Bolivia’s Urgent Mission: Defeat the MAS | La Misión Urgente de Bolivia: Derrotar al MAS

Priority number one: Expelling the MAS

By Jimmy Ortiz, El Deber:

Indeed, that is the number one priority of the Bolivian people: to expel this nefarious regime, an appendage of the transnational Socialism of the 21st Century, heir to the failed communism that fell with the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union, demonstrating in practice its economic, political, and social inviability.

While the antidemocratic Movement for Socialism is in a clear stage of exhaustion, it is necessary to give it the final push. We have to break free from its clutches so that Bolivia can be a decent country.

As long as the MAS governs, this country will not have freedom, democracy, or justice. There will be no autonomy or federalism; we will not have a clean voter registry or elections without fraud; there will be no Fiscal Pact; environmental concerns will not be respected, and we will certainly not have a country free from drug trafficking, public corruption, and indigenous racism, all deeply rooted in the plurinational state.

The MAS is already self-destructing, although some analysts believe it is merely a charade imposed from Cuba. Nevertheless, the citizens no longer tolerate them. Their dirty laundry aired in public makes them fully visible: a party of malicious people willing to do anything to cling to power, even if it means destroying the country to its ashes. I have no doubt they will go down in history as the most abominable party to have governed this poor nation. They will be remembered with sadness, just as Germans remember Nazism, having discredited in the process the left of the Grupo de Puebla and the Quechua and Aymara indigenous movements, their creators, operators, and ultimately their only beneficiaries.

Now it is up to the democratic opposition forces to rise to the challenge of history. Last February, I wrote an article titled “A Broad Front for 2025,” expressing the need for unity to defeat the coca growers and their allies.

Once this front is formed, and leveraging its powerful synergy, we must demand clean and fair elections, ensuring equal conditions for voters and candidates. To this end, three measures are minimally necessary:

  1. Eliminate discriminatory electoral regulations that violate the universal democratic principle of one citizen, one vote. It is unacceptable for Constituency 10 in La Paz to have 191,363 citizens while Constituency 15 has only 74,798, yet both elect a deputy. Or for Constituency 57 in Santa Cruz to have 154,589 citizens while Constituency 53 has only 100,306, yet both still elect a deputy. But the most incredible thing is that the special constituency of Oruro, Indigenous Origin Campesina No. 3, Chipaya, and Uru Murato, has only 1,235 and still elects a deputy. It’s unbelievable! We have returned to qualified voting. But all of this is calculated to favor the MAS, plain and simple. We must be vigilant in this new redistribution of constituencies coming with the 2024 census.
  2. It is imperative to elect a new Plurinational Electoral Body with ethical, competent, and politically neutral professionals, removing from the institution all those who participated in the 2019 fraud. We do not accept biased referees.
  3. It is also necessary to establish a new voter registry that enjoys the trust of the citizens, legitimizing democracy.

Under these conditions of fairness, I have no doubt that the MAS will lose at the polls. What remains afterward is the monumental task of rebuilding Bolivia, starting with revoking the legal status of the MAS, not only for the gross fraud of 2019 but also for the disaster of a country they have left us. Demanding that they return all the money they stole from us, starting with the Indigenous Fund, will be another indispensable measure to take.

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