9 November 2021
Tik Tok Diplomacy
By: Iván Camarlinghi – Diplomat and Journalist
A few days ago, the former Ambassador to Paraguay Mario Cronenbold was dismissed from his duties for the mockery he made of one of the traditions of the Guaraní people: the Tereré, as important as tea in England, Yerba-Mate in Argentina and Uruguay or mid-morning Salteñas time in Bolivia.
Cronenbold had the curtness to believe that he was with Tachuelita or any other clown, to record a Tik Tok video in which he distorted his voice to make a fool of not the tradition of the tereré, but the Bolivian diplomacy before Paraguay, a noble and combative people that faced Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in a war (that of the Triple Alliance) in the 19th century and Bolivia in the 20th century.
It is shameful (also for the Mayta Foreign Ministry) that an administration in 12 months of management has been so conspicuously absent, just as we warned eleven months ago in this same [opinion] column. The only “epic” battle won by the management has been to have exterminated institutionalized diplomacy in less than 24 hours, by means of a communiqué that ordered all career diplomats to leave their positions, under penalty of being prosecuted for those who did not proceed in this way. They tell me that now several former diplomats of the Añez administration are being prosecuted.
We do not know what the Chancellor intended to do with the previous measure. Exterminate career diplomats with one stroke of the pen? He must have already realized that that will not be easy. What’s more, here we are more than 250 professionals trained by the Bolivian State to defend its interests, and we will continue to do so even if Mayta does not return our items back to us (which he should do if the judges who heard our three lawsuits against the Chancellor for having dismissed us without any motive, other than politics, had extended a just mandate).
Mayta says there is no diplomatic career (how will there be? If one of his first measures was to lay off 90% of career diplomatic personnel) and that is why it is justified to send the most rancid and rickety MAS militants to our consulates and embassies, e.g.: Mario Cronenbold. Will all ambassadors appointed by Evo and appointed by Mayta be tested? Or is the political membership card enough? Although they cannot answer even with which countries Bolivia borders.
Diplomacy is a matter of personalities. The great difference between the Ambassadors of the traditional parties and those appointed by Evo is that the traditional parties were concerned with appointing militants who had experience and merits in the activity such as Manfredo Kempff, Valentín Abecia, Guido Riveros, Lidia Gueiller, Fernando Messmer, Jorge Soruco, Jorge Gumucio, to name just a few; the difference is abysmal in relation to Evo’s Ambassadors: Mario Cronenbold, Jerjes Justiniano, Arce Zaconeta, Sacha Llorenti, Norma Brito, Diego Pary, Gringo Gonzáles, Felipe Cáceres and others who have to their credit, the ridiculous record of having tried to prosecute the Secretary-General of the OAS, with the support of 3 countries (obviously Bolivia among them), Luis Almagro, something that not even the most recalcitrant Cubans had tried at the height of the Cuban Revolution.
Is what happened to Cronenbold in Paraguay by chance? We don’t think so. Ambassadors who were not even given instructions for the mission, because that old but effective practice of the Republican Chancellery has been discarded, like most of the procedures of traditional diplomacy for having been demonized since, “supposedly,” it was employed “during neoliberal governments.” It is worth remembering that these norms are of universal use and are common to all Foreign Ministries of the world, except ours.
Mayta had to dismiss Cronenbold as soon as the offensive Tik Tok towards Paraguay was known, but the Chancellor is so badly advised that he waited for the Chamber of Deputies of that country to approve a declaration of “persona non grata” to dismiss the former “diplomat” from his position, an act that made diplomats from other countries laugh, because of how grotesque it was, but it made us cry.
Cronenbold’s outburst is by no means an isolated case. Like this case, there are many others that can be remembered in the 15 years of the Choquehuanca, Huanacuni, Pary, and Mayta administrations, such as the accusations of sexual harassment against the former Bolivian Ambassador in Moscow; the case of former Ambassador Nardi Suxo, whose daughter (former Consul in Berlin) was reported to the German Chancellery because she had confiscated the passport of the domestic worker that she brought to her destination and she seized her salary for several months without valid reason; something very similar to the confiscation that Mayta has made of more than 250 public servants whom he dismissed without justification. These are just some of the many scandals in the MAS Foreign Service, not counting other irregularities such as the payment of tickets and per diem to leaders of social movements, without these belonging to the Ministry’s payroll.
Much was said in the past about the Diplomacy of the National Revolution, of the Diplomacy of the Mining-Feudal Cronyism, of the Diplomacy of the Peoples (fantasy of the MAS), the Diplomacy of the Military Uprising, the Career Diplomacy, but nothing was ever said about the Tik Tok Diplomacy until now because the Tik Tok App did not exist, but now that it exists, it can be said, without any doubts, that the Diplomacy of Arce Catacora and Rogelio Mayta will be known as the “Tik Tok Diplomacy”. Hopefully, there is time to rectify this “diplomacy”, before the Bicentennial of Bolivia in 2025, because our great and heroic homeland and people deserve a better and more serious diplomatic and consular representation before the world.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2021/11/9/la-diplomacia-del-tik-tok-314623.html
