Bolivia
October 18 General Election
Mass demonstration in La
Paz, July 14, 2020, against the Áñez government. (TeleSUR)
The campaign is finally on for the long overdue
Bolivian
general election originally set for May 3, then
postponed three times
by the coup government of "interim president"
Jeanine
Áñez on the basis that the conditions did not
permit it going forward during the pandemic.
Finally, in the face of
massive street protests by the organized people
furious that their
right to elect a president and government of their
choosing continued
to be blocked, Áñez agreed to the demand of the
Plurinational Legislative Assembly that October 18
be guaranteed as the
date for the election with no further
postponements. Both chambers of
the Assembly are controlled by the Movement Toward
Socialism (MAS),
whose leader Evo Morales was prevented from
assuming the presidency
after being democratically re-elected last
October, by the
U.S.-orchestrated military coup that installed
Áñez in his place.
On
September 6, under the banner "Vamos a salir
adelante" ("We
will overcome"), MAS launched its campaign with a
large vehicle rally
in the city of Santa Cruz led by its presidential
candidate Luis Arce,
former Minister of the Economy under Evo Morales.
"We are beginning the
campaign to restore democracy and give the
Bolivian people economic,
political and social stability," Arce said. "This
caravan is endless.
The people of Bolivia are fed up with the
right-wing parties and want
to once again have a peaceful country for all
Bolivians, inclusive,
with economic stability, which only we guarantee."
Vice presidential
candidate and former Foreign Minister, David
Choquehuanca, kicked off
the campaign in the combative working class city
El Alto with an
ancestral Aymara ceremony. He said re-electing the
MAS would allow a
new stage in the transformation of Bolivia to go
forward, in which
mistakes made in the first stage will be corrected
and new leaders
promoted.
The U.S.-linked coup forces, themselves
far from united, have several candidates in the
running for president
and are scrambling to find the way to prolong
their illegitimate,
dictatorial rule. They have persecuted, jailed and
laid trumped-up
charges against as many MAS leaders and activists
who remain in the
country as possible, and opened judicial processes
for invented crimes
against others, including Luis Arce. They wasted
no time after usurping
power in spuriously accusing Evo Morales of
"terrorism" to prevent him
from returning to Bolivia from Argentina where he
has been living as a
refugee. On September 7, one day after the
election campaign opened in
Bolivia, he was disqualified from running as a
candidate to the Senate
for the Department of Cochabamba by a
constitutional court in La Paz.
Evo's response came in a tweet, "History shows
that they will be able
to disqualify Evo, but they will not be able to
outlaw the people."
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 34 - September 12, 2020
Article Link:
Bolivia: October 18 General Election
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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