Eric Cardenas writes in El Diario:
The life of modern societies evolves according to the norms, that is to say to the norms and laws, it is the state of law in which all citizens, without exception, are subject to compliance with the laws, but in the societies subject to regimes of authoritarian and dictatorial governments, the rulers or the ruler, are placed above the law, and as in the past times of absolute monarchy, they believe to be the State.
In our country, in a few months we will have to go to the polls to elect new rulers, as it is stated in the Political Constitution of the State, which fixes the time of the mandate of the people (five years), but it turns out that the influence of the “Chavista” recipe book” the regimes of socialist populism intend to remain in power: “for life,” as ruled by our chieftain-ruler, trampling the Constitution that in Article 168 provides that the term of office of the president and vice president is five years and they can be re-elected continuously only once.
Despite the fact that the president and vice president have already exercised the political power of the state for three consecutive administrations, they again appear as candidates for the populism, arguing that Art. 23 IA of the Pact of San José (American Convention on Human Rights) states that it is a political right to choose and be elected, but Article 35 of the same Convention states that: “the rights of each person are limited by the rights of others, for the security of all and the just demands of the common good in a democratic society”, that is to say that above the individual right is the right of others.
With the intention of validating this argument, the government went to the Plurinational Constitutional Court, which issued resolution 0084/2017 that ignored and reformed the Political Constitution of the State, which ratifies the supposed human right of the pro-government candidates, giving “illegal” course to his re-nomination for a fourth mandate, resolution that was qualified by two prestigious Spanish jurists of the University of Valencia (Roberto Vizcayno Pastor and Gabriel Moreno Gonzales) as a: “interpretative fraud”, originated in an “abusive constitutionalism”. In summary, the official candidacy of the cocalero populism is, by all accounts of the science of law, ILLEGAL.
The same candidacy ignores the pronouncement of the will of the sovereign people, expressed in the majority vote in the referendum that was convened by the government, to modify precisely Art. 168 and be able to be reelected once again. In that consultation the people said NO!, what matters that the people consulted rejected that candidacy for a fourth term. The referendum has a binding character in the decision of the people, that is, of obligatory compliance. However, the regime went this time to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which, of course, validated the candidacy, with the artifice of a Law of political parties that obliged them to elect primary elections to elect their candidates, when the regime already had them elected, ignoring this binding nature, provided by the Electoral Regime Law, the Law of the Plurinational Electoral Body and others. All that matters is that the official candidacy is illegitimate, because it is not backed by the citizen vote, which has already denied that possibility.
Finally, the populist-cocalero candidacy is immoral, since the pro-government candidates, in addition to being campaigning for more than thirteen years, continue to use public goods and resources, that is of all Bolivians and issuing propaganda with all public works, until they reach to the extreme of having turned a tragedy into electoral propaganda, as is the case of the geo-landslide that occurred in Llojeta, and the delivery of departments to some affected people, without following established procedures and regulations.
Every electoral process must be administered, as a basic principle, by an absolutely “independent” and, therefore, impartial and appropriate instance. And the candidates have to be at the same level of access to resources, because if some have public resources and others with their own resources, those elections should be considered fraudulent and vicious.
The author is a lawyer and a political scientist.
Bolivian Thoughts 