The opposition leader and governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, accused this Wednesday (8) the government of Bolivian President Luis Arce of trying to “consolidate a coup” against his region through a judicial appeal to put in his place a “functional” authority for the governing party.
Camacho spoke in a handwritten letter read by the senator of his party, Creemos, Érick Morón, in front of the maximum security prison of Chonchocoro, where the governor has been imprisoned since the end of last year accused of acts related to the political crisis of 2019.
In the text, the departmental authority states that the ruling Movimento ao Socialismo (MAS) “intends to consolidate the coup” that, in his opinion, the Arce government carried out in the government of Santa Cruz through a controversial police operation of arrest that he described as a “ kidnapping”.
“The final objective of the MAS government is to disrupt our institution [governo] in order to install a governor who serves their interests and thus manage to extinguish the struggle for democracy that radiates throughout Bolivia, starting from Santa Cruz,” Camacho said in the letter.
At the end of last month, MAS departmental legislators in Santa Cruz filed a lawsuit to have Lieutenant Governor Mario Aguilera assume the top job in the department that Camacho continues to occupy from prison.
The hearing, which should have taken place this Wednesday, was postponed until next week and will define whether or not Camacho remains at the head of the government of Santa Cruz.
Camacho’s lawyers and collaborators stated that the fact that he is detained does not prevent him from carrying out the administrative work of the government of the department of Santa Cruz.
In the letter, Camacho stresses that it is a “dispute” not for a position, but a “struggle for resistance and democracy”.
The governor of Santa Cruz made an “appeal” to his region and Bolivia to prevent “the consolidation” of this action and assured that now “to defend the departmental government of Santa Cruz is to defend democracy and the freedoms of citizens” in the country.
Camacho was arrested on December 28 of last year, in a controversial police operation, and later transferred to La Paz, where a judge ordered his preventive detention in Chonchocoro prison for four months.
The opposition leader is being investigated for the crime of terrorism in the case known as “coup d’état I”, related to the political and social crisis of 2019, although the accusation has been expanded to active bribery and the seduction of troops, which is the usurpation of command. political or military.
The ruling party alleges that in 2019 there was a coup d’état against then-president Evo Morales, while the opposition maintains that the protests that led to the president’s removal were due to alleged fraud in his favor in the annulled elections of that year.
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