Journalist and Political Analyst
12 January 2022
Release Jeanine Añez, now!
“From her vulnerable position, Jeanine Añez speaks her truth. Fear does not silence her.”
Roberto Laserna on twitter.
One day before the tenth month of her abusive preventive detention* Jeanine Añez Chávez affirmed: “I know that there is an order to kill me and day by day they are moving forward… I am kidnapped in this prison; I have had many health problems. I have to be under observation; I have many mental gaps… I will probably die in this prison, but the good thing is that I am at peace with my God and my death will end the thirst for revenge and hatred of Evo and his elite. I forgive them and hope they find peace one day. Of course, they will never be able to erase from history that I was the Constitutional President of Bolivia, after the resignation of a fraudulent President.”
These and other statements appear in the extensive interview that the La Paz newspaper Página Siete (La Paz 09.01.2022) conducted with the former President. They are written in her own handwriting. In them, the former acting Constitutional President clarifies doubts and leaves others to talk about them ”before international organizations, when they come to listen to me.” So far they have not listened to her, although the “country needs to understand what happened during the time I took office as President.” She did clarify that they had ”many meetings with different sectors to pacify the country… many ministers made agreements and arrangements for it and it was the right thing to do because Bolivia required peace…” She points out that many of these agreements were not directly coordinated with her, because “they were hard times and of great tension, where many politicians, people, Ministers, authorities acted independently.”
On the subject, she points out that some took advantage of her inexperience and good faith since they believed that everything could be solved by talking and giving in, but she also highlights that “It must be recalled that the MAS had 2/3 in the Assembly. To reach those agreements, we had to give up many things requested by the social movements…”
Página Siete asked her if she thinks she is in prison as part of a MAS strategy to deny the electoral fraud of 2019, clean up the image of the party and former President Evo Morales. Her response was blunt: ”Evo Morales needs to whitewash his image, trying to invent a sordid story of a coup d’état, when the entire country, the world, and international organizations know that what he did was a shameful and blatant electoral fraud… All the situations of violence, terrorist acts such as surrounding the city of La Paz and not allowing food to enter, trying to blow up the Senkata plant, burning police units, private houses, etc., we owe it to his ambition to perpetuate himself in power. That’s where the thirst for revenge comes from. He could not carry out the plan to leave, generate violence, generate a power vacuum, and return as the savior…”
Jeanine Añez adds ”His plans failed, since he came across a woman, me, the one who disrupted his plans. He does not forgive her for that, since he is an abuser of women and must control them and he could not do it with me or with Eva Copa (president of the National Assembly), since it was necessary to pacify the country. He is known for mistreating ladies, young ladies, and girls, and today he mistreats me, the former President of Bolivia. If to avoid a civil war, the one that the MAS was looking for, to pacify the country and give Bolivians peace of mind at a time of so much violence, it resulted in prison for me, that’s what I got. I do not evade responsibilities, I would do it again. I fulfilled my patriotic duty, I have a clear conscience. We confronted the violence and called for new elections.”
In my capacity as a citizen, I stand in solidarity, once again and always, with the former president and I agree with her: the wounded pride of Morales, who resigned and then fled, wants Bolivia and the world to forget that he himself is the origin of everything the democratic mess that Bolivia is experiencing. First, he did not respect the 2016 Referendum, which said NO to his fourth candidacy because it violated Article 168 of the State Political Constitution, which only allows two continuous ones. Second, he wants us to forget the premeditated fraud staged in the 2019 elections to perpetuate himself in power.
Morales wants to erase those origins. And he does so by recycling his leader’s populist practice as head of his party, the Movement Towards Socialism. From there he intends to impose absolute lies as truths, criminalizes justice, judicializes politics and constructs hate speech.
The face of Jeanine Añez already reflects the relentless traces of the suffering to which her executioners subject her, who have turned the administration of justice in Bolivia into a vicious model of administration of justice; with a Prosecutor’s Office at the service of former [President] Morales, of the Executive with Luis Arce President and Iván Lima Minister of Injustices. Thus, they violate human and constitutional rights and procedural transparency in the most arbitrary manner.
The former President faces two processes: Coup d’état I for terrorism, sedition, and conspiracy, about which they have not been able to prove anything. So, they invented a Coup d’état II for resolutions contrary to the Constitution and the laws and non-fulfillment of duties.
Along with Jeanine Añez, there are other civilians from her Government, military, and police officers who are also prisoners, with the same aberrations and procedural abuses.
For her, for all, democratic Bolivia demands justice and freedom.
* 10.03.2021, Trinidad, Beni, and later transferred to La Paz, held incommunicado.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2022/01/nunca-podran-borrar-de-la-historia-que.html
