16 June 2021
My Word to the Country
Throughout my life I have been committed to Bolivia and to democracy, I have practiced it, I have defended it and I have detached myself from power when I had it, because of my conviction that respect for human rights and life is one of its most important values.
Evo Morales is the author of the largest electoral fraud in democracy and of having mocked the Bolivian people on 21F [21 February 2016] by not respecting its decision against his indefinite re-election. Not satisfied with these irreparable damages, he decided to subordinate the interests of the country and the dramatic health and unemployment problems that citizens face, to his own interest, which is none other than his unhealthy obsession to return to the presidency at any cost. For this he wants to whitewash the fraud he perpetrated, inventing a non-existent coup d’État.
By accusing me of being the author of the alleged coup, Morales has decided to complete his plan, destroy me and destroy the main democratic opposition force in the country, represented by Comunidad Ciudadana.
The one who fled Bolivia after resigning the presidency, the one that organized a plan to interrupt the constitutional line of succession and generate chaos and civil confrontation between compatriots, the one who instructed his militants to block and cause shortages in our main cities, speaks today shamelessly about a coup and coup plotters.
Morales, the government, and the MAS want me to lower my head and provide explanations. I won’t do either. There is no explanation for those who, like me, have done and would do a hundred times what must be done in defense of peace, democracy, and the Constitution, which is what I did between 2018 and 2020. As a presidential candidate, I faced the autocracy and as a democrat, I supported the recomposition of the constitutional line of succession that Morales tried to destroy in order to lead us to an internal war. A task that included the participation as facilitators of the Catholic Church, the European Union, the United Nations, and the Embassy of Spain.
It was my candidacy in 2019 that forced Morales to make a [electoral] fraud to avoid his certain defeat in a second round. His resignation and escape were the product of desperation to remain in the presidency at any price, in this case, to circumvent the popular sovereignty expressed through the vote.
Now, on Morales’ orders, orders accepted by Luis Arce, the Public Ministry and the Judicial Branch, proven executing arms of the governing autocracy, have put together in the most sloppy way a “case”, that of the delirious invention called the coup d’État. The district attorney’s office, at the height of the illegality of form and substance, gives more credibility to the pages of a book than to two State laws: Law 1266 that annulled the fraudulent elections and Law 1270 called “Exceptional Extension Law of the CONSTITUTIONAL mandate of elected authorities,” which prolonged the term of the then President Añez.
Both laws enacted by the Legislative Assembly –controlled by the MAS– on 24 November 2019 and 20 January 2020, generate State jurisprudence and recognize the full legitimacy and constitutional legality of the Government of Jeanine Añez and of its origin. To open a process invented by a coup d’État, the unconstitutionality of both norms should be previously declared and the president of the Senate Eva Copa, the president of the Deputies Sergio Choque, and the other five members of the board of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly and all the legislators who approved these laws should be prosecuted as co-authors of the alleged coup d’État.
Precisely because of these terrible events, I ask President Luis Arce: Will you continue to support the actions filled with hatred and ambition of power of Evo Morales? Will you continue to send your ministers and spokesmen to lie to the Bolivian people by denying the constitutional succession that you yourself publicly admitted? Are you willing to remain subordinated to Morales, even at the risk of leading your administration to disaster? I accuse Evo Morales, Luis Arce, and the MAS of lying, of distorting the facts, of inventing a crime to destroy the opposition, destroy me, and lead the country into a spiral of confrontation in the midst of a profound health and unemployment crisis. All planned and forced by the disproportionated ambition of a man who has already done too much harm to Bolivia before fleeing on 10 November 2019 in a foreign-flagged plane.
Source: https://carlosdmesa.com/2021/06/16/mi-palabra-al-pais/
