Forces external to Bolivia are clearly at work to create maximum upheaval in the country as it approaches presidential elections to be held in just a little more than two months, on Aug. 17. Note the report the IMF just released on its Article IV review of the economy, in which it demands a change in the government’s state-directed economic model, including a currency devaluation, a harsh austerity program based on cutting public expenditures and wages, interest rate “flexibility,” etc. Bolivia’s current economic policies are “unsustainable,” the report says, and could provoke serious social and economic consequences.
For years, the City of London and Wall Street have targeted Bolivia with financial warfare aimed at forcing it to abandon its fixed exchange rate, unsuccessfully. The Fund report was released at a time of great economic turbulence and political polarization, exacerbated by acute fuel shortages and a lack of dollar reserves, and by the destabilizing role of former President Evo Morales.
Morales announced last week that, beginning on June 4, he and his backers will launch a nationwide mobilization to blockade national highways and roads and to demand that current President Luis Arce resign immediately, blaming him for the economic crisis, food and fuel shortages, corruption, etc. Morales has resorted to this tactic previously, causing enormous economic dislocation, halting transportation among cities of food, fuel and consumer goods, bankrupting small businesses and farms as a result. Public Works Minister Edgar Montano warned yesterday that Morales hopes that denying citizens basic goods for their daily lives will cause enough social unrest to justify staging a coup against Arce.
