Oscar Rotundo
Protests in Santa Cruz last Friday – Photo: Diego Tejerina / DPA
In Bolivia, the fascist particracy intends to wear down the government and promote a coup insurrection like the one in 2018, which led to the coup of 2019. Their arrogance and contempt for the people, never permitted them to imagine that the peo the Bolivian economy.
The National Population and Housing Census was to be carried out in 2022, precisely on November 16 of this year, but due to technical and budgetary observations, the government decided through Supreme Decree 4760, issued in July, to postpone its realization. The new deadline was set for the first semester of 2024, in order to be carried out “with the highest standards”.
In view of this fact, the Census became the new flag of destabilization at the hands of the right wing, incarnated in the figure of the coup governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho. He was accompanied by former President Carlos Mesa, businessman Samuel Doria Medina, and the president of the Interinstitutional Committee, Vicente Cuellar, together with the Santa Cruz leader Romulo Calvo.
How does the opposition’s desperation for the urgent realization of the Census fit in with their destabilizing and dismissive plans?
According to section V of article 146 of the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State: “The distribution of the total number of seats among the departments will be determined by the Electoral Body based on the number of inhabitants of each one of them, according to the last Census carried out in accordance with the Law. For reasons of equity, the law shall assign a minimum number of seats to the departments with lower population and lesser degree of economic development. If the distribution of seats in any department is unequal, preference shall be given to the allocation of single-member seats”.
Santa Cruz achieved a significant population growth of 800,000 inhabitants since the 2012 Census. Its population is young, about 60% are under 30 years of age.
Santa Cruz also contributes 30% to Bolivia’s GDP, 12,355 million dollars in 2021, when it grew by 5.7%. If the Census were to be carried out in this context, this governorate would have the chance to obtain a greater number of seats.
Another element to take into account and which is of utmost importance, is that the Framework Law of Autonomies establishes in its third transitory provision that the resources of tax co-participation will be “distributed according to the number of inhabitants of the jurisdiction of the autonomous community territorial entity, based on the data of the last National Population and Housing Census”.ple would return to govern, dismantling the coup in the streets and democratically and electorally installing, by a large majority, a popular government that would continue with the process of change.
The popular government had to bear the burden of the pandemic and the economic collapse left by the multi-party corruption of those who made up that gang of looters. Some of these looters are in prison, others are fugitives -for the time being- and others remained unpunished, such as the coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho.
As soon as the government of Luis Arce began to point the way to recovery, the criminal horde disguised as political parties, embedded in the democratic institutions that they themselves had beaten hundreds of times, began to undermine the steps towards economic stabilization and social recomposition.
By this date of 2021, the Government should have taken a step back with a fundamental law for political, social and economic reorganization. A step backwards was taken with Law 1386, a fundamental tool for the “National Strategy to Combat the Legitimization of Illicit Gains and the Financing of Terrorism”, as the opposition generated a disinformation campaign through the media and social networks, organizing strikes and blockades in some regions of the country, dividing society with their manipulations and empowering the worn out coup plotters against Evo Morales, Carlos Mesa, Samuel Doria Medina, Luis Camacho and Rómulo Calvo as leaders of the social demands.
Thus the government began the year 2022 in the framework of another coup d’état, prepared to hinder the process of change and accumulate forces to attack the people again. The objective was clear: to force the resignation of Luis Arce and call for early elections.
Offices of the Federation of Rural Workers in Santa Cruz are set on fire. Demonstrators demanded the realization of the Census in 2023 – Photo: AP/Ipa Ibanez
They need chaos and for this they incite institutional, social or regional conflicts. They want to demonstrate that the government cannot lead the destiny of the country, materialize its campaign promises and advance the strategic interests of both foreign multinationals and sectors of the Bolivian economy.
The National Population and Housing Census was to be carried out in 2022, precisely on November 16 of this year, but due to technical and budgetary observations, the government decided through Supreme Decree 4760, issued in July, to postpone its realization. The new deadline was set for the first semester of 2024, in order to be carried out “with the highest standards”.
In view of this fact, the Census became the new flag of destabilization at the hands of the right wing, incarnated in the figure of the coup governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho. He was accompanied by former President Carlos Mesa, businessman Samuel Doria Medina, and the president of the Interinstitutional Committee, Vicente Cuellar, together with the Santa Cruz leader Romulo Calvo.
How does the opposition’s desperation for the urgent realization of the Census fit in with their destabilizing and dismissive plans?
According to section V of article 146 of the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State: “The distribution of the total number of seats among the departments will be determined by the Electoral Body based on the number of inhabitants of each one of them, according to the last Census carried out in accordance with the Law. For reasons of equity, the law shall assign a minimum number of seats to the departments with lower population and lesser degree of economic development. If the distribution of seats in any department is unequal, preference shall be given to the allocation of single-member seats”.
Santa Cruz achieved a significant population growth of 800,000 inhabitants since the 2012 Census. Its population is young, about 60% are under 30 years of age.
