This within the framework of the first day of the Progressive International in which Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis and Noami Klein were present.
Andrés Arauz and Luis Arce, candidates for the Presidency of Ecuador and Bolivia respectively, denounced judicial and political persecution, which has intensified this year due to the electoral context in both countries.
The statements were made in the virtual talk “Lawfare and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”, framed on the first day of the Progressive International where the former candidate for president of Colombia Gustavo Petro and the former Argentine ambassador to Venezuela and the United Kingdom, Alicia Castro, also participated.
Arauz denounced that the Government of Lenín Moreno along with other right-wing sectors want to exclude the Citizen Revolution from the 2021 elections.
“I want to send an alert to the world: they want to rob us of democracy in Ecuador. What Arce said for Bolvia is also happening in our country. There are direct threats against our electoral process: they eliminated our party, they issued a very fast sentence to prevent the participation of the former president (Rafael Correa). Now they are activating an operation to prevent us from showing up, ” he explained.
The candidate for the Democratic Center stated that Ecuadorian democracy is threatened by Plan Cóndor 2.0 since the new mechanisms of this process are being evidenced through the judicialization of politics and the interference of the Judicial system to exclude progressivism: “We need study what lawfare means ”.
The 35-year-old Ecuadorian candidate emphasized the need to reinforce the progress progressivism had made with economic equality: “Which will not be possible with elites that control the wealth of our countries and do not invest in it, but take it to tax havens.”
On his side, Luis Arce, candidate for the Presidency in Bolivia for the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) representing former president Evo Morales, referred to the context of political struggle that frames the electoral campaign, this after the calendar of the elections was has postponed three times:
“Every moment that we set a date for the elections would be the peak of the pandemic. That’s what the de facto government (of Jeanine Áñez) said. It was a false argument. The idea of the right wing in our country was basically to hold the elections for next year. Why? In Bolivia, the de facto government committed numerous acts of corruption, even increasing drug trafficking in the area where Áñez is, in Beni.
The Arce-Choquehuanca formula is in the first place of the candidates in Bolivia, so the MAS candidate underlined the support of the people for not allowing a new extension for the electoral process:
“The population demands the recovery of democracy. They did not like the change of elections and that is why the people, the Central Obrera Boliviana, the rural workers organized to blockade, demanding that the voting date be fixed. And that there are guarantors of the entire process”.
In this context, he urged international progressivism to be attentive to the situation in Bolivia since to this day the violence against people continues.
“We require more than ever international journalism, organizations, this International of Progressivism so that they can come in this electoral period. So that they do the follow-up not only in the lessons but right now that we see abuses by the government to promote right candidacies”.
It should be noted that the International of Progressism was launched in May 2020 and the objective is to unite, organize and mobilize progressive forces in a common front. Thus, from September 18 to 20, the I Summit called “Internationalism or Extinction” takes place, in which Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis and Noami Klein have participated.
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