Bolivia victim of the altercation between the dictator-in-chief and the sitting dictator

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 06/11/2024

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The recent episodes of wrangling and brawls encouraged by Evo Morales and Luis Arce has paralyzed Bolivia for the past 21 days with road blockades, several dead and injured, material losses, and damages exceeding 2 billion U.S. dollars (more than 5% of its Gross Domestic Product), and with grievous consequences for Bolivian peoples. It is the wrangling between Evo Morales the Dictator-In-Chief, and Luis Arce the Sitting Dictator, co-authors of 19 years of control of power and of the establishment of one of the 21st Century Socialism dictatorships that has taken Bolivia to turn into a Narco-State, endure a crisis that today takes this nation towards its total downfall and the misery seen in Cuba and Venezuela.

Today in Bolivia, there are political persecutions, over 300 political prisoners, and nearly 12,000 exiles. Members of the regime, starting with Evo Morales and Luis Arce enjoy shameful impunity, and there is judicialized repression, torture, and imprisonment for anyone who truly opposes the regime. There is State-Terrorism with Castrochavist intervention and the coca harvesters and cocaine producer federations led by Morales, have converted their criminal activities into a political party known as the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS in Spanish). The regime; commandeered the acronym of a traditional right-wing party (reason why the party’s color is blue and not red), has heavily burdened the country with hyper-debt, killed-off the wealth of natural gas, squandered the strategic reserves of gas, caused the disappearance of U.S. dollars, an is embezzling the retirement funds of the people. All of these are part of the “achievements” of Morales and Arce.

Bolivians now live in a situation of helplessness, just as in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua because the system and its operators are the same; Cubans are in charge of Arce’s security and Venezuelans of Morales. They have surrendered Bolivia’s mechanisms for internal security, intelligence, personal identification, education, health, foreign affairs and more to Cuba’s dictatorship -directly- under Venezuelan coverage. They have surrendered strategic resources of lithium, uranium, and others to Russia and China, and by Cuban direction have converted Bolivia into a military base of Iran and terrorism. They are Evo and Lucho, as they used to be called when they were partners.

When Evo Morales was caught committing in-flagrant electoral fraud and other crimes in 2019 and resigned, a lawful succession government that was also supposed to be of transition was established under the command of Senator Jeanine Añez. But Añez’s government kept in-place the counterfeited Constitution of the Plurinational State because it allowed her to be a legitimate electoral presidential candidate while being the sitting President. Her obligation was to subject herself to the Constitution of the Republic of Bolivia that -coincidentally- prevented her to be an electoral presidential candidate, reason why she made the mistake of keeping the dictatorial system in place with its judges and tribunals who recognized her as the President to afterwards disavow, prosecute and imprison her. The interim president Añez, was -therefore- not of transition because “the dictator was ousted, but not the dictatorship” and because she kept the dictatorial system in-place and granted impunity to Morales as well as Luis Arce.

For the elections held on 18 October of 2020, the functional opposition was careful enough to divide into 9 candidates the option of the over 70% popular rejection of the dictatorship and Evo Morales from Fernandez/Kirchner’s Argentina chose Luis Arce as his candidate of his MAS party. Days before the elections several functional candidates withdrew from the race and despite the polls only giving Arce a near 30% of voter’s electoral preference, Arce appeared winning with a 55.11% preference in the first round. Details omitted were that the opposition did NOT perform any electoral controls, the same voters’ registry and the regime’s electoral officials were kept, and before a third part of the official vote count was even done, both the members of the opposition and President Añez recognized Evo Morales’ party as the winner.

On 8 November of 2020, Luis Arce was sworn-in as the Head of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, placed a gag on all complaints of fraud, and the next day Evo Morales stunningly returned to the country and was welcomed by who had been his former Minister of Economy for over 12 years and by whom he had placed as president. Immediately thereafter the regime placed its system to work and all legal charges and prosecutions against Evo Morales were annulled, and revoked. Morales’ impunity on cases of corruption, bloody massacres, narcotics’ trafficking, sexual abuse of underage girls, pedophilia, statutory rape, and more was consecrated. Evo Morales remained as the Dictator-In-Chief and Arce as the Sitting Dictator under the leadership of the chieftain now called “el jefazo.”

The quarreling between Morales and Arce is for control of; the State’s apparatus that they manipulate as the greatest employer of the country, customs as a source of corruption and support to narcotics’ trafficking, the importation of gasoline and diesel indispensable for the production of cocaine and a source of corruption for judges and tribunals of their judicial. This impasse must be solved as the 2025 elections under dictatorship is nearing and both wranglers want to be candidates, reason why Arce has started using the State’s apparatus and its judges against Morales and Morales in-turn has mobilized the coca/cocaine producer apparatus and the paramilitary against Arce who sustains himself with the institutional apparatus of the Plurinational State that includes the military and the police.

The situation in Bolivia is an altercation between the chieftain Evo Morales and his disciple Luis Arce who wants to remain in power. An altercation between accomplices who dispute who will be in charge of a criminal organization they present to the world as political. They are calamitously tied and if either of these two wins; dictatorship, narco-State, and crisis will continue.

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

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

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