Santa Cruz also contributes 30% to Bolivia’s GDP, 12,355 million dollars in 2021, when it grew by 5.7%. If the Census were to be carried out in this context, this governorate would have the chance to obtain a greater number of seats.
Another element to take into account and which is of utmost importance, is that the Framework Law of Autonomies establishes in its third transitory provision that the resources of tax co-participation will be “distributed according to the number of inhabitants of the jurisdiction of the autonomous community territorial entity, based on the data of the last National Population and Housing Census”.
These are transfers from the State administration, equivalent to twenty percent (20%) in the case of autonomous territorial entities (governorships and municipalities) and five percent (5%) to public universities. These resources come from the cash collection of the Value Added Tax, the Complementary Regime to the Value Added Tax, the Tax on Corporate Profits, the Tax on Transactions, the Tax on Specific Consumption, the Customs Tax, the Tax on the Free Transmission of Goods and the Tax on Departures Abroad.
It is not by chance that Camacho, in an interview a few days ago with a local media, insisted again on federalism as the only solution to the “fissure that comes from the foundation of the Republic”.
In the last elections, out of the 36 seats for Senators, MAS-IPSP obtained 21 – Comunidad Ciudadana CC (Mesa) – 11 and Creemos (Camacho) 4. In the Chamber of Deputies, out of the 130 seats, MAS-IPSP obtained 75, Comunidad Ciudadana CC (Mesa) 39 and Creemos (Camacho) 16.
In view of the resistance of these sectors to abide by the proposed date, the government called for the installation of a Technical Commission in the city of Trinidad, Beni, to establish the definitive date of the Population and Housing Census in the country. The Commission would be composed of more than 50 specialists, whose results would be binding and in which 41 representatives from all over the country would participate.
From this Technical Commission, designed by the Plurinational Meeting for a Census with Consensus, which was inaugurated and installed by President Luis Arce, 5 representatives withdrew and 36 remained, that is, more than 80%, who at the end of their functions, decided that the Census would be carried out in March 2024, with 8 weeks difference from the one proposed by the opposition for the year 2023.
But to make clearer the background of the opposition’s refusal, it is important to take into account the statements made by the head of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, Rómulo Calvo, who declared to the US network CNN that after the demand of the “Census in 2023, yes or yes”, he will go to the demand for the resignation of President Arce.
On Sunday the 13th a town meeting was held in Santa Cruz demanding that the census be held in 2023 and giving the government 72 hours to free the detainees and that the date of the census be fixed in a law, among other determinations.
President Luis Arce announced on Saturday that the Census will be held on March 23, 2024 – Photo – ABI
Comunidad Ciudadana (CC), a force headed by Carlos Mesa, indicated this Monday that it will present a bill to the Legislative Assembly proposing that the census be carried out in October 2023 in order to have the definitive results in the first semester of 2024, despite the fact that the Government has already set the date for March 2024.
As we can see, this unilateral act proposed by the Santa Cruz opposition, which ignores the actions of the members of the Technical Committee and the government, beyond any excuse, has no other objective than to destabilize the government and shorten Lucho Arce’s presidential mandate.
If this happens, what is expected is that Vice President David Choquehuanca will assume the leadership of the Plurinational State with the sole task, by mandate of the Political Constitution of the State, of calling elections within ninety days.
November 15 marked the third anniversary of the Senkata and Sacaba massacres, and with the fresh memories of the criminal balance of that 2019-2020 coup d’état, the Bolivian people have to endure this new coup adventure that has already generated four dead, 178 wounded, gang rape. at checkpoints and 720 million dollars in losses, among other fascist atrocities that are increasing every day, turning Santa Cruz into a paramilitary state.
Luis Arce was elected president of Bolivia in the first round, for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS-IPSP), with 55.11% of the votes.
The Movement Towards Socialism obtained 54.73% of the votes in the plurinominal chamber of senators and deputies and 53.72% of the votes in the uninominal chamber of deputies.
It is fundamental that before popular unrest continues to deepen in the face of this notorious coup escalation, the government and the MAS-IPSP, together with the workers unions and social movements, enforce the will of the people and democracy.
The triumph of fascist arrogance is inadmissible and intolerable. As the Liberator Simon Bolivar said: “To doubt is to perish“.
In the last 21 days former coup leader and current governor of the Department of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, has been allowed “to carry out a coup d’état in the city of Santa Cruz,” in the words of Pedro Damián Dorado, vice president of the association of municipalities of the department by the same name. Constant media misinformation is the glue that holds together Camacho’s base, which can be counted in the nearly 230,000, mostly middle-class people who turned out for his latest political meeting. In late October, Camacho launched the shutdown of the city for the foreseeable future. It is Bolivia’s largest and most prosperous metropolis – and the economic motor of the country. Camacho is a very rich man and to preserve the wealth of the few, he is once again acting as a threat to Bolivian democracy.
But, the story from the grassroots has shifted radically since the de facto coup regime that came to power three years ago and lasted less than a year. When the far-right of Camacho declared a total strike and work stoppage in the city of Santa Cruz three weeks ago, the masses refused to comply.
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