▲ Hugo Moldiz.Photo taken from social networks
Aldo Anfossi
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 7, 2024, p. 24
Santiago. Far from improving, everything has gotten worse in Bolivia since a military uprising to overthrow President Luis Arce failed last June, the window of opportunity was lost as a boost that the defeat of the coup plotters could have meant for the government, says Hugo Moldiz, former Minister of the Interior, economist and professor.
Things have gone from bad to worse, reality has revealed that Evo Morales’ personal interests contaminated the political scene, putting the continuity of the process of change at serious risk.he says in an interview with La Jornada from La Paz.
The more than three weeks of road blockades in Cochabamba and to the east of the country are associated with an internal war that only interests those who vote for the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), unsettling the population and damaging the economyadds who in 2015, in the third Morales government, was minister for four months.
The blockade is one of the most powerful weapons that the peasant, worker and popular movement in Bolivia has used. And they have given results to the extent that they were carriers of causes of national interest. But this is not happening now, rather it is causing a repudiation that is very great.precise.
About the preconditions of evism to negotiate the end of those – to file a criminal complaint against the former president for the alleged rape of a minor and to qualify him as a candidate – he maintains that In neither case does the government have constitutional powers; Furthermore, a coup de grace would be given because the vast majority condemns the blockade and the search for impunity..
Moldiz admits that politically the government is beaten because in addition to the permanent attack from the former ally, the economic situation – fuel shortages, currency depreciation, inflation – places it in many difficulties.
I believe that Morales is carrying out a strategy of political suicide, he is willing to take everything ahead, destroy the plurinational State and end the process of change.he states.
The window of opportunity that opened in June and which meant dialogues with various productive sectors, failed because Parliament blocked initiatives related to external credits and the industrialization of lithium with Russian and Chinese competition.
Regarding the continuity of the blockades, he rejects the notion that the Morales leadership – who on Saturday called like older brotherhe said, lifting them while starting a hunger strike – may be being surpassed.
“Those of us who know Evo know that his leadership has been built from an overconcentration of decisions. It’s actually a ploy.
“Evo thinks that if Lucho Arce does not guarantee him being a candidate and does not exclude him from the criminal complaint, he has to remove him to have a person as interim president who will allow him to achieve what he cannot do until now.
I believe that behind this there is obviously an enemy hand, there are invisible third parties who have added fuel to the fire to make the process of change implode, to take us to a level of internal war so great that practically the population ends up becoming saturated and rejecting to either faction.
–And where would those forces come from?
–I believe that the only capable force is the United States, it would not be the first time. I am absolutely convinced that the US strategy has achieved what the 2019 coup could not. Because it is not from the outside that the process of change weakens and ends, but from within by imploding the MAS and the social movements. to harm the Arce government.
He rejects the idea of international mediation because the country is not at war.
