Give to Goni what is Goni's

By: Gisela Derpic - 15/12/2024

Guest columnist.
Share:     

Year 1994, first government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Time of democracy. Authentic. Imperfect. With human rights and effective guarantees, with independence of powers, plurality of thought and actors. With freedom. Democracy perfectible through political action on equal terms, an ordinary part of its course. Via the institutional resources provided by law. In the rule of law. Without fuss and paraphernalia.

Time of relentless attacks on democracy with persistent disqualifications of the political system, demanding perfection. Attacks in word and deed, for everything and nothing. Part of the landscape. Folklore. Annoying. Tolerated. Unpunished. Since the end of the military cycle in 1982, increasing in tone and intensity. Through all available means. In the mouths and pens of the detractors of what does not carry labels of “popular” and “revolutionary”, a seal of fidelity to utopia, that paradise of equality always turned into a hell of misery and oppression as demonstrated by concrete historical experiences.

A scenario of confirmation that for a large part of the fighters against the military dictatorships, democracy was not strategic. No. That their objective was not freedom but domination. No longer class domination, buried by the Berlin Wall when it fell. They had to invent another one. And they invented it. Ethnic domination (racial, in good Spanish), in need of a dictatorship of a new kind. That of the 21st century. They were building it, taking advantage of the democracy that they would soon defenestrate. With the valuable help of the fanatics. Of the naive. With the indifference of others. Of us.

Potosí, second half of 2004. Seminar sponsored by popular organizations of the city to debate the three laws enacted that year —“damned” they were called— by the joint government of the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), the Free Bolivia Movement (MBL), the Civic Union of Solidarity (UCS) and the Tupac Katari Revolutionary Liberation Movement (Mrtkl): Capitalization (March 21), Popular Participation (April 20) and Educational Reform (July 7).

Directors of institutions linked to the Catholic Church, especially the Society of Jesus, were invited to this meeting. Their opposition to the “neoliberal government” headed by an “Americanized” MNR member, a private businessman: “el Goni”, was expected. Their condemnation of these laws was assured.

It was not so. It was clear to anyone that the Capitalization Law did not privatize or hand over public assets to transnationals. It put into effect a model for strengthening public companies through the creation of mixed-economy companies with their assets and rights and contributions from private investors, national and/or foreign, up to 50% of the shares, selected through international tenders.

It offered employees of companies to be capitalized the possibility of becoming shareholders by contributing their social benefits. It transferred free of charge the State's shares in mixed-economy companies to Bolivian citizens resident in the country and who had reached the age of majority by December 31, 1995. An unprecedented economic transformation.

The Popular Participation Law extended the jurisdiction of municipalities to municipal sections, making public institutions present throughout the country. It assigned them powers and resources for development in a deep decentralization never seen before. It recognized, as subjects of local development management in municipalities, pre-existing social actors, peasant and indigenous communities in rural areas and neighborhood associations in urban areas, granting them legal personality. An unprecedented political transformation.

The Education Reform Act incorporated bilingual education for the first time and recognized the participation of parents as stakeholders in school management. This was an unprecedented social transformation.

The country that emerged from the laws promulgated by “el Goni” was another one. With many lights and some shadows. Without having been recognized its merits by the beneficiaries. By the “thinkers.” The lie prevailed against it.

The fruits of these laws were squandered and perverted by the project of misery and oppression that was built thanks to the defection of a blind and fearful middle class. The one that made a chain to turn the hole and the country into a prison. A project useful to the prebendary and criminal circles of power. Those who use the putrid judicial cudgel to condemn those they envy and fear. Like “al Goni”.

Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada deserves recognition for his great contribution to the country. Politically and economically. To its democracy and its insertion in the challenging times of the “third wave.” It is a debt that must be settled especially by those who worked with and thanks to him. High dignitaries of State and members of the technocracy. Let them break their condemnable silence. Unless, of course, they are already dead.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».