Social movements approve strategy: Evo Morales organises offensive to defeat the fascist right

Hugo Moldiz

Convinced that it is necessary to have a correct reading of the results and mandates of the August 10 recall referendum with gave him 68% support in all the country, and that his indisputable hegemony in the west was strengthen by the triumph in the majority of the provinces of the so-called Half Moon (east), President Evo Morales and the social movements, who have called for the victory to be well administered, know that it is necessary to finish off the mortally wounded right that was defeat in order to ensure that it can not recuperate itself.

Just 15 days after obtaining a historic victory in the recall referendum, with the support of 68% of the country, Bolivian president Evo Morales has decided to further support himself on the force of the people and its mobilisation in order to confront the destabilisation plans of the ultra right, and make a reality the August 10 mandate: have a new Political Constitution of the State, reappropriate the banner of autonomy and establish a new form of distribution of state resources.

The decision is has been more than opportune in order to respond to a counter offensive that the right is seeking to make concrete, after its defeat in the popular consultation, through a destabilisation plan using violent, economic and judicial means which they hope to radicalise from Monday onwards.

Lacking political parties, the dominant classes, lead by the agroexporting, cattle ranching and commercial bourgeoisie - the most conservative of the old historic bloc that still continues to resist dying - have found in the form of the civic committees and the mass media the instruments to resist the process of change and to deal blows, on the political, physical and symbolic sphere, against Evo Morales and the project of emancipation that he represents.

The civic committees of five departments of the broadened “Half Moon” (Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija, Pando and the city of Sucre) in the last few days have moved from a hunger strike, to a 24 hour stoppage and another day of road blocks, to the execution of a plan aimed at the take over of public institutions, oil fields and the suspension of the distribution of meat and other products to the Bolivian west.

To these actions, until now rejected by the population, have been added the now common violent operations carried out by paramilitary groups at the urging of the Cruceñista Youth Union (UJC) that during the last few days have not only been directed at leaders and militants of the social movements but also police officers who have suffered blows and aggressions of all types.

The government knows it has to put a halt to this. The social movements demanded this on Saturday in the meeting they had with President Morales where they agreed to unite all political and social forces to deepen the process of change and defeat the agonising right wing, according the head of state.

Governments and social movements approved a line of march of advancing towards the approval, via a referendum, of the new Political Constitution of the State and the recuperation of the banner of autonomy that the right have utilised very well as part of their destabilising objectives.

The constitution approved last December by the Constituent Assembly leaves behind the monocultural state and recognises the plurinational character of the Bolivian social formation, broadens out representative democracy with the incorporation of forms of direct and communitarian democracy, emphasises the active role of the state and communitarian economy within the national economy, respects private property as long as it compiles with a socio-economic function, prohibits the installation of foreign military bases on national territory and contains a wide number of social rights for children, youth and older people, never before seen in 183 years of republican history.

The proposed constitution recognises four types of autonomy – departmental, regional, indigenous-originario-peasant and municipal (which already exists) – with which it surpasses the proposal of the dominant classes that only talks of departmental autonomy.

The government has expressed its disagreement with only implementing departmental autonomy with the criteria that it reproduces the centralism so criticised, bureaucratises and impedes access to resources for the municipalities and indigenous communities and restricts democracy.

Basing themselves on the victory in 95 of the 112 provinces in the country, which means a triumph in a majority of the provinces in the Half Moon, the government and the social movements have moreover adopted the decision to move towards the election of councilors and subprefects in all the country.

Along the same line, the government and the social movements ratified on Saturday that the resources of the state have to be distributed along similar criteria and that all levels of government – national and subnational – have to contribute to the sustainability of the social measures put in march during two and half years of government, such as the Dignity Rent that favours people over the age of 60 with a payment of 3000 bolivianos per year.

This line of work, whose mandate has already been built into the social imaginary on August 10, will translate itself into an offensive in all spheres, from the parliamentary to the social, and will count, above all else, on the solid unity that the president has called for in these decisive moments for the Bolivian revolution.

Translated from La Epoca

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