20 October 2021
When there is no moral
Bolivia is not only experiencing a crisis of excessive State patronage and prebendalism, what we are looking at in the present is deeper than that, it is about the moral degradation of power due to the absence of ethics, due to the total loss of the values that guide daily coexistence. The efforts to maintain power, the anguish for it, have blinded the rulers, who live not to seek the common good, nor to meet the needs of the people, they live to accumulate, to deify themselves, and make us believe that they are the predestined ones to take us to the future, when in fact they have pushed us back. Power is blind, which is something that Evo Morales shows us every day by ordering the presidential delegate Arce Catacora to do whatever is necessary for the Jefaso (Boss) to return to power. The reality does not exist for Morales, he only looks at his own imagination of returning to the presidency; his followers, including the President, are in charge of covering the sun with a finger to tell the Supreme [Leader] that everything is going smoothly in that project.
They came to power in 2006 as bearers of new values, of the new man, they spoke about ethics, they talked about caring for mother earth, and the empowering of the indigenous people. In fifteen years, corruption is greater than in the past, respect for Mother Earth does not exist, extractive developmentalism is imposed; it is important to build roads in national parks to expand the agricultural frontier in favor of the coca growers: the current center of power, with all that that implies. The indigenous people were repressed and the “intercultural” [representatives], that is, the coca growers, took away their lands. The Constitutional Court is ordered to say that the Government of Jeanine Añez was unconstitutional, when in fact two years ago that same Court ruled that the transitional government was fully constitutional; the tribunes in 2021 have not blushed when they erase with their elbow what they wrote with their hand when deciding that the Government of Añez was constitutional. It is because when there are no values, there can be no blush when you lie and falsify reality.
They fill their mouths talking about social inclusion, applauded by the international cooperation, when the country has 80% of informal employment; they express that the public administration is in the hands of popular sectors, they forget to say that, in the hands of union leaders, MAS leaders, neighborhood leaders with criminal records, none of them with the necessary expertise to handle the responsibilities of their positions. These leaderships, including that of the Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB), have been co-opted with exorbitant sums, but without having any idea in regards to public administration. As in the time of the agreed democracy, the public administration is chosen through a party-quota system, some leaders of the MAS or ministers are owners of many departments, among them those that have to do with the management of the land, which is handed over to the coca growers without embarrassment, stripping the indigenous peoples of their territory. Is that defending mother earth?
The moral degradation clearly shows how with sophisms they wanted us to believe that in the Zapata case there was no influence peddling, that in the Indigenous Fund there was no corruption but sacrifice in favor of the poorest, with sophisms they told us that the Draft [Law] for the Legitimation of Illicit Profits was to put Bolivia at the global forefront in the fight against illicit money laundering, when in fact the MAS governments are the ones who had a very soft hand to act against the coca-cocaine circuit, the one that originates in the Chapare.
But, the most publicized sophism by the power is the coup d’Etat, a self-serving hoax that is used to enable Evo Morales as a future candidate for the presidency. All of Bolivia saw him cry when he said goodbye to the country, crying accompanied by the tears of García Linera when he accepted that they had resigned from power. The hoax of all the resignations was put together by the MAS to leave the country in a power vacuum in 2019 that would incite the “people’s” petition for Morales to return to power. Their calculations failed; now, they are trying to correct their mistakes by resorting to the sophism of the coup d’État. They act that way because they don’t have a millimeter of ethics or shame.
The summary of what we see indicates that we are living in a time of moral degradation of power.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/carlos-toranzo-roca/2021/10/20/cuando-no-existe-moral-312664.html
