Gabriel Romano (EFE) / La Paz, Bolivia
The Movement for Socialism (MAS) must avoid a possible “popular fragmentation” for the 2025 elections in which it is expected there will be two factions: one led by the current president Luis Arce and another by the former president and leader of the ruling party, Evo Morales , warned in an interview with Efe Álvaro García Linera.
The former vice president identified a separation between the “political and state leadership,” which falls to Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca, and the “social leadership,” represented by Morales, as “something new” and could manifest itself in separate candidacies.
“Theoretically, they have the possibility (Arce and Choquehuanca) that they could present their candidacy in 2025 and they have every right to do so (…) what happens is that we do not know what their position will be in terms of the elections, whether they will be candidates within the MAS or not,” he explained.
You can also read: García Linera attacks Página Siete and El Deber: There are openly and blatantly coup-mongering newspapers
García Linera, who remains away from public office although politically active from society, referred to the events of the 2019 political crisis, which he considered were a “coup d’état”, and its effect on the structure of the MAS.
Morales, unifying factor
“I continue to reaffirm that Evo was the only personal guarantee of the unity of a very fragmented subordinate and popular plebeian society, if we have not gone in 2020 with a candidate who has maintained unity (Morales) it has been because of the coup,” he asserted.
In 2020, the MAS presented the Arce-Choquehuanca binomial before Morales left the country after the frustrated elections of the previous year that would have enabled him for a fourth term and that were denounced as fraudulent, although the latter has always been denied by the ruling party. .
“In truth, what has united has been the coup, this brutal displacement of the popular sectors of power is what has united them again,” he remarked.
You can also read: García Linera to users of tax havens: If they don’t repatriate the money, I’ll fall for them with expropriations
However, he considered that in the face of the 2025 elections it is possible that there will be a “fragmentation of the popular” and pointed out that now the MAS “no longer has a monopoly” on this type of representation, something that he affirmed was already perceived in last year’s subnational elections.
He also regretted that due to “parliamentary complicity” on the part of the opposition forces, since the official majority is not enough, the trial of responsibilities against former interim president Jeanine Añez is prevented, for the death of more than twenty civilians during the crisis of 2019.
“My hope is that by exhausting local instances, this will pass to an international instance (because) there is a report that speaks of a massacre,” said García Linera about the legal situation of Añez, who was held in preventive detention almost a year ago for accusations of illegalities at the time of taking office. the interim presidency.
different conditions
García Linera’s analysis is based on the fact that the conditions in the 2025 elections will be different than in 2020, since a “radicalization of the antagonisms” between the ruling party and the opposition will not be repeated, so the possibility of a fragmentation “is high “.
“Theoretically it is possible to think (of) a fragmentation, hopefully it will not happen, and we have to make an effort so that it does not happen, but the centrifugal tendencies are great”, he mentioned.
You can also read: García Linera: A president should have the lucidity to listen to people who have more experience
Morales’ former vice president, as well as one of the ideologues of the Plurinational State as a state model in Bolivia, asserted that the “algorithm” is being sought so that these two sociopolitical forces, that of Arce-Choquehuanca and that of Morales, function in “coordination and coordination.
“We have not found the mechanism of good coordination”, “sometimes there is a spark and another time it coordinates well again”, he remarked.
García Linera currently gives priority to academic matters, something he said he wanted to do “five years ago” to “pass on” his experiences to new generations.
He said he had permanent contact with Morales and spoke “with his colleagues,” although he did not specify with whom.
The former vice president decided not to intervene in local politics “out of respect for this new generation (of the MAS) that has assumed command of both the state structure and the social leadership.”
