VOTE IN BLANK, CIVIL RESISTANCE TO EVO MORALES IN BOLIVIA FOR USURPATION AND ECOCIDE

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
September 20, 2019

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) This upcoming 20^th of October presidential elections in Bolivia will be held using the “vote-catching dictatorship” model imposed to a nation so disgusted and helpless for the farce of the legal and popular mandate that disqualifies Evo Morales from being a candidate and for the premeditated forest fire of almost five (5) million acres in the Amazons perpetrated by Morales.    In this electoral process, spruced up with functional opposition´s candidates who fracture the option of having real opposition and who enable, legitimize, and ensure the criminal reelection of Morales, Bolivia can again say NO through Civil Resistance by means of casting a vote in blank.

There are no democratic elections in Bolivia.  None of the fundamental components of democracy are complied with.  There is no Rule of Law, separation or independence of the branches of government –as Evo Morales proves by his participation as a candidate-, he is recalcitrant in violating his own constitution.  This is his fourth candidacy and third consecutive reelection.  It violates the 21 February referendum (21F) election that mandated he can NO longer be a candidate.

The CastroChavism system applies its existing electoral model in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua consisting of “voting but not electing in elections that are neither free, nor fair”.  It has turned Bolivia into a “vote-catching dictatorship” defined as “the regime that either by force or violence concentrates all political power in one person or one group, represses human rights and basic individual freedoms, and uses elections as the means of simulation and propaganda in order to indefinitely hold on to power”.

Evo Morales is a “usurper candidate” because he has seized ownership of a right that legitimately does not belong to him, and he does so with violence, appropriating to himself the dignity and the position that do not belong to him, using them as though they were his own”.   If he is able to carry out his plan, declaring himself as the winner of the elections and being sworn-in for the fourth time as Head of State in January of 2020, Morales will have the same status of Nicolas Maduro.  This is why it is urgent for Bolivians and international defenders of democracy and human rights to make the world to acknowledge this usurpation and take measures accordingly.

Bolivian people, victims of the crimes that Morales commits in order to stay in power, sustain his dictatorship, and be a usurper candidate, are now being attacked by a new series of crime that Morales and his regime perpetrate with the fire and ecocide in the Bolivian Amazon jungle.  Proof and consequence of these crimes are the almost five (5) million acres intentionally burned in protected areas and national parks in order to expand the areas for the cultivation of illegal coca-leaf/cocaine, grant land to settlers to change the political/electoral map of the country, and extend the agricultural activities of the regime´s entrepreneurs at the expense of devastating the wild flora and fauna, patrimony of Bolivians and the whole humanity.

A situation of helplessness, impotency and frustration, aggravated by the breach of the real function of political parties and leadership who, instead of defending the return to democracy and the recovery of the Republic, are accomplices of the vote-catching dictatorship.

Such a severe crisis leaves but one option for the people to take.  “Civil Resistance” meaning “the use of non-violent methods to challenge the usurper power and that –historically- has worked through the calling on the people and the challenging to the adversary, pressure, and non-violent coercion to leave the government”.

 In Bolivia, there already is civil resistance.  The movements; 21F, NO means NO, Bolivia Said NO, and others with mass demonstrations, civic work stoppages, and other measures, constitute civil resistance that the regime sabotages through political control, bribery, threats, and repression, all with the similar Castroist Chavist methodology that is applied in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.  The time in which the dictatorial apparatus has very few possibilities of success is on election´s day.  The act of going to the ballot box, in which every Bolivian citizen is compelled to vote, is the best time to defeat Evo Morales and his dictatorship through civil resistance.

Since neither the political parties, nor the so–called opposition candidates have been able to unite, or demand the existence of conditions of democracy for the elections to be free and fair, let alone to abstain if Evo Morales the usurper candidate participates, the people can, this upcoming 20^th of October, CAST A BLANK VOTE as an expression of their rejection and as a measure of civil resistance to force the usurper to leave the government and respect the 21F referendum and stop the ecocide in the Bolivian Amazon jungle.  Bolivia can again say NO to the dictatorship by CASTING A BLANK VOTE, delegitimizing Morales and tracing a path for the return of democracy and the Republic.

Published in Spanish by Infobae.com Sunday, September 8, 2019

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators´ Association, ATA # 234680.