 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. On July 23rd, the Supreme Electoral Court in Bolivia postponed the election scheduled for September 6th, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. Bolivian social movements have rejected the decision, which they see as another attempt by the coup-insult government to extend their use of patience of power. Today, we're joined by Oli Vargas, a Bolivian journalist from Kausashian News, who's been on the ground following the development since the coup in November, which took Evo Morales out of office and has been documenting the tremendous resistance against the dictatorship. Thank you so much for joining us, Oli. So first off, I wanted to ask, since the announcement on July 23rd, when the Supreme Court has announced that, of course, they will be postponing the elections once again, what has been the response from the people's movements? There have been massive mobilizations. So what have been the key demands? What organizations are on the streets? What actions are being taken? So as soon as it was announced, it was quite, you could tell that the president of the Electoral Council, when he was announcing this postponement, this is the fourth postponement, or this is the third postponement of the elections this year, he had quite some nervous disposition because he knew that there would be a huge amount of anger against the decision. And so immediately afterwards, the social movements began pronouncing themselves to make clear the rejection of this suspension, first to come out were the indigenous groups that affiliated to the movement towards socialism. So that includes the Pact of Donidad, which is the indigenous women's confederation. That is the number of indigenous groups as well affiliated to that. But then what's most important, I think, was that the National Labour Union Federation came out to announce mobilizations. Now the National Labour Union Federation is called the Central Laborera Boliviana, they're not actually affiliated to the mass and they didn't mobilize against the coup in November. So to have their support gives an extra strength to the mobilizations and the extra sort of level of organization to the protests that have really started and will be intensifying in the week ahead. So there's a huge amount of very structured organization amongst social movements on the ground. We saw the strength of that on Tuesday when there was a mass march held right across the country, mass marches say held right across the country, organized by the National Labour Union Federation, the Central Laborera Boliviana. And they decided at these rallies that they would give the government and the electoral court a deadline after which, if they're not listened to, they will begin what they call roadblocks and an indefinite general strike. The roadblocks means that they'll mobilize the power of the indigenous rural workers to block the key highways in the country, to stop basically all economic activity between the different cities and departments of the country. So that is the power that they have to bring the country to the halt. And they say they'll use that power on Monday if the government haven't retracted it from their position, suspending the elections again. Yeah and what has been the response to these mobilizations? I mean since November, since the coup, the organized movements have faced tremendous amounts of repression. You know there were two massacres that happened following the mobilizations against the coup. And so this time around in this kind of recent wave of mobilizations, what has been the response of the Bolivian security forces? Well the first response was to open criminal charges, file criminal lawsuits against the main leaders, social movement leaders, accusing them of armed uprising. So that was what's been filed against the union, the main union leader in this region in the tropical Cochabamba, Leonardo Losa, rural Campesino leader. He has charges now for armed uprising, the same has been put up against the leader of the National Workers Federation, Juan Carlos Warachi. And they've both said quite clearly that they're not intimidated by this. They're going to continue with the mobilizations despite the threats of the government and in particular the interior minister, the guy known as Arturo Murillo, and he is the most authoritarian figure within the government. As I said without any evidence, he's decided that these protests, these mass protests that take place, constitute armed uprising despite the fact that no one has any weapons, no one is armed. The only weapon they have is some unity, is a sort of strength through sheer numbers that they can mobilize on the streets. And Leonardo Losa, leader from this area, he said to the interior minister, you can come and arrest, but you have to do it yourself and you have to come here and you have to arrest me in front of my rank and file basis. The government is incredibly worried about doing because in areas such as these, and in every single rural area in the country, in fact, the mass has support of well over 80% of the population in the rural areas. And to arrest, to try and carry out that level of repression here, we met with a huge amount of resistance by local people. So while the government threatens, the social movements are replied by refusing to back down and in fact challenging the government. So I think the sort of fear that has been instilled in people up until now has begun to melt away. But the second thing that the government are trying to do is they're trying to pin these accusations of armed uprising on the movements or socialism itself and their candidates, their presidential candidates, Luis Arce saying that he's the one who's organizing all this. And that's an excuse to ban them from standing in the elections, which is the long standing project they've had throughout the past eight months. And again, no one feels intimidated at this point because precisely because the social movement now are much more united than they were just after the coup. And people feel their strength in numbers and the potential to mobilize millions of people on the streets. For sure. And I mean, I think you got at something there is that I think in the international realm, can people have this false perception that, you know, no, Able wasn't that popular, you know, people really against him, they don't support the movement towards socialism mass. But obviously we see in this, you know, very pointed repression in the postponing of elections that actually this is, you know, motivated by the right wing sphere of the power of mass. So I don't know if you can talk about a little bit about kind of what was the what is the electoral scenario shaping up to be? What is the true support from the people towards mass in this context? Well, the movement towards socialism has a huge amount of support. We'll remember in the elections in October, they won the elections, 47% of the vote. All the accusations of fraud have been debunked since then by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, by the Washington Post, by the New York Times. So that's the basis support that the mass has in the country, just under 50%. However, it's true that that has become over the past 10 years, much