

The Coup Against the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia and Its President Canada Must Stop Being a Tool for Regime Change! Stand with the People of Bolivia Demanding Reinstatement of the President They Elected Events of the past week in Bolivia make crystal clear that what we have been witnessing is the culmination of a military coup against President Evo Morales who was re-elected in the October 20 general election and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) which he leads that won the majority of seats in both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. There is irrefutable evidence that the events which transpired over the past week are connected to U.S. efforts to co-opt and influence military and police forces in the region through programs it has in place for this purpose. In addition, leaked audio tapes have emerged which suggest certain U.S. politicians and embassy officials worked with retired Bolivian military officers and opposition politicians and some others to organize and finance the kind of violent and destabilizing actions that have taken place as well as the creation of a parallel government if Evo won the election. That such a plan existed is given credibility by the fact that according to Evo, a member of his security team told him he had been offered $50,000 to hand Evo over to his political enemies. Showing its bad conscience, the Trudeau government refuses to acknowledge the obvious. In its statements, Global Affairs has so far referred only to President Morales "resigning" and its readiness to support a "temporary caretaker administration to prepare for new elections and avoid a power vacuum." This means Canada is supporting opposition Senator Jeanine Añez, a person who, like Juan Guaidó in Venezuela, unconstitutionally declared herself the interim president -- in her case backed by the military, with an army officer assisting her don the presidential sash at her swearing-in. With the presidency captured, opposition Añez named her own cabinet and, belying the notion that hers is only a caretaker administration until a new election is held, set about dismantling programs and arrangements of all types put in place by the Morales government and generally unleashing a wave of revenge-taking against its members and supporters. If the interim "president" has her way, not just Evo but any candidate of the MAS will be barred from contesting the new election. Meanwhile the police and army have been given a green light to attack and arbitrarily arrest those resisting the coup -- many of them members of the country's Indigenous nations. As of November 16, 23 deaths had been reported across the country, many caused by bullets.

Rally of rural teachers in La Paz, November 13, 2019, demanding the self-proclaimed coup government step down. In the regime change operations mounted against both Bolivia and Venezuela, Canada has been an important player, working through the Organization of American States (OAS) to declare elections illegitimate or fraudulent that have not produced the desired results. It then works with coup forces to illegitimately remove the presidents and governments elected by the people of those countries. In the case of Bolivia's recent election, separate analyses of the results performed by different experts do not support the conclusions allegedly reached by the team that performed the audit for the OAS. All the studies concluded that the reported irregularities were not significant and that removing the suspect number of votes cast for Evo would not have affected his first round victory. All of which suggests that the alleged irregularities reported by the OAS team -- which it provided no concrete evidence for and never said amounted to fraud -- was the pretext needed to call for rejecting the results altogether and holding a new election, opening the door for the coup forces to claim Evo was elected through "fraud" and to make their move against him. In whose name was Canada acting to help instigate this?

March from 20 states in Bolivia to the government headquarters in support of Evo Morales,

November 15, 2019. Canada has played a similar role in other U.S.-orchestrated coups or coup attempts in the hemisphere this century -- including the coups against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 2004 and President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009. In both cases the leader and governments targeted for regime change were attempting to chart their own course for development, giving priority to meeting the needs of the working people and most vulnerable rather than embracing the harsh neo-liberal remedies of the IMF that have destroyed national economies and brought misery to so many people around the world. In those two cases, beyond the role it played in supporting the coups perpetrated against those presidents, Canada under both Conservative and Liberal governments weighed in to prevent the people's forces from electing their choice of government by rushing in to support subsequent electoral coups to ensure the continuation in power of neo-liberal governments and the repressive apparatus they do not hesitate to wield against the people. The fact that Canada was tapped by the U.S. to lead the Lima Group, supposedly to "restore democracy in Venezuela," shows what kind of democracy, human rights and rule of law Canada stands for. The Lima Group is a collection of some of the most corrupt, repressive, undemocratic, rights-violating governments anywhere -- among them Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Chile, Peru, all of them facing crises of legitimacy and widespread repudiation at home.

The Trudeau government's hypocrisy appears to have no bounds. It is making endless declarations on its own behalf and as part of the Lima Group about the democratic and constitutional order having been ruptured in Venezuela, warranting punitive action by the OAS. Not only are the people of Venezuela standing steadfast against the attempts to bring about regime change in Venezuela but Canada's attempts have never been realized for lack of the required support inside the OAS itself. Meanwhile, it is willfully blind to the attack on the constitution and democracy -- as well as on the lives of the people of Bolivia demanding the return of their legitimate president -- by the racist oligarchy now taking their revenge on the "Indians" they so despise. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on Canadians to unreservedly support the demand of the Bolivian people for the reinstatement of their elected president Evo Morales and to demand that the government of Canada end its gross interference in the affairs of Bolivia and Venezuela in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the norms of diplomacy, which no amount of Liberal hypocrisy about working for free and fair elections, human rights and a "rules-based order" can hide.

This article was published in



Volume 49 Number 27 - November 16, 2019

Article Link:

The Coup Against the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia and Its President: Canada Must Stop Being a Tool Regime Change! Stand with the People of Bolivia Demanding Reinstatement of the President They Elected





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