The right mounted on the popular mobilisation and seeks to take over the government
We reject the attempt to impose a right-wing reactionary government, either transitory or through constitutional succession.
– Immediate call for an emergency COB (Workers’ Central Union) Congress, with the participation of all workers’, peasants’, indigenous and youth organisations.
– To form the Popular Assembly from the workers, peasants and youth mobilised to assume the provisional government and to call for clean and free elections, with no restriction for the popular candidates.
The fight must continue:
– Against the oligarchy (CAO, CAINCO, Camacho, etc.) allied for over 10 years to Evo Morales and partner in the Chiquitania fire.
– For non-payment of the fraudulent external debt contracted by MAS (Movement Towards Socialism, Evo’s party)
– For the nationalisation of the transnational San Cristobal pampered by Evo
– For exposing and fighting Camacho’s fascism disguised as democracy
After 21 days of struggle, with 3 dead under repression and MAS violence, Evo Morales lost the support of the oligarchy and imperialism, represented by the OAS, and ended up resigning.
When the popular mobilisation did not retreat in the face of police repression and the violence of the MAS and its thugs, the oligarchy abandoned Evo and mounted itself on it not to lose power. Following their oligarchic masters and for fear of mobilisation, the police mutinied, and the Armed Forces declared their “neutrality” and then “suggested” the resignation of the president. The imperialist OAS, in which the MAS relied upon to validate its fraud, advanced the results of the electoral audit (which has not yet ended) declaring the entire electoral process fraudulent. Threatened by the mobilisation, a call for a demonstration in his support that failed, abandoned by his allies and without the means of repression at his disposal, Evo Morales resigned.
Now the right-wing leader of Santa Cruz (Camacho), representative of the CAO, CAINCO, FEGASACRUZ, the big Agro-industrialists of Santa Cruz, responsible along with Evo Morales for the Chiquitania fire disaster, seek to take over the government, through a transitory government or constitutional succession. He speaks of democracy, but he is an enemy of the working people.
This reactionary bourgeois sector has used hatred and anger against the 14 years of Evo Morales’ government who, in the name of a false “socialism” and “anti-imperialism”, betrayed the people and governed for the benefit of the multinationals and the big business groups of soy, mining and gas. Evo Morales and MAS betrayed the October agenda and ignored the social demands such as the democratic ones of the 2016 referendum that rejected Evo running again for office.
Hundreds of thousands of workers and middle classes’ youth and the general population of upper and lower-middle classes took to the streets and blocked them repudiating the electoral fraud. Young people especially have a legitimate discontent with the MAS government which did not guarantee decent jobs in 14 years, and today young people with or without university studies are condemned to informal employment and miserable wages.
Thousands of workers and popular sectors broke with Evo Morales and joined the popular demand for him to leave and for new elections. Union sectors such as the mining unions of Potosí and San Cristóbal, workers, factories, or cocalero peasants of Los Yungas, joined. These sectors differ from the upper and middle classes of Santa Cruz or other regions that are traditionally conservative and support the right-wing of Camacho and Mesa. These right-wing demagogues want to use the working people’s demands to impose their reactionary and anti-popular project.
Added to this protest are legitimate popular demands, from the coca growers of Yungas who have had their leaders imprisoned for over a year, and were brutally repressed, to the people of Potosí in a struggle to defend the lithium that Evo gave to the transnationals (days before his resignation he had to back down). The salaried miners of San Cristobal de Potosí also demand respect for their labour conquests.
Large sectors of workers from the city and the countryside continued to vote for Evo Morales, many because they did not find another alternative and distrust Carlos Mesa and other right-wing candidates.
There is also a repudiation of the violent action of armed MAS gangs that attacked cooperative miners in Vila Vila and young people protesting in Cochabamba, resulting in deaths and injuries. And after Evo Morales’ resignation, there is the repudiation of the attacks and fires produced by MAS shock groups in El Alto and La Paz.
The right is mounted on this legitimate discontent, to impose its agenda, hiding under the banner of “democracy”. They even rejected Evo’s proposal to hold new elections “with another Court and other actors”. Now that Evo Morales resigned, they are rushing to palatial conjurations and political negotiations to impose a reactionary government.
For this, their main figure is Luis Fernando Camacho, representative of the right-wing fascist business in Santa Cruz, who already proposed to form a “transitory” government, but also have the right-wing parliamentarians who co-governed with the MAS the last 5 years and the military and police leadership.
We cannot allow the business fascist right-wing of Santa Cruz, supported by the military and imperialism, to decide the government and the future of the country. Whether with a “transitory” government or other variants, such as a Legislative Assembly that is the enemy of the people, made up of Masista and right-wingers who accompanied the policy of the MAS, be in charge of the constitutional succession; or of a military junta, they would all be a reactionary anti-popular government.
We reject attempts to impose a reactionary government by any of these means.
That is why we from the real left put forward: “Neither Evo Nor Mesa, Camacho or the military! For an Alternative of the city and countryside workers” (Declaration of the PT-PSR on 8 November).
We join the demand of the factories in Cochabamba, miners in Potosí and the CSUTCB Genaro Flores, that an urgent Extraordinary Congress of the COB be held, especially inviting peasant and indigenous organisations, and the youth, to form a Transitional government.
To impose the workers’ agenda, among others: a true nationalisation of San Cristóbal, a Japanese company pampered by Evo Morales; stop paying the foreign debt accumulated in these years that was used for corruption and useless works; fight against the oligarchy (CAO, CAINCO, Camacho, etc.) that was an ally of the MAS during the last 10 years, etc.
To convene an open Congress of the reorganised COB to form a Popular Assembly with representatives of grassroots organisations of city and rural workers, youth and indigenous, to resolve the future of the country and guarantee clean and free elections without restrictions for any candidate from the popular sectors.
Revolutionary Alternative for the Working People (ARPT), a section of the IWU-FI in Bolivia.
11 November 2019
