- Crisis.Evo Morales resigns as president of Bolivia and denounces an illegal detention order against him
The power vacuum threatens Bolivia, as demonstrated during the night of chaos and riots that followed Evo Morales's resignation. The indigenous leader has decided to entrench himself in his fief cocalero in the Tropic of Cochabamba, the department where precisely last Friday the spark of the police rebellion that ended with 13 years and nine months of revolution emerged.
The resignation of Commander Yuri Calderón, chief of the police, has joined a long rosary of abandonments in the official ranks, which does not mean, much less, that the Aymara leader has given his arm to twist. "Carlos Mesa [presidential candidate of the Citizen Community, the first to denounce the fraud] and Luis Fernando Camacho [president of the Pro Santa Cruz Civic Committee, the main driver of street protests], discriminators and conspirators, will go down in history as racists and coup plotters That they assume their responsibility to pacify the country and guarantee the stability and peaceful coexistence of our people . The world and Bolivian patriots repudiate the coup, "Morales urged from his internal" exile. "
There is no lack (revolutionary) reason for the great regional ally of Chavismo to state that he has support, and many. But the reality is that the Army has not taken power in the Andean country, which does not find right now who directs it. The succession of events in just three weeks is already a political milestone in Latin America: after the fraud came the citizen protest, with blockades and strikes and without political parties protecting them. The demands of the people activated the police riot and the confirmation of the fraud caused the resignation of important governmental political factors .
The last link in the chain, the military, joined the others after they declared their neutrality in the first instance, which only lasted a few hours in the face of the savage attack that government officials inflicted on the caravan of students and miners who wanted to reach La Paz to request the departure of Morales. The three fatalities of the three weeks that have changed Bolivia occurred in similar circumstances, during attacks by followers of Evo .
Address uncertainty
Uncertainty can only be channeled through the full call of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, which should appoint as provisional president the opposition senator Jeanine Añez, second vice president of the Chamber . This is maintained by the successor line after the cascade of resignations, starting with that of Morales and following that of his right hand, Vice President Álvaro García Linera. They were followed by the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra; Senator Rubén Medinaceli and Víctor Borda, president of the Chamber of Deputies. The aforementioned is a parliamentarian of the Democratic Union party, little known at the national level, who yesterday was able to access the hemicycle. From there, he called for calm and summoned the rest of parliamentarians today for a session that can make history. Its objective is that the elections are held before January 22, when the new legislature begins.
"The only possibility of building a democratic succession, so that the world does not accuse us of a coup d'etat, is that the Assembly has a quorum," said Mesa, who called on the police to regain control of the streets and allow the deputies of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) access the Chamber to carry out the session.
Camacho, who has become a national hero for a part of the country, also asked his followers in the streets to keep up the pressure for at least 48 hours, so that elections can be called in 60 days.
In similar terms, the Catholic Church expressed itself, who ruled out that the country has suffered a coup d'etat, but at the same time made a clear call to cease violence and to immediately seek a constitutional and peaceful exit.
"The call to elections is necessary," said Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) whose preliminary report on the fraud of October 20 cornered Evo Morales on Sunday morning. The political move of the indigenous leader, calling an election in which he himself would be a candidate, failed after the defection of ministers, governors and other official leaders. The coup de grace was executed by the military high command, by "suggesting" publicly that there was no other way but the presidential resignation .
Vandalism Incidents and Assaults
The outcome came at full speed after the military pronouncement, which have not taken power as they denounce inside and outside the country. Morales has not accepted asylum offers in Mexico and Venezuela at the moment and so he decided to fly to his Andean fief, leaving behind a country in chaos. At least 64 buses burned in La Paz in an attack by angry government supporters, as Mayor Luis Revilla denounced. Other incidents were repeated throughout the country, including the assault on a house of Morales, where a group of vandals repeated the same liturgy performed in the taking of the palaces of Husein, but much more modestly.
The clashes did not cease after the cessation, the other way around. The wave of violence intensified with the burning of homes, attacks on the media and public companies on both sides. Even some who celebrated were attacked by those who shouted against the alleged coup.
"We are facing a political crisis in which it is important to prevent extremist sectors from taking over the transition and revanchism prevails," warned political scientist Daniel Zovatto . Many are the open questions and little time to answer them, from if they will finally provisionally assume the opposition policy to what will be the composition of the new Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), knowing that several of their members remain detained and are being interrogated by Prosecutor's order.
The role of Evo and who will be his substitute as a candidate in his ranks is as momentous as knowing if the opposition will repeat with Mesa as the main candidate or if Camacho will launch into a new fratricidal duel, as usual in the oppositions of the different revolutions. "The route is clear: immediate cessation of all violence, respect for the rule of law and free and fair elections with international observation," said political scientist Armando Chaguaceda .
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