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Bolivians Reject Postponement of Elections with Massive Mobilizations

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

28 July 2020: Organizations and trade unions from diverse sectors in Bolivia joined the call to mobilize today, on July 28, against the postponement of the general elections in Bolivia. The call for nationwide mobilizations was given by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia’s trade union center, and the Pact of Unity, a national alliance of grassroots organizations in Bolivia.

On July 23, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), which is under the direct control of the coup-installed government, postponed the elections scheduled for September 6 to October 18, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. The following day, the COB and the Pact of Unity released a video announcing their rejection of the coup regime’s decision to further suspend the elections and called on citizens and workers to mobilize to demand the restoration of democracy and compliance with the decision to hold elections on September 6.

Indigenous, peasant, rural and women organizations have organized massive demonstrations in the capital city La Paz as well as in El Alto, Potosi, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, among others cities, under the banner of “For Democracy, Health and Life”. The organizations have also urged to abide by public health protocol and wear face masks, gloves and carry hand sanitizer.

The Coordinator of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba and the Special Federation of Intercultural Communities and Agricultural Producers of San Julian also rejected the suspension of elections and demanded compliance with the electoral schedule. They warned that if the decision to delay elections is not reversed, they will carry out indefinite mobilizations across the country.

The United Federation of Rural Workers announced that they will embark on a general strike and maintain roadblocks in all 20 provinces of the La Paz department for an indefinite period of time.

The organizations criticized the TSE for its complicity in the attempts by the country’s right-wing leaders to delay the democratic elections. They denounced that the TSE does not have the authority to repeal Law 1304, which set the date of the elections for September 6. They also denounced that the postponement is a way to extend the de-facto president Jeanine Áñez’s time in office. The social and union leaders also condemned the political persecution against MAS members.

Former president Evo Morales, his party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), and the MAS presidential candidate, Luis Arce, among other leaders, denounced the suspension of elections as a coup against democracy and reminded that any change in the date must be approved by the country’s parliament.

“The announcement of the Supreme Electoral Court is an abuse and an arbitrariness. It violates laws 1266, 1297 and 1304 that establish that the TSE may set the election date no later than September 6, 2020. This unilateral and arbitrary decision, surpassing the Plurinational Legislative Assembly exposes the members to eventual responsibility,” said the MAS in a statement.

Former president Morales in a tweet on July 27 said that “an administrative resolution of the Supreme Electoral Court cannot be above the law or above the Political Constitution of the State, especially if it talks about postponing general elections, suspended twice with the approval of the Legislative Assembly.”

Earlier last week, on July 24, Morales also alerted that the right-wing political parties were trying to seize power in municipality and departmental governments. “The right-wing involved in the coup aims to extend itself, outlaw MAS, and assault the state. They are now planning coups in departmental and municipal governments, among them the department of Pando,” tweeted Morales.

Bolivia’s de-facto government led by far-right Jeanine Áñez, which seized power following the civic-military coup against Morales in November 2019, has postponed the general elections three times since March this year. Social movements have condemned Áñez for holding on to power in pursuit of her imperialist and neoliberal policies.

(Peoples Dispatch, an international media organization with the mission of highlighting voices from people’s movements and organizations across the globe.)

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Bolivia’s Ongoing Coup

Oliver Vargas

27 July 2020: When the Bolivian government’s electoral authorities nervously announced to the nation that elections were to be suspended for the third time in four months, the fear instilled in many seemed to suddenly melt away. It was replaced by a fury of a country whose working-class districts and rural areas were led to believe that free and fair elections, on September 6th, would provide a peaceful route of the country’s dramatic economic collapse.

The hope was that these elections would mark the end of authoritarian rule at the hands of an unelected regime, who stand as proof of how the US rules its ‘backyard’ and the ease with which neoliberalism dispenses with its purported values when facing down those who call for national sovereignty and public control of natural resources.

When elections were suspended last week Bolivia’s indigenous and trade union leaders – most of whom have charges hanging over them – announced mobilisations on a scale far outstripping the mostly disorganised resistance to the November coup. The coming week will see those social movements launch what is probably a final fight for democracy; if they are defeated, a brutal persecution awaits.

The endless postponement of the presidential elections hasn’t been met with much criticism from those in the English-speaking media and NGO world, many of whom praised the coup as a triumph of democracy that would usher in fair elections. Of course, even The New York Times now admits that initial allegations of fraud which legitimated the ouster of Evo Morales were false.

At the time, liberal journalists such as Yascha Mounk wrote in glowing terms in The Atlantic about the “real prospect of free elections” and Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth naively spoke about how “the most important thing now in this transitional moment for Bolivia is ensuring… fundamental rights, including to protest peacefully and to vote in transparent, competitive, and fair elections.”

Those aware of what really happened in November 2019 have always known that the current regime never had any intention of instituting democracy. The government, led by the self-declared President Jeanine Añez, was borne out of a military coup that celebrated its triumph by burning the indigenous wiphala flag in public squares, followed by the killings of indigenous pro-democracy protesters in Sacaba (Cochabamba), and Senkata (El Alto), which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have labelled as massacres.

