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Clashes between opposition groups and government supporters aggravate the Bolivian conflict

2020-08-11T02:10:22.744Z


The civic committees of Santa Cruz, the wing most opposed to former President Evo Morales, threaten to "summon the people to reject mass violence."


An aerial view of the protests in El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz, in Bolivia, this Sunday.DAVID MERCADO / Reuters

The failure of the dialogue between the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the mining and peasant unions that oppose the postponement of the elections from September 6 to October 18 has put Bolivia on the brink of a new social conflict. Groups formed by young people from the middle classes who identify themselves as "non-indigenous" clashed over the weekend with groups of peasants and residents of popular sectors who, after having begun their mobilization with the banner of "elections now", have ended up calling for their resignation of the President of the Government, Jeanine Áñez.

These clashes are similar to those that, at the end of last year, preceded the departure of former President Evo Morales, only now their protagonists act the other way around: while the peasants and popular neighbors protest, the middle-class groups come out - along with the police or on your own — to face them. Fights with sticks and non-lethal explosives between these two groups have taken place this weekend in La Paz, Cochabamba and in the town of Samaipata, in the department of Santa Cruz. There were several minor injuries. In San Ignacio de Velasco, in the same area, a group of peasants detained for a few hours three young people who arrived in this town together with a group of activists from the civic committees from Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Luis Fernando Camacho, candidate for the presidency and leader of the 2019 demonstrations against Morales, has sent an open letter to President Áñez in which he urges her to discipline the unions, which are linked to the Movement for Socialism (MAS) of Morales. “If you show yourself to genuflect and submit to the MAS and do not fulfill your constitutional mission of providing security to Bolivians, and do not order the lifting of the blockades (...) I announce that I will be forced to summon the people

A few days ago the government threatened to use "everything it has" to clear the routes of the blockades, but so far it has only ordered military planes to fly over peasant concentrations. Surprisingly, Áñez called for a dialogue between institutions, social sectors and political parties last Sunday, which was not attended by the most relevant actors. At this meeting it was agreed to ratify October 18 as the "definitive and unpostponable" date of the elections.

The Minister of the Presidency, Yerko Núñez, set this Monday as the last deadline for a voluntary unblocking to take place. He warned that if any person loses their life in the "operations" of the Government, it will be "the entire responsibility of those who are mobilized and of the political party that is behind this."

Although the other parties blame Evo Morales and the MAS for the roadblocks, in reality the former president and his party are dealing with more radical social leaders who do not care about the electoral effects of the protests and do not want to back down until achieving the Áñez resignation from the presidency. Morales recommended not raising this lawsuit. "The leaders and the mobilized social bases must choose responsibly between the resignation of Áñez, which will further delay our return to democracy, or prompt elections with the guarantee of the United Nations," he tweeted on Sunday. Morales is asking that the blockades be suspended with the commitment of the electoral authorities, before international organizations, that the date will not be postponed again on the grounds of the health crisis. But his word so far has not been enough to calm the rank and file of his movement, which are furious at what has happened in recent months, among other things at the actions of anti-Masist shock groups, which are tolerated by the police.

The MAS believes that both Áñez and Camacho want to postpone the elections sine die because the favorite to win them is the candidate of the leftist party, Luis Arce, who could be seen in the second round with former president Carlos Mesa. A new postponement of the Electoral Court of the previously agreed date pushed this party to start a wave of protests, despite the risks of creating sources of contagion of the coronavirus. This initiative was widely repudiated by the middle classes. Social networks were filled with attacks against the MAS, which is accused of "crimes against humanity" for the arrest of tanker trucks carrying medicinal oxygen on the roads. This substance is produced mainly in Santa Cruz, so you must travel from there to other cities in the country. Government authorities have emphasized this aspect of the conflict; they warn that there is only a two-day supply of oxygen in the hospitals of La Paz.

The MAS affirms that the shortage of medical oxygen has existed for a long time and is due to the ineffectiveness of the Government and not to blockades. From social networks and the media, a drastic sanction is demanded against this party for "causing many deaths" with its measures. The Ministry of Justice has requested the prosecution of the union leaders, as well as Evo Morales, Luis Arce and his companion as a candidate for vice-presidency David Choquehuanca, although only the first has a legal link with the unions that are acting. The charges are for "genocide, terrorism, sedition, crimes against health, basic services, destruction of public decoration and crimes against the environment."

After the fall of Morales, last November, there was a power vacuum due to his decision to make the main parliamentary authorities of the MAS resign. In this context, the opposition parliamentarians at the time formed the Cabinet of Jeanine Áñez, which had to be in power for only six months to call elections. But the president became a candidate and then, with the arrival of the pandemic, the difficulty of holding the elections created incentives for the different political actors to make individual calculations about when it was convenient for them to hold the elections.


Source: elparis

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