to regain freedom and democracy, was shattered by agreements and covenants made with the dictatorship that left her subjected to the legislative, the judges, and the entire dictatorial system because she did not restore the Republic and illegitimated herself when she decided to be a candidate in the elections in which she was supposed to be a guarantor and not a candidate. Some people were changed, but not the system and Bolivia went from having a dictatorship with a functional opposition to having a government functional to the dictatorship.

Conducting elections under a dictatorship is not democracy. Universal suffrage was annulled by the dictatorship’s constitution and laws. The voters’ registration is the same with which Morales committed fraud, the judges on the highest benches are the same as those who perverted the course of justice and ruled that “Morales had the human right to indefinitely be a candidate”. The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS in Spanish) is the political party with which Morales committed crime and flagrant electoral fraud, material and ideological falsification, used counterfeited documentation, and was not disqualified as an accessory to crime.

Using the dictatorship’s constitution President Añez included herself as a candidate to the presidency, something forbidden in the Constitution of the Republic that does not allow candidacy for two consecutive terms. The opposition’s candidates vie amongst themselves for a second place in the first round of elections and thus to win in the second round, with the hope of getting the “useful vote” that is fallaciously argued as the “lesser of all evils”, all of these while everything points to the dictatorship being able to win in the first round.

The Coronavirus pandemic aggravates the situation with quarantines, confinements, and the liquidation of the economy in a country with over 60% of informal self-employment. The health crisis of the pandemic has been turned into an electoral campaign issue with disastrous results. The dictatorial corruption system produces great scandals, the actors are the same and it is a time-bomb due to the absolute lack of transparency worth billions.

Under this scenario, the people return to civil resistance as the only way to reiterate the unfulfilled mandate of the President so that she may fulfill it by restoring the Republic, acknowledging the validity of the Republic’s Constitution of 1967 with the amendments included in 1994, to put together a government of national unity and to end the dictatorship.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

 

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