The persecution which followed that initial repression has been just as fierce. Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) presidential candidate, Luis Arce, has been pursued with politically-motivated charges, and now the regime is pressuring the electoral council to ban him from standing altogether. Almost all union and indigenous leaders have similar charges being brought against them, mostly for ‘sedition’.

The station I work at – Radio Kawsachun Coca – has had to labour under this climate. My colleague Landert Marca was arrested a few months ago while reporting on an event held by the trade unions from the tropico of Cochabamba. Our radio signal has been jammed or taken altogether in numerous areas, and our offices in the city of Cochabamba torched by far-right gangs a day before the coup.

Jeanine Añez’s government declared itself to be an ‘interim’ one whose only task was organising elections. But they had other priorities. Its first changes were to foreign policy, ripping up Evo Morales’ integrationist and anti-colonial approach and immediately re-establishing diplomatic ties with the US and Israel, as well as turning its back on Latin American integration through institutions like UNASUR.

The State Department got their delegate into the presidential palace to help manage this endless ‘transition.’ Erick Foronda, chief advisor to the US embassy in Bolivia for twenty-five years was appointed as private secretary for President Añez. Foronda’s leading role in managing the country can be seen in the fact that Añez’s own ministers bemoan the manner in which he overruled government departments and cut off their access to the President.

The government has also prioritised economic ‘reforms’ over holding elections. The IMF has returned to the country with a huge $327 million loan. To accommodate this, the regime has paralysed the large state development projects that had been unveiled by Evo Morales. The plans to process the country’s lithium supplies within Bolivia itself have been suspended. The contract with the German company ACISA which gave Bolivia’s state firm the majority share was quickly scrapped after the coup. The processing plants that Morales opened have also had their gates shut since his ousting.

The huge Urea and Ammonia plant opened in the Cochabamba region, a jewel in the crown of the state gas company, has suffered the same fate. The new overground tram system for the city of Cochabamba was almost complete, all the stops and tracks had been built and the carriages manufactured. All that remained was paying the Chilean border agency to release them from customs and transport them to the city. The regime refused to pay and now the Chilean agency is selling the carriages at auction.

The deliberate sabotage of Bolivia’s economic development has been a key plank of the new government. This policy has had dramatic consequences for the ability of the country to weather the economic impact of Covid-19. 38% of the country has lost the entirety of their income, while 52% have lost a part of their income. The deliberate retreat of the state has meant that the 90% who are suffering during quarantine haven’t received any income support, the only gesture has been a one-off universal payment of US$70. In April, to last four months of lockdown.

In the face of this desperate situation, voters were looking forward to ending the eight month coup experiment at the ballot box in September. Polls show that MAS is on course for a first-round victory, with Añez trailing behind in a distant third. It might have been a peaceful end to a violent period. However, determined to cling on to power whatever the cost, the regime is using Covid-19 as an excuse to postpone those elections. Claiming that elections would spread the virus, even as public transport and most of the economy re-opens, they have pushed for further delays.

October 18th is the new date. But civil society has lost faith that it will be respected. In a highly organised manner, trade unions, indigenous groups and neighbourhood associations in the working-class districts have formally announced indefinite mobilisations to demand the right to vote.

In November, the indigenous groups affiliated to the MAS were mobilised, blocking roads in rural areas and some joining protests in the cities. But the movement is much broader now. The national trade union federation (COB) is mobilising all of its member unions at a national level for a mass protest on Tuesday at which further actions will be announced. They didn’t mobilise at all in November. In the indigenous city of El Alto, adjoining La Paz, the federation of neighbourhood councils (FEJUVE) is mobilising in every district. In November, the leaders of that federation were jailed and forced into hiding, meaning anti-coup protests were largely spontaneous. Now they have a systematic approach.

The movement is also strengthened by the fact that demands are not just about democracy, but also against the neoliberal economic measures that have affected every part of society. When announcing the demonstrations, COB leader, Juan Carlos Huarachi, explained: “We need a democratically-elected government so as to discuss new policies, not just for social issues, but also for economic issues… in eight months we’ve seen the collapse of our country. Sadly, this is the reality, with recipes from the IMF, by blackmailing the people, by blackmailing the legislature.”

The Bolivian resistance movement is powerful, but that’s no guarantee of victory. The two massacres in November are proof that the government is prepared to see blood in the streets, and support from Western powers has been key to propping up a regime that is languishing at sixteen percent in the polls.

Bolivia shows how the ideologues of the free market are more than happy to toss out any semblance of democratic rule if they feel threatened. It also exposes the true character of interventions by governments like the US and UK in international affairs to ‘promote democracy.’

If the rest of us want to ensure that their coup in Bolivia doesn’t result in the end of democracy for good, those demanding free, fair and immediate elections will need all of our solidarity.

(Oliver Vargas is a Bolivian journalist working for Radio Kawsachun Coca in the Cochabamba region.)

