Opinion: Bolivia is increasingly chaotic due to the drift of Arce’s economic model

By Mauricio Rios Garcia

A large part of the problems Luis Arce Catacora faces in exercising power can be explained by the difficulty in obtaining financing to try to keep afloat the economic model he designed and which Evo Morales imposed on Bolivia from the first day of May 2006, with the nationalization of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB).

That was a problem that Morales also dragged along at least since 2013, when the economy began to slow down systematically, and even more so when in 2014, the prices of the raw materials that the country typically exports plummeted.

Faced with this problem, to maintain the powers and competencies that the State was gaining over the economy as both Morales and Arce could spend hand over fist, a machinery of perks and permanent corruption was established with the various violent interest groups that protected them from the beginning.

However, by the time the bad times came, the Arce model had already shown advanced exhaustion, and instead of reforming it, they preferred to leave their future in the hands of fate.

That commodity prices would eventually rebound as if by magic, but this never happened.

What was done after the fall of raw materials in 2014 was not to cut public spending, which would have been ideal.

Still, instead, they tried to solve the model by increasing the public debt in the same way they had done since 2006 when Morales and Arce as its Treasury holder, took advantage of the huge write-offs that countries like Spain granted Bolivia, but now even this source of financing has been exhausted.

There are no resources to continue handing out and continue concentrating power.

THE ARCE REGIME GIVES IN TO THE VIOLENT DEMAND OF THE MINERS

The signs of this serious problem that Arce cannot handle are tough to count, much less calculate in terms of duration and intensity.

Still, this week the miners of the state mining company Huanuni surprised the country with the violent takeover of the headquarters of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB).

In this way, the Huanuni miners, who used to be allies of Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), accused Juan Carlos Huarachi, the main leader of the COB, of being a traitor and servile to the Arce government since he had not communicated the contents and scope of Supreme Decree No. 4783.

Among other aspects, Huanuni demands the abrogation of this decree, which establishes that part of the profits of the public companies is transferred to the General Treasury of the Nation (TGN) and that the management of workers’ pensions, currently in the hands of the Pension Fund Administrators (AFP) of the Spanish bank BBVA and the Swiss insurance company Zurich, be nationalized and transferred to the Gestora Pública until May 2023.

Huanuni, together with other interest groups that also belong to the COB, such as the urban and rural teachers who accompanied them, considers that there are reasons to distrust the public administration of the workers’ pensions “because they are going to spend it”, and that, therefore, part of the board of directors of the Gestora Pública should be made up of their representatives.

The miners protested for two days, blocking the streets of downtown La Paz and using sticks of dynamite in the face of tear gas from the police who tried to disperse them.

However, they finally managed to set up a meeting with the Arce regime in which they reached an agreement, not for the abrogation but for the repeal of the decree.

In other words, what the Huanuni miners agreed with Arce after two days of violent protest without arrests was to temporarily paralyze data migration to the Gestora Pública.

THE PARADOX WITH THE STRIKE CALLED BY THE PRO SANTA CRUZ COMMITTEE

Curiously, even though the Arce regime guaranteed that the population and housing census would be carried out in November of this year, several weeks ago, it decided to postpone it, provoking the general annoyance of authorities, civic leaders, opinion leaders, and citizens in general, who have already organized two civic strikes, one of 24 hours and the other of 48 hours.

The argument used by the Arce regime is that there are no technical means for the census to be carried out before 2024, nor for the results of the data collection process to be presented before 2026.

Again, the problem is that Luis Arce and Evo Morales, and who knows if also David Choquehuanca, intend to present their candidacy in the 2025 elections.

If the census is carried out in 2023, the truth will be revealed regarding the extent of the manipulation of the electoral roll with which Morales intended to be reelected indefinitely in 2019.

The configuration that the Legislative Assembly would have today, and finally, the allocation of resources that there would have to be in the country according to aspects such as population growth that, unquestionably, would have to strengthen Santa Cruz after the 2012 census, which was also a failure.

In this way, and given that Arce has decided to disregard the demands of Santa Cruz, the largest and most productive department of the country is preparing again to go on a new civic strike this coming Tuesday, October 22, with the caveat that the measure will be indefinite.

The strike will not be suspended as long as Supreme Decree N° 4760, which establishes that the census will be carried out in 2024, is not repealed.

In the meantime, Rómulo Calvo, president of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee, has lost his right to work by judicial determination because he arrived late to previous detention for unscheduled maintenance of the plane of the state-owned Boliviana de Aviación (BoA) in which he was traveling back.

In addition, Calvo’s restrictions were extended to 24 hours under house arrest with police escort.

The civic leader pointed out that such judicial determinations constitute judicial persecution to sabotage the civic strike that he must lead but will be carried out anyway.

In short, Bolivia finds itself adrift and with an increasingly intense and deep crisis due to the lack of resources and financing of Arce’s economic model, an increasingly marked and unbridgeable division in the MAS, an absolute absence on the part of the opposition legislators called to attend to their work, and increasingly unfair, clumsy, abusive and dishonest attention to the demands of the citizenship by the socialist regime in the country.

With information from Gaceta