[News] Bolivia: The Coup Within the Coup

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/bolivia-the-coup-within-the-coup/?fbclid=IwAR2ToZwswgn9emi6LEsvHvapKO2PXji4reVNz19wfzMshQHE-_ShsPIDmII
Bolivia:
The Coup Within the Coup
August 5, 2020
------------------------------

Hector Bernardo <https://www.diariocontexto.com.ar/?s=Hector+Bernardo>
[image: https://i1.wp.com/www.dw.com/image/51234133_303.jpg?ssl=1]

While the social and union movements carry out roadblocks to demand that
the TSE respect the electoral timetable, the coup leaders, led by Arturo
Murillo, are meeting with Tuto Quiroga, high-ranking military officials,
CIA agents and US Embassy officials to plan the strategy that will allow
them to perpetuate themselves in power.

Bolivia could suffer a coup within the coup. The consolidation of the
intention to vote in favour of the candidate of the Movement to
Socialism-Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples
(MAS-IPSP), Luis Arce, makes the right desperate.

The most reactionary sectors, with the support and leadership of the U.S.
State Department, seem convinced that if, less than a year after the coup
d’état against Evo Morales, the MAS recovers power, all that has been done
will not have been enough.

It was within this framework that the president of the Supreme Electoral
Tribunal (TSE), Salvador Romero, using the excuse of the disaster caused by
covid-19, announced the suspension (arbitrary and illegal) of the elections
scheduled for September 6.

Salvador Romero, appointed as president of the TSE by the de facto
government, is quoted in the WikiLeaks as being linked to the U.S. Embassy
and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Furthermore, the
Embassy’s own cables describe him as a person with a clear position against
Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism.

After the coup d’état of November 10, 2019, the government headed by the
self-proclaimed president Jeanine Áñez assured that her stay at the Palacio
Quemado (Bolivia’s Government House) would only be temporary and that she
would call elections soon. In a framework of repression, systematic
persecution and arbitrary imprisonment, the first date established for
Bolivians to recover democracy was May 3, 2020. When registering for
Election Day, the government, with the complicity of the TSE, banned former
President Evo Morales and former Foreign Minister Diego Pary and prevented
them from running. Despite this, MAS continued to consolidate, which led
the TSE, on the pretext of the pandemic, to propose a new date for the
Plurinational Legislative Assembly on 2 August. The TSE again requested the
suspension of the election date and the Assembly set September 6 as the
deadline.

In this context, the government attempted by all possible means to remove
the legal status of MAS and outlaw its candidate, Luis Arce, in a desperate
move to prevent the Movement to Socialism from once again leading the
destiny of Bolivia.

It was within this framework that the president of the TSE announced a new
suspension of the elections and set a new date for October 18. Romero’s
decision is not only arbitrary, but also illegal, given that the question
of whether or not to suspend the elections is not an attribute of the
Supreme Electoral Tribunal, but rather a decision that corresponds to the
Plurinational Legislative Assembly, which was not consulted on this
occasion.

As a response to this arbitrary and illegal decision, social movements,
peasant organizations and unions announced a plan of struggle that began on
Monday, August 3, with roadblocks in key points of the country.

Led by the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), the different groups demanding
that the electoral calendar be respected carried out roadblocks in 75
points in five of Bolivia’s nine departments (La Paz, Santa Cruz,
Cochabamba, Oruro and Potosi). In several of these points, the police
cleared the blockades with tear gas.

The TSE turned a deaf ear to the popular demand and, on the same day,
Salvador Romero ratified the postponement of the elections.

The government launched both political and judicial persecution against the
protesters. Former President Evo Morales tweeted: “We denounce to the
international community that the de facto government has initiated
political persecution against the Executive Secretary of the Bolivian
Workers’ Central (COB), Juan Carlos Guarachi, and the Head of the MAS-IPSP
Deputies’ Bank, Betty Yañiquez. We will defend union and political rights”.

