The pro-Morales wing in Congress launched its own sexual scandal against Arce, preparing a press conference where a woman named Yéssica Villarroel denounced the current president for having a secret relationship with her and forcing her to have an abortion.
As the political conflict in Bolivia moves from mudslinging to an assassination attempt and potentially civil war, Morales and Arce have relied on their control of sections of the capitalist state, the MAS party, peasant organizations and the union bureaucracy.
All factions, however, are doing everything possible to preempt a mass intervention of the working class in the political and economic crisis. A major hike in the cost of living this year, shortages of fuel and dollars and economic stagnation have led to limited strikes among teachers, truckers, and other workers, as well as pot-banging protests in cities.
Following its economic “miracle” in 2003-2014, when the economy boomed in tandem with the rising gas export prices, Bolivia has proven to be a weak link in the breakdown of bourgeois rule internationally as a result of the US-led imperialist drive to recolonize and redivide the world, which includes securing control over lithium and other key natural resources in Bolivia and Latin America against China and Russia.
Facing economic stagnation as a result of the drying up of natural gas, lower gas and lithium prices, the growth of public debt and the depletion of foreign reserves, each faction of the Bolivian ruling class is vying for support from one or another imperialist or capitalist power. This process, which is taking place across Latin America, threatens to drag the country and the region into world war. At the same time, however, the entire ruling class is determined to secure capitalist rule and exploitation against the working class.
Carlos Romero, a leader of the pro-Morales camp and former minister, had insisted earlier this year that “Morales is doing everything possible to contain a social mobilization.” On Tuesday, he warned Arce: “Military intervention would lead to an escalation of deaths and the escalation of deaths will provoke an uprising of greater dimensions and a greater state crisis, so what is the best way forward? For the government to convene a major national dialogue.”
Nonetheless, from Añez to Arce and Morales, no faction of the Bolivian ruling class has any other response to the deepening crisis of Bolivian capitalism than resorting to police state rule. None of them has any legitimacy in the eyes of the millions of Bolivian workers due to their record of austerity measures, corruption and repression. Workers cannot stay on the sidelines. The only way forward lies in mobilizing politically for power as part of a world socialist revolution.
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Publish date : 2024-10-31 10:43:00
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