Dull, predictable, confrontational and with an insistence on blaming Jeanine Áñez’s presidency for all bad things labeled “de facto” or “coup” and comparing his government to a leadership in which not only that Country paralyzed because of the Covid-19 pandemic but that the whole world was in crisis were some of the features of President Luis Arce’s two and a half hour speech at the Legislative Assembly yesterday.
The report on the first year of Arce’s government was developed amid total embarrassment, with opposition whistles, combat threats, whistling noises, posters and red cards, among other things, causing inconvenience to the President, who read his on several occasions Lost Speech and took a sip of water to take the time and realize where he’d stopped reading. In this regard, Arce’s face became blurry and twitched at the gaze of MAS fighters who filled various rooms in the legislative assembly.
The president spent about two and a half hours introducing the nation to the achievements of his government compared to the Áñez government, which had to face the pandemic that crippled the whole world.
Los Tiempos put Arce’s speech under the control of political analysts. “We knew his message would be predictable. First, the de facto government, the right wing of the coup, wanted to do it, and it has insistently repeated it; It was also about getting the most out of the vaccination campaign and a third element was economic, ”said analyst and political scientist Franklin Pareja.
In addition, the political scientist doubted that the president had drawn comparisons with the government of Áñez, which had a difficult time. It was “dishonest,” he said.
“It seems dishonest to me to try to compare one of the worst moments, not just in the interim government, but one of the worst moments in the world because everyone was sick from the pandemic,” he said.
He reminded the president that “many countries in the world have entered strict quarantine, not just Bolivia. Not to say that seems dishonest to me ”.
For lawyer and analyst Paul Antonio Coca, it was inevitable that President Arce would not compare his management to Áñez’s.
“The inevitable comparison with the ñez government is evident that the MAS will never make a mea culpa about the actions that led to Áñez’s takeover,” he said.
Health and education
Regarding the way he dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, Arce said his administration reduced the lethality of Covid-19 from 6.2 percent in the first wave to 2.7 percent in what he called “incapable “The government of Áñez in the fight against this evil, and that now at the beginning of this fourth wave with 0.96 percent in November 2021, the lowest values of the entire pandemic are registered.
“After assuming the mandate, the country was in a deep health crisis (…) of the de facto government due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Arce, highlighting the vaccination campaign.
In this regard, analysts claim that “during the outbreak of this pandemic, the world was in dire straits, no one had the knowledge to face this virus, to provide drugs that surpassed intensive therapies across the hemisphere, so it was Bolivia not the exception. In view of the ignorance and the progression of the contagions, many countries have closed borders and declared strict quarantines.
Arce also highlighted the “regaining” of the right to education, which he said had been confiscated by the Áñez government. “Restoring the right to education for students has indeed been one of our main tasks since November 2020.”
Finally, the President mentioned that the National Justice Summit will be held in 2022 to reform the judicial system.
David Choquehuanca promises to ban “all kinds of fascism”
“The peoples are warned of new outbreaks of manipulation, destabilization, racism and division. (…) We will banish all kinds of fascism, colonialism, racism and confrontation among the Bolivians, “said Vice-President and Born President of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, David Choquehuanca, at the opening of the first session of the 2021 legislature – 2022.
The second president proposed that the calls for justice from the Bolivian people, particularly the family victims of the “massacres” that took place during Jeanine Áñez’s tenure in 2019, should be heard and resolved.
“What we have all learned in times of conflict is that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, that there is no best or only solution, that all solutions are alternatives, and that the principle of unity is to approach others in their otherness hear . “he showed.
He added that “2020 has warned and taught us that political chaos, abuse, corruption, injustice and human rights violations are not the path of our plurinational state. It is everyone’s duty to identify those responsible so that these events never happen again ”.
He stated that the government, social organizations, indigenous and urban communities will use all the resources democracy grants to banish all forms of racism and confrontation between Bolivians.
“We will work to ensure that illegitimate forces never turn into extremism again (…). We are currently in a process of change in which we need to build hope and implement new scenarios to agree on diversity, because nobody has a monopoly on the truth. We have to learn to listen to each other in their otherness, because everyone has the right to think differently, ”he said in the opening session.
