Former Mayor of the city of La Paz
17 October 2021
Government, without leadership or trust
Seeing President Arce as the main agitator of a MAS concentration, calling for street confrontations, portrays well the stature of a leadership that, without even fully addressing the health and economic crises, has chosen to maintain and exacerbate polarization. If in 11 months the Government has not assumed the mandate of the polls –i.e. pandemic, reactivation, and pacification– it is very difficult to encourage it to pay attention to the pending democratic agenda: the fight against impunity and corruption, the construction of institutions, the comprehensive reform of justice, the eradication of sexist violence, and the protection of the environment.
55% of the votes are trickling down, and citizen mistrust is growing, putting every Government decision into suspicion, presuming the authoritarian guilt of its representatives. That is why the bill on “illicit profits” was rejected, withdrawn this Thursday, the 14th, despite the fact that it had to be approved “yes or yes until mid-November.”
It was a project that was not only unconstitutional and suspicious but also blatantly probative of the authoritarian vision of the Government. As the media reported, the project violated the privacy and property of all people, put freedom at risk by eliminating the presumption of innocence and the right to defense and, to consummate the citizen defenselessness, it abolished jurisdictional control over prosecutors, who had become employees of the Financial System Supervision Authority (ASFI).
There was not even the urgency to comply with international agreements since, as the lawyer Ramiro Orias demonstrated, the Bolivian State continues to fail to comply with the “recommendations” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which requires, in order to effectively fight against the laundering of illicit money, a solid, suitable, and independent justice administration system, impervious not only to the corruption of ill-gotten great fortunes, but also to the manipulation of authoritarian governments that use an alleged fight against crime to invade individual freedom, control society and persecute political opposition.
The fact is that a Government that uses the Police Force to assault the private property of the coca growers of La Paz and turn it over to an unrepresentative side is no longer trustworthy, while “officially” ignoring and disregarding a demanding and peaceful march of indigenous peoples from the East. It is difficult to trust a government that, while denying a true Judicial Reform, lives comfortably with a genuflecting judicial leadership, where sentences and records disappear, or where “rulings” are issued and communicated to the desire and taste of each authoritarian government.
Surely the FATF experts, who will arrive in the country at the end of November, will be shocked by our “national capacities to fight crime,” when they verify that judges and prosecutors lack competence and independence and that the ASFI officials, from the Ministry of Finance or the Comptroller’s Office, are improvised militants of the ruling party without any professional background.
With leadership and confidence adrift, the horizon is clouded, not so much for the Government, but for the country that, approaching 2 years after the outbreak of the crisis, cannot find the way out. The main responsibility lies with the Government, but also in the opposition there are signs of a resurgence of dangerous visions, embodied in the “leadership” of some civic Santa Cruz citizens or their Governor, who are threatening to finish off “the rags” and “the crows” in a “2nd round”, forgetting that we lost the 1st round with 37 deaths, hundreds of wounded and the entire country unhinged.
We cannot accept that the opposition leadership is assumed by reactionary minds, perfectly functional to the MAS and that cause great harm to Santa Cruz; and therefore discourages seeing democratic personalities mixed with retrograde people. After 39 years of democratic life, it is no longer swallowable that “unity” is built by swallowing toads and snakes, which then definitively indigestible alternative projects.
Indeed, by digging trenches, we will not get out of the hole either, but the construction of a different opposition involves reestablishing the horizon we are aiming for, which is none other than that of inclusion, popular leadership, democratic tolerance, the rule of law, the sovereignty of the vote, and the production of sustainable wealth.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/10/gobierno-sin-liderazgo-ni-confianza.html
