By Moon Of Alabama
November 13, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" -
The coup in Bolivia is
devastating for the majority of the people in that
country. Are their lessons to be learnt from it?
Andrea Lobo
writes at WSWS:
Bolivian president Evo Morales of the Movement
Toward Socialism (MAS) party was forced to
resign Sunday evening by the Bolivian military
in a coup backed by the United States. Last
night, Morales tweeted that he is “leaving for
Mexico” after that country agreed to grant him
asylum.
After three weeks of protests following the
disputed October 20 presidential elections, the
imperialist powers and their Bolivian client
elite have overthrown the government of Morales.
In the context of a deepening crisis of global
capitalism and a resurgence of the class
struggle internationally, including recent mass
strikes among miners and doctors in Bolivia, the
ruling class lost confidence that Morales and
the MAS apparatus can continue to suppress
social opposition.
During his twelve years in office Evo Morales
achieved quite a lot of good things:
Illiteracy rates:
2006 13.0%, 2018 2.4%
Unemployment rates
2006 9.2%, 2018 4.1%
Moderate poverty rates
2006 60.6%, 2018 34.6%
Extreme poverty rates
2006 38.2%, 2018 15.2%
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But Morales failed to build the
defenses that are necessary to make such
changes permanent. The leadership of the
military and police stood against him.
Why were these men in such positions?
Jeb Sprague @JebSprague -
20:19 UTC · Nov 11, 2019
The US coup connection
Officials who forced #Evo to resign worked as
#Bolivia's Mil. Attachés in DC. The CIA often
seeks to recruit Attachés working in DC.
2013: Gen. Kaliman served as Mil. Attaché
2018: Police Com. Calderón Mariscal was Pres. of
APALA in DC
The Agregados Policiales de América Latina (APALA)
is supposed to fight international organized crime
in Latin America. It is curiously hosted in
Washington DC.
These police and military men cooperated with a
racist
Christian-fascist multi-millionaire to bring
Morales down.
Morales had clearly won a fourth term in the the
October 20 elections. The vote count
was confusing (pdf) because it followed the
process defined by the Organization of American
States:
The [Tribunal Supremo Electoral, or TSE] has two
vote-counting systems. The first is a quick
count known as the Transmisión de Resultados
Electorales Preliminares (TREP, hereafter
referred to as the quick count). This is a
system that Bolivia and several other Latin
American countries have implemented following
OAS recommendations. It was implemented for the
2019 election by a private company in
conjunction with the Servicio de Registro Cívico
(SERECÍ), the civil registry service, and is
designed to deliver a swift —but incomplete and
not definitive- result on the night of the
elections to give the media an indication of the
voting tendency and to inform the public.
The early and incomplete numbers let it seem that
Morales had not won the 10% lead he needed to avert
a second round of voting. The rural districts in
which Morales has high support are usually late to
report results and were not included. The complete
results showed that Morales had won more than the
10% lead he needed to avoid a runoff.
Kevin Cashman @kevinmcashman -
1:36 UTC · Nov 11, 2019
Eventually, the official count was released:
Morales won in the first round 47.08% to 36.51%.
If you had been watching the polls before the
election, 5 out of 6 of them predicted the same
result. Weird to have a fraud that matches up
with polls.
Poll Tracker: Bolivia's 2019 Presidential Race
To allege false election results to instigate
color revolutions or coups is a typical instrument
of U.S. interference. In 2009 Mahmoud Ahmedinejad
won his second term in the Iranian presidential
elections. The U.S. supported oppositions raised a
ruckus even as the results fit perfectly with
previous polling.
The OAS which recommended the quick count scheme
that allows for such manipulations receives 60% of
its budget from Washington DC.
Western media do not call the coup in Bolivia a
coup because it was
what the U.S. wanted to happen:
Army generals appearing on television to
demand the resignation and arrest of an elected
civilian head of state seems like a textbook
example of a coup. And yet that is certainly not
how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s
events in Bolivia.
No establishment outlet framed the action as
a coup; instead, President Evo Morales
“resigned” (ABC News,
11/10/19), amid widespread “protests” (CBS
News,
11/10/19) from an “infuriated population” (New
York Times,
11/10/19) angry at the “election fraud” (Fox
News,
11/10/19) of the “full-blown dictatorship” (Miami
Herald,
11/9/19). When the word “coup” is used at
all, it comes only as an accusation from Morales
or another official from his government, which
corporate media have been demonizing since his
election in 2006 (FAIR.org,
5/6/09,
8/1/12,
4/11/19).
The poor and indigenous people who supported
Morales will have little chance against the
far right para-militaries and police (vid) who
now
go from door to door (vid) to round up leftists
and Morales supporters.
Evo Morales found asylum in Mexico. Bolivia will
now turn into a neoliberal hell and a
quasi-dictatorship. It will take time, a lot of
effort and probably a civil war to regain what was
lost through this coup.
What can one learn from this?
- As one person remarked to me: "When one
wants to win and keep a socialist revolution one
has to bring guillotines."
- Socialist movements who come into power must
neutralize their biggest local enemies. They
need to build their own defenses. They can not
rely on those institutions, like the military
and police, they inherit from previous regimes.
- Such movements must never rely on U.S.
affiliated organizations like the OAS or on
military and police personal that had come under
U.S. indoctrination.
- A movement needs a public voice. It must
build its own media locally and internationally.
Hugo Chavez knew this all this. As soon as he won
the presidential election in Venezuela he built the
necessary forces to defend the state. It is the only
reason why his successor Nicolás Maduro defeated the
coup attempt against him and is still in power.
Evo Morales unfortunately failed to follow that
path.
This article was originally
published by "Moon
Of Alabama" - -
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