By Katu Arkonada on June 28, 2023
Evo Morales, photo: efe
The popular victory of October 2020, one year after the coup, without any doubt recovered democracy, but not the process of change prior to the 2019 coup d’état.
Luis Arce was faced with a difficult panorama, leaving behind the coup, without economic reserves, and in the middle of a pandemic, and it can be said that his government, now that he is halfway through his term, is a government of light and dark. Although he recovered the country economically, governing a country is not the same as directing a Ministry of Economy, and so far he has not been able to carry out the great strategic projects of the country, biodiesel, pharmaceuticals, basic chemicals, which were aimed at the industrialization of Bolivia.
Suspicions and accusations
Furthermore, the government of Arce and Choquehuanca is being overshadowed by suspicions of corruption at intermediate levels, which has even led the former Ministers of the previous government, Carlos Romero (Government) and Teresa Morales (Productive Development and Financial Intelligence) to file a complaint against the President of the state oil company Armin Dorgathen, for economic damage to the State due to having bought diesel at an overprice from the large storage companies Trafigura and Vitol, which due to all the allegations of corruption they have, are called the “Odebrecht of hydrocarbons”. In Mexico, these allegations even led to the suspension of Vitol’s operations.
For his part, Evo Morales has been working to maintain control and cohesion of the Movement Towards Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP), which is the electoral acronym under which both Evo himself and Luis Arce have been presidents. A part of the leadership has been co-opted by the government in a prebendalist manner, but in the rank and file the majority affirmation is: “we are not well, with Evo we were better off”.
With this objective, as well as that of beginning to prepare for the presidential elections of 2025, the Congress of MAS-IPSP has been called for October 3-4-5 in Lauca Ñ, Tropic of Cochabamba, the headquarters of the 6 Federations of the Tropic, a union confederation that has already proclaimed Evo Morales as its presidential candidate for 2025.
The three scenarios
In view of this situation, Luis Arce, who has been invited to the Congress, has three scenarios: the first and most logical would be to announce that he is not going to run for reelection, since the process must continue under the indigenous leadership that marks history, and ask to be allowed to govern and finish as best as possible his mandate; the second scenario would be to try to dispute with Evo Morales the political leadership of MAS-IPSP, and therefore the presidential candidacy, but this would be a political mistake similar to an Alberto Fernandez trying to dispute the political leadership of the leader of the Kirchnerist space Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The third scenario, besides a political mistake, would imply a political suicide, and this is if Luis Arce listens to some voices whispering in his ear, to run with another acronym (it could be that of the old party of Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz PS-1, of which Luis Arce is a militant). But this third scenario, with a divided vote, could even facilitate the return of the right wing.
Faced with this situation of division within the popular movement, the State is promoting an anti-evismo, with the aim of damaging the personal image, without realizing not only that in the face of a fratricidal war the right wing could return, but also that they are paving the way so that when this mandate ends in 2025, the right wing will return, and the MAS-IPSP returns to the State, there will be a political revenge against those who have not been able to live up to the process of change with indigenous leadership and the Quechua principle of Ama Sua (do not steal) will be applied to them, paying for the deviation in the principles of the Bolivian process of change.
The Bolivian sociologist, founder of FLACSO, René Zavaleta, spoke of dual power to refer to the rupture, from below, of the natural unity of power of the modern State. For his part, another sociologist, the Marxist Indianist Álvaro García Linera, spoke of a catastrophic standoff to refer to the period 2006-2008 where the government led by Evo had a part of the political power, but the right wing had another part of it, the economic and media power.
Saving all distances, today we have a catastrophic tie that is not allowing the recovery of the Bolivian process of change and transformation, and a dual power that is expressed in the government of Luis Arce, but also in the political leadership of the process whose leader is Evo Morales. The tie-breaker today can only come through Evo Morales and the Political Instrument, and not to understand this is to go against the history of struggle with indigenous roots in Bolivia.
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US