With or without an invitation, Camacho will go to the appointment for the census on Monday: "I assume that the only guests are those who follow the MAS line"

When asked if he finally received an invitation to the meeting on Monday, August 15, the governor of Santa Cruz said this Saturday, August 13, that, without a doubt, it is intended not to involve people who do not think the same as the Government and that they do not agree with the census being done in 2024.

“That is why I assume that the only guests are those who follow the line of the MAS, who are the mayors of the masismoplus the mayor of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and what they want is to sit them down so that they continue raising their hands by 2024, while the Santa Cruz institutionality, represented in this inter-institutional commission, wants in 2023,” he said.

Camacho also assured that, invited or uninvited, you will still attend the census socialization meetingconvened for this Monday 15. “Whether they invite me or not, I have to attend to convey the feeling of the people who want the census to be in 2023“, he affirmed, recalling that in Cochabamba the governor, the rector and the mayor cannot be present at the meeting, and that in Santa Cruz they are wanting to “purify those who do not think alike”.

In case the organizers want to prevent his participation, he said that we have to leave the proposal, and be insistent so that “the intolerance of the Governmentwho clearly does not want to meet with the authorities.”

Along the same lines, the rector Vicente Cuéllar, who until this Saturday the 13th had not been formally invited, which he classified as a symptom of improvisation on the part of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and the Ministry of Planning. Nevertheless, also assured his participation on 15.

“We are always going to look for the scenarios to dialogue technically. We will attend the place and time that they make known publicly, as an inter-institutional commission, with the technicians who prepared this proposal,” he said about the document that supports the census in 2023.

Cuéllar said that as the Interinstitutional Census Committee they want to know their schedule (INE and Ministry of Planning). “We do not want this meeting to be a delaying meeting to do the censusor that they only let us know the conceptual and regulatory framework of the census, We want to know the schedule, with the date of completion of each of the activitiess, just as we are going to present it,” he asserted.

According to unofficial data from the Mayor’s Office, Jhonny Fernández did not receive the formal invitation either.

Regarding the place where the event will take place, the vice president of the Association of Municipalities of Santa Cruz (Amdecruz), Pedro Damián Dorado, clarified that andn the first instance, it was planned to do so at Amdecruz facilities, but the plans were changed in the face of alleged threats of groups demanding the census be carried out in 2023.

For the constitutionalist José Luis Santistevan, the reasons for postponing the census have more to do with political reasons than technical ones.

He said that the Government wants to carry out the census in 20204 because after a year, that is in 2025, he will only want to get the results, in such a way that the resources will arrive in 2026, and representation in the Chamber of Deputies will only become viable in 2030.

“The underlying issue is that citizens will not have representation in the Chamber of Deputies. What the country must understand is that it will not have resources or political representation. Results and terms are key, as is the date,” he argued.

According to Santistevan, initially the reThe census was held in November 2022 because the results, applicable until 2025, would not come out until August 2024. “That is why the Government threw it away for June 2024. In the 2001 census we increased from 22 to 25 parliamentarians, in the 2012, from 25 to 28, that is, six parliamentarians in two censuses. Now there will be more, whether they like it or not, the Political Constitution of the State (CPE) says that,” he said.

Santistevan called as “political deception” that the data is introduced in 2030 and not in 2025. “The MAS thesis is that in Santa Cruz will never win the MAStherefore, the result of three or four more parliamentarians in Santa Cruz it could mean the MAS losing the Chamber of DeputiesIt is a matter of State strategy and geopolitics, but one that violates the CPE,” he concluded.