The meeting was agreed for 3:00 p.m. this Tuesday. President Luis Arce will meet with the mayors of the capitals of the nine departments in addition to El Alto to discuss the observations on Law 1407 that gave life to the 2020-2025 Social Development Planning Plan.
The local authorities expressed the need to ask the Head of State to respect municipal autonomy, as one of the observations to the law has to do, precisely, with that model of decentralization in force in the Constitution.
On the one hand, the mayor of Santa Cruz, Jhonny Fernández, announced that his bet is precisely to ensure that issue.
“I am going to fight a lot because the autonomies are respected, that there are no more laws or decrees above our powers, that they do not transfer powers to us and they do not give us financial resources. The issue of reactivation is one of the pillars that we are also going to raise ”, he remarked.
Law 1407 contains a 209-page annex containing the five-year plan. The fourth article establishes the “obligation” of its fulfillment for all autonomous entities, municipalities and governments, as well as universities. In an additional provision, it establishes that all state entities must adapt their plans according to the national plan. The mayors of the capital cities, which are part of the Association of Bolivian Municipalities (AMB), indicated that these provisions may affect municipal autonomies.
The Development Plan establishes an investment of US $ 35,000 million for five years. The mayors requested a meeting with Arce to explain to them if those resources have to do with municipal funds.
To this agenda, Fernández also plans to address the pending tasks of the 2022 Population and Housing Census. He will propose the creation of a commission to monitor the process.
For his part, the mayor of La Paz, Iván Arias, considered that during the meeting the mayors will be able to “express discrepancies until they agree on disagreements and at least that helps and what will happen on Tuesday is important.” said the mayor.
Arias affirmed that the 10 mayors that make up the AMB will attend, the heads of the nine capitals and El Alto, who will have a preparatory meeting on Tuesday morning hours before the appointment with the head of state that will take place at the Casa Grande del Village.
Additionally, he affirmed that part of the agenda that they will take to the meeting is the request for a trust to pay debts inherited from previous efforts. “We want to see if the president can create a trust to pay debts to small, medium and large entrepreneurs, which allows us to grow the economy,” he said.
He reported that in the case of La Paz a debt of Bs 250 million is dragged.
From Cochabamba, Mayor Manfred Reyes Villa indicated that he will participate in the meeting with a “constructive” perspective, focused on the reactivation of the economy of the entire country.
The Vice Minister of Autonomies, Álvaro Ruiz, announced that at that meeting several doubts regarding Law 1407 will be resolved.
