There is ongoing debate over pros and cons of autonomy. For the last five years, autonomy in Bolivia is synonym of trouble, separatism, solution, opportunity, sedition, way of life and many more. It has become a problem on top of poverty, drugs, pollution and still there is no light seen, the tunnel is tortuous.

This time I would like to reflect over the need or not to have a decentralized police force. For one, Bolivia is still a unitary country, and that makes police hierarchy pyramidal. The problem is La Paz has around 20 times more policemen than Santa Cruz and they are about the same size… crime rate and violence is rampant in Santa Cruz, and that has to go down, we demand it.

Although, autonomy has forcefully inserted itself in the constitution; after the million people consultation held in Santa Cruz. Even the central government had created a ministry to handle its implementation (an oxymoron?). Current “autonomy” is only by name, they changed the name from Prefect to Governor nothing more. Funding still goes to every department from one central pocket; disbursements are slow, there are millions owed from central government to the departments. There is considerable debt over health and education services, which translate into fewer beds, malfunctioning equipment, collapse of public hospitals almost every week for the former. As for the latter, there are fewer facilities and teachers where they are really needed. In sum, a centralized government, over the last century, has failed to serve adequately the Bolivian population.

Police force wants to keep the status quo, they interpret Bolivia is the same as before. It could be considered a sign of weakness and low esteem that police does not even analyze why they need to come to a different “management”. Furthermore, is police a service or a syndicate? Shouldn’t they respond to what is demanded from them by their rightful employer, the people? Despite most of Santa Cruz businesses and households had to hire private guard services, those guards are killed or assaulted invariably from time to time. Because of current scenario, private guards can not possess guns, they don’t have proper training, have low job security and most of them lack health coverage. So criminals remain unpunished and rampant.

As a result of Governor Ruben Costas being shot in the skull when tried to help a woman who was being assaulted, Santa Cruz leadership gathered and proposed that a regional police be created. That was rejected out flat by central government and things remain stagnant. The question now resides on government’s reaction, why would they not want that? Is it because police as it is a centralized, unified force, serves to control riots, blockades? The police force is used as an instrument to control protests, and that hasn’t changed a bit over several decades. There is no need to analyze this now, suffice to say that police force needs to respond to the needs to fight crime.

In the past the prefect was appointed by the nation’s president and as such was considered the main authority in the department, reporting only to the president. As that changed, the central government resents the idea of handing in that force to the opposition, in the last governor’s and mayor’s elections, many important cities and departments were won by the opposition and that is the source of the problem. The central power, so far has rejected the idea of decentralizing the police force.

Thus, a solution could be that the police should “shrink” by a third and the rest remain as is, so government can continue to use it discretionary, no problem. That third (personnel, budget, infrastructure and equipment) should be assigned to the Governor of every department. That department police should be able to use guns to fight street criminality. The national police should direct the fight against drugs, major crimes and of course continue to be used as the government in turn sees fit.

Another subject: over this weekend, while in rural Potosi the president had suggested that two billion dollars from the reserves Bolivia has, should go to support food production, and industrializing stated owned companies. A referendum will be called so that population can decide on the use of those funds. As earlier as it is in this new development, one could only think that those funds do really need to boost food production from small and large private entrepreneurs, in a competitive and efficient manner. So that national market be secured and surpluses by exported. Regarding the support to state owned companies, Bolivia has not fully seen or learned how China, Vietnam and Cuba (now) have responded to such subsidy. More on this as it develops.

One good thing about this presidential initiative will be that finally Bolivians will know the precise breakdown of those reserves’ uses, how much needs to cover foreign and national debt, how much of those should we keep for bad times and if there is really two billion to spare for supporting this initiative. Good decision to call for a referendum, well informed citizens will decide in the referendum which way to go.