The desperate attempts to outlaw MAS and its candidates and the repeated
suspension of the elections consolidate what was denounced in a
journalistic investigation by the Behind Back Doors website, in an article
titled: “*Red September for Bolivians. New military coup plan against the
institutions
<https://libya360.wordpress.com/2020/07/29/red-september-for-bolivians-new-plan-of-military-coup-detat-against-the-institutionality/>*“.
Before November 2019, this site had exposed audios that revealed the plot
of the coup d’état, as described in the article “The civil plot of the
overthrow of Evo Morales,” written by journalist Gustavo Veiga and
published in Página/12.

On this occasion, the same website reveals that the impossibility of the de
facto government to perpetuate itself in power through elections, and the
consolidation of the intention to vote for MAS has “awakened the idea of a
military self-coup in the most radical groups”. According to the
investigation, “once again, high-ranking Bolivian military officials, with
the support and advice of the U.S. Intelligence Services, are organizing
the maneuver to bypass the constitutional order”.

“Despite the participation in this plan of several of the people who
participated in the November coup d’état, such as Luis Fernando Camacho ,
Samuel Doria Medina , Jorge Tuto Quiroga and Manfred Reyes, the key figures
in this plan are now the Secretary of Government, Arturo Murillo, and the
Secretary of Defense, Fernando López, who was in fact responsible for
recruiting the military assets to remove Evo Morales from the presidency,
and now would perform this same function, although based on different
interests,” the article states.

The researchers point out that “as is easy to assume, this group does not
function autonomously. The instructions and funding come again from the
U.S. Embassy in La Paz […] Therefore, Rolf Olson , a CIA official who
participated in the previous November events, has been organizing and
directing every action included in this plan. Through his diplomatic cover
as head of the Political Office, he has been meeting ‘in secret’ with the
parties in charge of its articulation”.

“Among the confidential documents consulted (some belonging to the US
Embassy), sources located near the Secretary of Government, Arturo Murillo,
describe the development of these secret meetings held on July 2, 11 and 14
of this year, where agreements were adopted for the final implementation of
the plan. These meetings took place in the house of former President Tuto
Quiroga and in the headquarters of the Presidential Palace,” the
investigation notes, and then points out that “the main objective of this
plan is to postpone the elections until 2021, presumably in October, saving
time to reconfigure the electoral forces (to strengthen the coalition and
to weaken Carlos Mesa, the candidate of the Comunidad Ciudadana political
party), as well as to ‘legally’ deactivate the MAS and comply with the
commitments to the U.S. government.

The researchers point out that “these commitments are based mainly on the
sale of gas and the exploitation of lithium deposits, namely the decision
to hand over the exploitation of these resources to transnational companies
with U.S. capital.

The de facto government and the Embassy are evaluating three possible
scenarios to perpetuate themselves in power: suspending the elections at
least until next year to allow the right to reorganize, an action that
would have the support of the secretary general of the Organization of
American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, and the consultant to the secretary of
the Bolivian Mission to the OAS and collaborator of the CIA, Erick Foronda
Prieto (who would already be in Washington articulating this plan); the
creation of “false positives” or “false flag” attacks that would be
attributed to MAS so that it could later be declared a “terrorist” group
and outlawed; the self-coup. On this last point, the exhaustive
investigation gives names of the high-ranking military followers of the de
facto government who could take part again in a coup (among them, Sergio
Orellana Centellas, commander general of the Armed Forces; General Pablo
Arturo Guerra Camacho, head of the Air Force Headquarters; Ciro Orlando
Alvarez Guzman, commander of the Air Force; Brigadier General Rubén
Salvatierra Fuentes, commander of the Army; and Rear Admiral Moisés Orlando
Mejias Heredia, commander of the Navy), also points out that there would be
support from the paramilitary groups Juventud Kochala de Cochabamba and
Resistencia de La Paz.

The U.S. Embassy, the CIA, the military, and the coup leaders in the
Palacio Quemado are all thinking about how to remain in power. The people,
in the streets, are trying to recover democracy. Time will tell who wins
this struggle.
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