Media concentration affects democracy says Atilio Boron

Bolivia wants stability and rejects presidential recall

“People don’t want the president removed, how do we read that? Not the percentage of 50 percent, but that the people are for stability, social tranquillity, jobs and security and that all these elements are guaranteed by President Arce,” he said in an interview with the PAT channel.

The poll, by Captura Consulting, comes to light as Santa Cruz’s bourgeois leadership is sponsoring a referendum to remove the president in response to the government’s rejection of demands for amnesty for those charged and imprisoned in the conspiracy , which led to the coup d’état. Budget from 2019, the main sponsor of which was the governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho.

One such conspiracy forced the resignation of former President Evo Morales, placed Jeanine Áñez at the head of the de facto government, and led to the subsequent massacres in Sacaba and Senkata, which left 38 dead, hundreds injured, and thousands imprisoned and tortured.

These excesses led to a complaint by former MP Lidia Patty and the opening of the Coup I criminal file, which led to the arrest of Camacho, a terrorism charge in late December 2022, and preventive detention in Chonchocoro Maximum Security Prison.

Political sections of the opposition also reject the dismissal on the grounds that failure would strengthen the image of the president.

These authorities include the governor and mayor of Tarija, Óscar Montes and Johnny Torres respectively; alongside the Mayor of La Paz, Iván Arias, the leadership of the rebellious National Committee for the Defense of Democracy and the Civic Community Party.

Bolivia ended 2022 with a record exports of $13,653 million, a budget deficit of just 7.2 percentage points and cumulative inflation of 3.12 per 100 units, the lowest in the region.

In addition, the year-to-date consumer price index recorded a second-month decline of -0.44 percent from January, with the cumulative change through February being negative, falling -0.11 percentage points.

Richter emphasized that these indicators and society’s perception show that the “apocalyptic” vision of some political actors, who have been talking about an “economic crisis” for years, and that the Productive Community social economy model “it ended” is not real.

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