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‘We Will Coup Whoever We Want’: Elon Musk and the Overthrow of Democracy in Bolivia

Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano

On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote:

“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Musk refers here to the coup against President Evo Morales Ayma, who was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. Morales had just won an election for a term that was to have begun in January 2020. Even if there was a challenge against that election, Morales’ term should rightfully have continued through November and December of 2019. Instead, the Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivia’s far right and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and is now in Argentina.

At that time, the “evidence” of fraud was offered by the far right and by a “preliminary report” by the Organization of American States; only after Morales was removed from office was there grudging acknowledgment by the liberal media that there was in fact no evidence of fraud. It was too late for Bolivia, which has been condemned to a dangerous government that has suspended democracy in the country.

Lithium Coup

Over his 14 years in office, Morales fought to use the wealth of Bolivia for the Bolivian people, who saw—after centuries of oppression—remarkable advances in their basic needs. Literacy rates rose and hunger rates dropped. The use of Bolivia’s wealth to advance the interests of the people rather than North American multinational corporations was an abomination to the U.S. embassy in La Paz, which had egged on the worst elements of the military and the far right to overthrow the government. This is just what happened in November 2019.

Musk’s admission, however intemperate, is at least honest. His company Tesla has long wanted access at a low price to the large lithium deposits in Bolivia; lithium is a key ingredient for batteries. Earlier this year, Musk and his company revealed that they wanted to build a Tesla factory in Brazil, which would be supplied by lithium from Bolivia; when we wrote about that we called our report “Elon Musk Is Acting Like a Neo-Conquistador for South America’s Lithium.” Everything we wrote there is condensed in his new tweet: the arrogance toward the political life of other countries, and the greed toward resources that people like Musk think are their entitlement.

Musk went on to delete his tweet. He then said, “we get our lithium from Australia”; this will not settle the issue, since eyebrows are being raised in Australia regarding the environmental damage from lithium mining.

Suspension of Democracy

After Morales was removed, an insignificant far-right politician named Jeanine Áñez set aside the constitutional process and seized power. She showed the character of her politics when she signed a presidential decree on November 15, 2019, that gave the military the right to do whatever it wanted; even her allies found this to be too far and repealed it on November 28.

Arrests and intimidation of activists from the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—the party of Morales—began in November 2019 and still continue. On July 7, 2020, seven U.S. senators published a statement that said, “We are increasingly concerned by the growing number of human rights violations and curtailments of civil liberties by the interim government of Bolivia.” “Without a change in course by the interim government,” the senators wrote,

“we fear that basic civil rights in Bolivia will be further eroded and the legitimacy of the crucial upcoming elections will be put at risk.”

There’s no need to worry about that, since the government of Áñez seems unwilling to hold an election. By all polls, Áñez looks likely to be defeated in the general elections. A recent poll by El Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica (CELAG) says that Áñez will get a mere 13.3 percent, far behind the Movement for Socialism’s Luis Arce (41.9 percent) and the center right’s Carlos Mesa (26.8 percent). The election was supposed to have taken place in May, but it was rescheduled for September 6; it has now been postponed once more, this time to October 18. Bolivia would not have had an elected government for an entire year.

The CELAG study shows that 9 out of 10 Bolivians have seen their incomes decline due to the coronavirus recession. Because of this—and of the attack by this government on the MAS—65.2 percent of Bolivians have a negative appraisal of Áñez. It is important to note that due to the positive policies of Morales’ MAS, there is widespread support for a socialist orientation; 64.1 percent of Bolivians support taxes against the rich, and Bolivians in general support the resource socialism of the MAS and Morales.

CoronaShock and Bolivia

The government of Áñez has been utterly incompetent regarding the coronavirus. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in this country of 11 million people is 66,456; since testing is low, the number is likely much higher.

Musk returns to our story. Earlier this year, on March 31, Bolivia’s Foreign Minister Karen Longaric wrote an obsequious letter to Musk asking him about the “offer of cooperation posted by you regarding ventilators ready to be dispatched to countries where they are needed the most.” Longaric said, “If it is not possible to send it to Bolivia, we can arrange its receipt in Miami, FL. and transport them from there as quickly as possible.” No such ventilators came.

Instead, the government bought ventilators from a Spanish supplier for $27,000 for each of the 170 devices; Bolivian producers had said they could supply ventilators for $1,000 per unit. The health minister in the Áñez government—Marcelo Navajas—was arrested for this scandal.

Morales

Evo Morales read Musk’s tweet about the coup in Bolivia and responded:

Elon Musk, the owner of the largest electric car company, says about the coup in Bolivia: ‘We will coup whoever we want.’ Another proof that the coup was about Bolivian lithium; at the cost of two massacres. We will always defend our resources!

The reference to the massacres is important. In November, from Mexico City, Morales watched as the government of Áñez let loose the dogs of war against the people of Bolivia from Cochabamba to El Alto. “They are killing my brothers and sisters,” Morales said at a press conference. “This is the kind of thing the old military dictatorships used to do.” It is the toxic character of the government of Áñez, backed fully by the U.S. government and Elon Musk.

Protests across Bolivia began on July 27 for the restoration of democracy.

(Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. Alejandro Bejarano is a Bolivian musician, documentarian, and social media manager.)