Tensions return to Bolivia with the imprisonment of opponent Luis Fernando Camacho

Camacho’s imprisonment has aroused international concerns due to the revival of political tensions in Bolivia and particularly in the city of Santa Cruz, where there is a 24-hour citizen strike with blockades to demand the freedom of the politician and where there was recently a 36-day strike against the Government of Luis Arce to demand a census.

After a virtual hearing, Judge Sergio Pacheco ordered Camacho’s imprisonment for four months in that jail, while the crimes of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy of which the Prosecutor’s Office accuses the leader in the case called “Coup 1” are investigated.

The governor’s lawyers assured his innocence and in a brief message, Camacho stated that his fight was “for the democracy of Bolivia” and asked Bolivians not to let “masismo impose a dictatorship like in Venezuela and Cuba.”

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The governor was one of the leaders of the protests that led to the resignation of Morales on November 10, 2019, after accusing him of committing electoral fraud to extend himself in power for a fourth term. Morales’s resignation gave way to the transitional government of Jeanine Áñez, imprisoned since 2021 accused of other crimes.

The polarization that Bolivia is experiencing has not ceased since 2016 when Morales was defeated in a referendum with which he was trying to obtain an endorsement for his fourth candidacy, and which he later obtained by court order amid complaints of the submission of Justice to the Executive.

Camacho, 43, will initially be in an isolation cell in Chonchocoro, a prison located 30 kilometers from La Paz, in the highlands and at an altitude of 3,900 meters.

His doctors have denounced that confinement in these conditions endangers his life because, according to what they said, he suffers from Churg-Strauss syndrome, an immunological disease “that attacks veins and arteries” and requires medical treatment that should have been administered long ago. two days.

Camacho, who assumed the governorship of Santa Cruz, the most economically developed department and with the largest population in the country, in 2021, was arrested on Wednesday in a violent operation with armed agents and transferred by helicopter to Cochabamba and then to La Paz.

His followers denounced that the arrest was a “kidnapping” because it should not be carried out during the judicial vacation, while the Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, defended that a prosecutor already ordered the arrest last October after Camacho, according to what he said, was He repeatedly refused to testify because of the complaints against him.

“In the Plurinational State of Bolivia, due process is scrupulously respected,” said Lima, accusing Camacho of “obstructing” the progress of the process since 2020.

The UN calls for “maximum restraint”

After the arrest of the opponent and the first episodes of violence in Santa Cruz with the burning of public institutions and clashes between protesters and the Police, the UN and former conservative or center-right presidents have spoken

In a statement, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, expressed concern about the events and called for calm on all political and social actors in Bolivia, urging them to exercise “the utmost restraint”, while reiterating the importance of “due process” and transparency in judicial proceedings.

Likewise, 25 former heads of State and Government from 12 countries, grouped in the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas, issued a statement in which they condemned “preventive detentions and prosecutions of political opponents” and reiterated that, as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in cases like Camacho’s, the independence of the judiciary must be respected.

The Bolivian Episcopal Conference published a statement in which it maintains that the supposed coup d’état of November 2019 “never existed”, but that it was a “peaceful uprising”, while criticizing that Camacho was the victim of a ” kidnapping with unprecedented violence and viciousness on the part of the State security forces.”

Paul Coca: the Government acts under pressure due to the internal fight of the MAS

Political analyst Paul Coca argued that taking into account the lack of judicial independence in Bolivia, Camacho’s arrest responds to “instructions from the Government of Luis Arce” because, in his opinion, he is under pressure due to the existing internal disputes with former President Evo Morales, head of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and cocalero leader.

Coca recalled that Morales accused the Arce government several times of having an alleged pact with Camacho and threatened to lead protests since January if action was not taken against the opponent and other alleged leaders of his overthrow in 2019.

“Within the internal struggle, Arce preferred a thousand times to please Morales, even if that implies a high political cost,” Coca told France 24, for whom the president “prefers to have opposition sectors protesting in the streets, rather than masista militants ”.

Likewise, according to the analyst, a consequence not foreseen by the Government could be that “the dispersed opposition” could unite around the figure of Camacho in 2023, a year “that is seen to come as one of high confrontation and instability” in which Arce will have to deal “with internal enemies in his party and external enemies in the opposition.”

Thus, according to the analyst, the governor’s arrest would be opening the door to greater polarization with an eye toward the 2025 general elections.