DOWN WITH DECREE 5503 OF THE PEACE GOVERNMENT

By: Alberto Giovanelli

When the recently inaugurated Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz promulgated Supreme Decree 5503 eliminating fuel subsidies, causing an increase of up to 86% in the price of special gasoline and 163% for diesel, I never imagined that protests from various sectors of workers, popular sectors and the poor would immediately be called for, and even a crisis in his recently appointed board of ministers and the almost definitive rupture with his vice-president Edmand Lara.

The powerful Federation of Mineworkers’ Unions led the protest against the “gasolinazo”, followed by other important union sectors such as the Single Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), the Urban Teachers’ Union, and yesterday, December 25, the COB declared a strike for an indefinite period of time with roadblocks.

While the marches were taking place in downtown La Paz, near Plaza Murillo, the Government of Rodrigo Paz deployed a brutal repression, violently attacking with gas and rubber bullets, arresting an undetermined number of demonstrators, before the shameful silence of the mainstream media, which only highlighted partial agreements with unrepresentative sectors in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

In the midst of the unleashed crisis, former policeman and current vice-president Edmand Lara, lashed out against the decree and published a video in the social network Tik Tok in which he questioned Paz for “setting him aside” and accused him of “governing for the rich” and of “surrounding himself with corrupt people”. We must remember that Lara’s support was vital for Paz’s electoral triumph, so the vice-president’s distance distances himself from the most popular figure of the new government.

It is very important to point out that this crisis is unleashed a little more than a month after Paz’s inauguration, which allows us to foresee that this is the first round of a long fight that the Bolivian people will give against the neoliberal policies of the new administration and its false promise of “capitalism for all”, which is only a foretaste of the measures that the new government will take in favor of the rich and the most powerful sectors of the country.

Hence, unconditional support and accompaniment to all the measures of resistance are an indispensable first step to defeat the government decree. Simultaneously we must advance in the organization of the revolutionary and anti-capitalist sectors to be able to overcome the experience of the MAS and its thunderous failure, ratifying the futility of trying to reform “capitalism” and make it “more humane” as its leader Evo Morales and his ideologue Alvaro Garcia Linera never tired of preaching, among others.

In order to change reality and advance to a government of those who never governed, the workers and the people, the unity of revolutionaries in an organization that really intends to turn everything around, is an urgent task.

Repudiation of the brutal repression of the Paz government!
Repression does not take away hunger!
Down with DS. 5503!
Immediate freedom for all those imprisoned for struggle!
For the unity of all those who claim to be anti-capitalists in transition to a government of the workers and for Socialism!