Jeanine Áñez has postponed the elections and accuses her government, which mixes militarism and zeal, of persecuting political opponents
While the locked Bolivians looked up at the sky in Holy Week, they were greeted through a show. Priests dressed in cassocks, some wielding statues of apostles, sprinkled holy water and blessings over 4 villages from air force helicopters.
The episode sums up the delicate combination of militarism and devoted fervor that explained the six months of Jeanine Áñez’s interim presidency. A little-known evangelical politician from Bolivia’s tropical lowlands, Áñez forcibly catapulted herself last November with one goal: to hold new elections as soon as possible. as possible.
The long presidency of Evo Morales had the Andean-Amazonian country, lifting much of the indigenous majority out of poverty. But it ended with violent protests, a police mutiny and pressure from the army to resign amid allegations of voter fraud.
Morales and senior officials of his Movement to Socialism (MAS) resigned and fled, and Áñez – as momentary vice president of the Senate – assumed the interim regime with the commitment to “rebuild democracy. “
Six months later, even Morales’ critics say the 52-year-old has instead deepened divisions in the multi-ethnic country of 11 million, and it’s the coronavirus pandemic to further her own political ambitions.
“The installation of the Áñez government was marked with the blood of Bolivians,” said Valeria Silva Guzmán, a former MAS deputy who is now seeking asylum in Mexico. “Deaths, prison, repression, political persecution. . . It is fundamentally a regime of terror. “
One of Áñez’s first acts to authorize the use of lethal force by police and soldiers. The decree was later rescinded, but security forces have since killed up to 28 protesters, adding two shootings widely described as massacres. The killings have yet to be investigated.
In January, Áñez declared her own candidacy for the presidency in the upcoming elections, a reversal of her past promises. It has since postponed elections originally scheduled for May 3, arguing that they wait until the worst of the pandemic has passed, which has meant that so far more than 8,000 instances have been registered in Bolivia and 293 showed deaths.
Áñez imposed a strict quarantine on March 17 to prevent underfunded Bolivian hospitals from being hit, and called for “fasting and prayer” to defeat the coronavirus. In the province of Beni, some wonder the justification for postponing the resumption of voting until September or beyond. Schools will remain closed and public events banned, but devotees will be allowed to resume at 30% capacity.
“Now we are lining up to go to the bank, there are crowds to enter the supermarket,” said Miguelangel Estellano, an artist. “The health crisis is helping the government create a state camouflaged as martial law. “
At least 56 countries around the world have delayed elections due to Covid-19. But Áñez, such a resolution fueled the denunciations of a force. Left-wing news hunters and supporters have been harassed and detained.
Last month, generals in combat uniforms stormed the Senate, it is not easy for the majority of Mas to frame to approve the promotions granted through the Áñez administration. a stronghold of Mas – to crack down on suspected drug traffickers.
A new law threatening up to 10 years in prison for those who “misinform or cause uncertainty” about the coronavirus, with Murillo’s warning through a call to Mas’ presidential candidate, Luis Arce, was scrapped in early May following a foreign outcry.
Áñez “a disappointment,” said Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, a Bolivian judge and former diplomat. But, and govern in an opaque, abusive and blatantly ideological way,” he said.
Rodriguez, who served as Bolivia’s interim president for six months between 2005 and 2006 after an equally dramatic political crisis, said those moments required consensus-building. Restoring calm and organizing the elections that brought Morales to power for the first time, “was only imaginable with an impartial arbiter, who was not tempted to enter the electoral game with the merit of holding the whistle,” he added.
Instead, Áñez’s leadership expelled Cuban doctors, restored ties with Israel, abandoned left-wing regional forums, and courted Donald Trump’s White House. Such abrupt changes in Bolivia’s foreign policy show that its priority is “to restore neoliberalism in the Latin American paradigm as the garden of the United States,” Silva explained.
At least thirteen corruption cases have emerged in the past six months, adding to state-owned oil, telecommunications and aviation companies, and medical officials have reportedly used the pandemic to line their pockets.
The fitness minister was arrested and fired in May after Bolivia imported 179 ventilators, which doctors later discovered were incompatible with extensive care equipment, for nearly $5 million, nearly 3 times its market price. Reacting to the scandal, Áñez vowed to “impose the full force of the law” on those convicted of corruption. Police have since arrested those who handed down sentences in the case.
Analysts recommend that weak establishments and widespread corruption are partly a legacy of Mas and his predecessors, and that Áñez’s persecution of critics mirrors tactics hired through Morales.
“The existing administration has followed Mas’s law manual,” said Jorge Derpic, a sociology professor at the University of Georgia, comparing the existing series of terrorism cases opposing Mas officials to the way Morales has used fees to intimidate, arrest and exile opponents.
Mas, whose supporters remain Morales, now exiled in Argentina, has a role to play in easing tensions, Derpic added.
“We may have made more wonderful decisions in many areas,” Silva admitted. “But it is a threat to enter this debate at this time, when we see that the wonderful progress made through Bolivia is temporarily reversed and there is no rule of law. “
The way forward for Bolivia promises to be “very difficult,” Rodriguez said. He argued that the three successive emergencies — the widespread fires in the Bolivian Amazon last year, the electoral crisis and the pandemic — have demonstrated the need for additional constitutional reform to restrict presidential powers, the judiciary, combat poverty and protect the environment.
Luisa Elba Sanjinés, 59, a street vegetable vendor on the outskirts of La Paz, said her rural consumers and suppliers were scared after months of turmoil. Government subsidies for those affected by the lockdown had not arrived.
“We want to get out of this disease and go back to work, because a lot of other people have nowhere else to go,” Elba said.
Áñez “should discuss and communicate with everyone,” he added. People just finished the election. “