will polarize geographically and among class lines. So we're in say 2009, the mass had a much wider level of support. Now the support is concentrated in the working class areas of the cities and in the rural areas where before they might have had a bit more middle class support. Now, their power, their social base is in the popular districts of the three main cities, that's El Alto, Sonosulu, Cochabamba, the Plantas, Milo, Santa Cruz. That is sort of the poorest areas of the big cities where they have a solid rock of support and then the rural areas, whereas as I said earlier, the mass is impossible for them to get less than about 80% of the vote. And that's become reflected in the sort of political discussions. So the political discourse of the right of the pro quo forces become a lot more racialized in recent years, I'll say precisely because they're very aware of the fact that they have the support of the large, the right has the support of the vast majority of sort of middle class, mixed race, white people in the country, whereas they're not able to speak to and to connect with the majority of sort of working class and indigenous sections of the country. So there's a much bigger polarization on class lines and along geographical lines, but what I mean by geographical is racial lines because, you know, who lives in the rural areas, it's overwhelmingly indigenous communities. So I think there's, and it's those sections that have been the most affected by the economic crisis caused over the last eight months and their support for the mass has become even more entrenched. I think we're likely to actually see an increase in support in the rural areas from about 80% to 90% for the mass because of the level of suffering, especially not just during the quarantine, but before by the economic crisis triggered by a number of neoliberal reforms. So I think the mass can rely on almost 50% of the vote. That'll give them a first round victory because there's no second place candidate that can get anywhere near that. Under Bolivia's constitution, you can win in the first round if you're 10% ahead of the second place and the most popular right wing candidate Carlos Mesa can't get anywhere above about 25% of the vote and the current president, self-proclaimed president, Ian Agnes, is also standing, she's lingering about 15% of the vote. So they're training behind and the mass has managed to sort of regroup all of the social forces that delivered its electoral victory in October 2019. Yeah, so kind of one more question about the electoral scenario. There's been a lot of, you know, corruption allegations that have come out during the COVID-19 pandemic that have seemed to created rifts between within the right wing and they seem unable to kind of reconcile and have a united front. So can you talk a little about these splits that have been happening, maybe getting worse under the economic crisis that's been happening? Yeah, there's, I think the right in Bolivia has historically been very divided throughout the past 14 years. They've never been able to present a united front against the mass and the moment is no different. Camacho, he actually is against the new postpone date. He says the election should be cancelled all together until there's no pandemic, you know, an indefinite date, possibly never. So that's the position of the kind of more extreme, the more sort of street fighting violence section of the Bolivian right. I'm sure that has something to do with the fact that they're trailing sort of fourth, fifth in the polls, but the position of the sort of more centre ground neoliberal, sort of centrist neoliberal candidate Carlos Mesa is that he wants elections sort of as soon as possible, actually. He was strong armed into accepting this postponement precisely because he knows that he's the right wing candidate that will go into a second round runoff against the mass if the country reaches such a situation, but the government has pressured him into accepting the new date. And the government has an interest in postponing the elections indefinitely because, as I said earlier, they're trailing behind third in the polls. There's a tremendous economic crisis going on right now in Bolivia. I think the latest figures from CELAC shows that 38% of the country has lost the entirety of their income and 52% has lost a part of their income. So that's 90% of the population. They've lost their income and not been provided with any support, sort of income support during this time. So there's a huge amount of anger swirling up against the government that the other right wing candidates want to try and distance themselves from this sort of disaster this unfolding. So we can see the sort of splits opening up on those lines as well. And then finally, I just wanted to ask about, you know, in your own personal experience being a journalist in the Poku Post-Ku scenario, we've seen a lot of reports of attacks on journalists. I think some of the strongest images or one of the very powerful images during the coup was attacks on these journalists forcing them to leave the state-owned radio station, TV station. And how has that continued? How have you and your comrades at Kauashian News been facing this? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, it's an incredibly difficult situation for those reporting in the country. My own, people I know, friends who ran a left-wing radio show called La Resistencia, they're now in Argentina because the arrest orders were sort of put out against them in December, saying that their radio show was seditious and incitement to terrorism. My own colleague here at the radio, Landon Marca, was arrested a couple of months ago while reporting on a sort of a social movement event back then. He still has those criminal charges hanging over him, though he's been freed provisionally for now. The signal of the radio itself has been essentially jammed or taken over in a number of different municipalities. The equipment that helps transmit the signal in the Amazon department of Benny has been seized by the state. And we know that for a long time the state has wanted to intervene to sort of shut the radio down altogether. The only thing stopping them right now is the geographical sort of location in which we're surrounded by the best organized social movements in the country here in Cotrabamba, just the six federations, the Campesino unions, whichever himself was the leader of before he became president. I think that's the only thing stopping them from attacking altogether. And as we move into conflict starting Monday, we'll see an increased attack on journalists, which will be accused of incitement to armed rebellion, sedition, terrorism, that sort of thing. That's the sort of charges they've been put out against anyone who raises the head above the parapet and criticizes the current US backed regime. Yeah, well, thank you so much for all the coverage that you guys are doing to help inform the people of the world what's happening in Bolivia. It's of utmost importance that we continue to follow the events happening there and expressing all of our support to the movements on the ground. Thank you so much for helping shine a light on this issue. And that's always time for keep watching People's Dispatch.