▲ Ana Teresa Morales, MAS activist, from the wing that sympathizes with Evo Morales.Photo taken from YouTube

Aldo Anfossi

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 14, 2024, p. 23

Santiago. The description of Bolivia by the economist, professor and political leader Ana Teresa Morales Olivera, a member of the Evista wing of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), is flatly alarming and denotes a hint of resignation in the face of what is perceived as inevitable.

Luis Arce still has a year left in his administration, but almost no one believes that he can conclude his government, because the social sectors have rebelled in relation to the current situation and every day there are social protestssays who was Minister of Productive Development between 2011 and 2015, during the second government of Evo Morales.

The severe prediction shows the contempt and total rupture, without the possibility of reconciliation, between both factions of the MAS.

There are no dollars because the Central Bank has been emptied with acts of corruption, they cannot pay for the fuel that is imported and we are paralyzed. The country has collapsed, the government has begun to print banknotes inorganically, a process of inflation is beginning, there is no money to import fuel, medicines, spare parts or agricultural inputs.he describes, in an interview with The Day from La Paz.

–With 10 months until the 2025 elections, will the country endure in an environment of worsening conditions?

–The entire country is worried because we are in a situation of economic collapse. The president does not offer solutions, he has called meetings but the sectors have no longer attended, because they are all unfulfilled commitments and it is very difficult for him to reach agreements. The businessmen’s protest is totally consistent, there are no dollars for imports, neither for inputs, nor for machinery, nor for raw materials, and there is also no fuel for the crops.

–Do you support the shortening of the Arce government?

–It should not be, it is not ideal that presidents do not finish their constitutional mandates.

–How does reducing the mandate translate?

–It would mean that the Legislative Assembly makes a law to advance elections. It is not what any democratic person and supporter of the rule of law would want; However, the situation is so serious that an early election seems increasingly viable due to the government’s failure to react. It is incredible that Arce has not been honest about the situation, the possibility that the popular rebellions exceed the possibility of the government and he will have to resign early, because it is the only way to bring forward elections, almost falls under its own weight.

Any thoughts about the judicial situation of former President Morales?

–They have started a legal persecution with several issues. The best known has been an alleged attempted rape, a case that the government de facto by Jeanine Áñez began and that it had been closed due to lack of evidence. They have reinstalled it and are trying to make sense of it, although no one denounced Evo Morales, the prosecutor’s office set it up ex officio and there are no witnesses either, there are no basic conditions for a trial. They have attempted an arrest warrant that they had to lift because other judges considered it illegal and will surely try to issue another warrant or the option B that they have already tried: that snipers attack Evo Morales.

–What do you think of both Arce and Morales giving up the aspiration to govern again; Could that pacify the MAS and unify it around a common candidacy?

–That path is not viable, more than a million militants have made the decision to refuse to accept that Evo Morales is not a candidate, they consider that the only one capable of reinstating the process of change is him. Luis Arce has a popularity of 5 to 10 percent and 75 percent rejection, he knows that he cannot be a candidate because he is about to not be able to finish his term, but he is obsessed and determined that if it is not him, the MAS has to disappear.

–Suppose the date for registering the candidacies arrives and Evo is not allowed.

–It can happen, and it is surely Arce’s intention, but the mobilization capacity of social organizations and the MAS is enormous. Any government that is installed by disabling the largest party in the history of Bolivia will not be a bearable government and its governance will not be easy, it will practically be impossible, the opposition recognizes that.