Deputies of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) have reproached this Monday the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, and his vice-president, David Choquehuanca, for the «fracture» caused in the party and criticized the management of the census conflict with the opposition, which has provoked an indefinite civic strike in the province of Santa Cruz.
«Today the bench of the Movement Towards Socialism is divided and fractured and who are the responsible ones? We are going to say it with absolute firmness: our president Luis Arce Catacora and David Choquehuanca. They are the ones who have divided. They are illegally electing a head of the national bench, and also in the style of Mrs. Jeanine Añez they are trying to impose the directive of the Chamber of Deputies», said MAS deputy Héctor Arce in a press conference, quoted by the newspaper ‘Página Siete’.
In particular, he criticized the prolongation of the debate on the electoral census which has triggered an indefinite «civic» strike of the opposition in the province of Santa Cruz, which has already accumulated 17 days.
«This debate is bland. It is already three days on the census issue. It is dragging on to hide three things from the Government of Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca: they want to hide corruption, they want to hide the allegations of drug trafficking and they want to minimize this fracture that there is MAS and in our organizations», he has warned.
Héctor Arce has also regretted that in the two years of legislature the president of the Assembly has not discussed or debated with the opposition or given press conferences to defend the Government.
«I have not seen David Choquehuanca defend the bills or laws that have been sanctioned. In two years David Choquehuanca, as president of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, has not been able to elaborate the legislative agenda, but he is very good at dividing. Today he has fractured MAS in the Assembly, today he is working to fracture our social organizations», he stated.
He also denounced the «illegal and trucha session» with which they tried to impose a directive with «elbows, kicks and fists» in the MAS parliamentary group.
«How sad, how shameful to reach this extreme of making a pact. In the neoliberal era there was talk of black briefcases. Now there is talk of black bags with five, six résumé folders. They pay tickets for deputies and senators to come and vote for Virginia Velasco in the Senate or Jerges Mercado in the Chamber of Deputies. We are ashamed to have this type of authorities», he said.
Héctor Arce was accompanied at the press conference by other deputies such as Gualberto Arispe, a MAS leader from the Tropic of Cochabamba considered close to Evo Morales.
