Bolivia ends 2021 strained in a still indebted democracy

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The tension, which successive electoral processes have failed to dissipate, continues to hinder the coexistence between the national power recovered by the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) and the minority and fragmented opposition in some regional governments, two right-wing alliances and loud citizen groups.

The democratic order installed in 1982 after a long cycle of military dictatorships and prolonged by the MAS, which came to power in 2006, was interrupted by the October 2019 crisis, when Evo Morales failed to consolidate his 4th consecutive electoral victory, faced protests for alleged fraud and was ousted and replaced by the interim government of Jeanine Áñez.

MAS’ return to power, again through elections in November 2020, restored institutional order but failed to repair the damage left by the “transition” year, including the trail of massacres for which victims are demanding justice, human rights violations, economic hardship and the Covid-19 pandemic disaster.

“With the government of Luis Arce, formal democracy returned to Bolivia, but after his first year in office this democracy is more a field of tensions than a scenario of agreements and solutions,” said sociologist Vicente Guardia, professor at the Public University of El Alto.

The tension “could be explained as a matter of mutual rejection, namely with the ruling party on one side and the opposition on the other denying the democratic nature of the other, denying themselves the possibility of doing something in agreement with the other,” he said.

WHAT DEMOCRACY?

Guardia said that while there is consensus that Bolivia lives a formal democracy, it is also clear that a great disagreement exists when it comes to defining what happened in the transition year after Morales’ ousting, from November 2019 through November 2020.

For some, the coup that toppled Evo Morales in November 2019 meant the restitution of democracy. On one side, the sectors that encouraged Áñez’s takeover as president in response to Morales’ “fraud,” proclaiming it as the end of the “autocracy” or even the “dictatorship” exercised by the MAS in the name of the indigenous and peasant majorities.

Others believe that there was no fraud, but rather that democracy was violated in November 2019 and restored a year later. Here the MAS, the social movements that support it and, with increasing presence, the interim government’s victims’ representatives stand out.

“For the right-wing opposition, there is no other plan than to defeat the MAS, and for the MAS the electorate is sufficient argument to seek the annihilation of its rivals, in a confrontational scenario that transcends electoral opportunities and manifests itself in every important decision, law, decree or appointment of officials that needs to be taken,” the analyst summarized.

He stated that this political scenario has led the MAS to try to dominate with its institutional strength and its street calls, leaving to the opposition only the scenario of protests, such as strikes, blockades and street rallies, in addition to modest initiatives in the regional governments it controls.

CELEBRATION

In this context, Guardia recalled the controversy unleashed in February by an Arce decree that declared October 18, the date of the last elections in which the MAS sealed its return to power, “Day of the Recovery of Intercultural Democracy throughout the territory of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.”

The decree argued that the forced resignation of Morales, on November 10, 2019, represented “the interruption of 37 years of continuous democracy, prompting a constitutional rupture based on sectors of the Bolivian Police and the Armed Forces.”

The 37 years mentioned are those elapsed between October 10, 1982, when leftist Hernán Siles Zuazo assumed the first democratic government that closed 18 years of military dictatorships and opened the period of constitutional stability.

The decree reaffirmed that with the MAS victory in the October 18, 2020 elections “the constitutional democratic order was reestablished and with it the de facto and authoritarian regime” of Áñez was left behind.

But “declaring October 18 as “day of the recovery of democracy” is an affront to the citizenship that conquered democracy on October 10, 1982 and consolidated it on February 21, 2016. Evo Morales committed fraud on October 20, 2019, but failed to impose his autocracy,” protested ex-President Carlos Mesa (2003-2005), a candidate successively defeated by Morales and current President Arce.

The dates refer in succession to the restitution of democracy after the military dictatorships, a referendum that rejected Morales’ indefinite reelection and the triumph of the indigenous leader in 2019, which Mesa denounced as rigged.

Ex-civic leader Luis Fernando Camacho, another of the 2019 coup leaders and also defeated by the MAS, said that the fall of Morales marked the recovery of democracy, and “it is the true day of the recovery of democracy”.

TENSIONS, JUSTICE

The last month of 2021 was marked by the arrest of former Potosi (south) civic leader Marco Pumari, one more incident in the long process triggering the greatest tensions: the attempts of the ruling party (government, movements and victims) to prosecute the protagonists of the 2019 coup, for the same insurrection and for the massacres and human rights violations to which it gave rise.

Throughout the year, incidents of tension succeeded one another virtually incessantly, such as:

In January, the opposition and entrepreneurs reject a government agreement with carriers to extend the release of bank debt payments, as a relief due to the pandemic.

In late January, the government takes advantage of the arrival of a first batch of Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19 to denounce the Áñez administration’s “poor response” to the pandemic.

On February 2, the government decrees that October 18 of each year will be celebrated as “Day for the Recovery of Democracy,” which the opposition rejects as representing only the MAS’ perspective.

On March 7, the ruling party and the opposition share victories and both declare themselves winners in regional elections. Ex-President Añez fails to be elected governor of her department, Beni (northeast).

On March 13, ex-President Áñez is arrested and placed in pre-trial detention until at least February 2022, accused of the 2019 coup. In the ensuing months, Áñez loses at least 6 appeals to annul the proceedings or exchange jail for house arrest, while the opposition launches an intense denunciation campaign against the government.

On July 9, parliament receives from the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor’s Office the first 3 lawsuits against Áñez, for administrative and economic crimes.

On August 6, Independence Day, the opposition obstructs with whistles and shouts virtually all of President Arce’s formal speech in parliament.

On August 17, the Group of Experts of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights presents a report that establishes that in the first days after the 2019 coup, the Áñez government committed massacres and even summary executions of protesters. The government applauds the report in general and the opposition highlights the lack of judicial independence.

August: The government enacts an anti-money laundering law, which is rejected with two national strikes (October 11 and November 8) by retailers and civic committees that call for Arce’s resignation. The government denounces subversion and repeals the anti-money laundering law.

On August 20, the Prosecutor’s Office submits to the Supreme Court its first request for the prosecution of Áñez and her former Ministers for the 2019 massacres.

On November 8, the opposition again blocks Arce in parliament, causing much of the president’s speech on the government’s first year from being heard.

In November, the Prosecutor’s Office fails to summon prominent opposition figures such as Camacho and the current civic leader of Santa Cruz Rómulo Calvo to testify on charges of sedition.

From November 23 to 29, Morales leads a massive pro-government march to La Paz in support of Arce and against “coup attempts.” Morales emerges as the greatest national political leader and the opposition states that he is the true ruler.

On December 9, civic member Pumari is detained pending trial, leading to the mobilization of civic committees and other right-wing groups for his release.