The governor of the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, explained this Wednesday that, since the Census cannot be organized in 2023 due to lack of time, the execution date is not «decisive», thus desisting from his initial position that urged the Bolivian government to carry out the national survey next year.
«Unfortunately, the Government has delayed this situation for seven months, which makes it impossible to carry it out in 2023», he declared, before pointing out that the issue of the date «would not be the determining factor».
The governor affirmed that they have achieved 90 percent of the issues of the strike: «We have managed to reverse the Government’s agenda, we have managed to turn the Government’s hand, we have achieved a lot,» he said in statements reported by the ABI agency.
Thus, he clarified that in the next hours they will decide if the strike will continue, since what the people «are waiting for (is) a law that gives them the certainty that the date on which it is determined (that the Census will be carried out) in the Parliament will be respected».
Camacho, who is the main protagonist of the conflict, considered on several occasions that the realization of the Census in 2023 was «unbreakable», but the new position of the governor changes the conflict situation and announces a new scenario, reports the Bolivian newspaper ‘La Razón’.
In the Bolivian capital there have been 33 days of protests demanding the Government to hold the Census in 2023 in order to advance the payment of benefits to Bolivian citizens. In that city, where the economic engine of the country is located, the opposition to Luis Arce has greater weight.
Bolivia’s so-called «civic movement» began more than a month ago -on October 22- an indefinite national strike to demand the holding of the Census in 2023, instead of 2024 as proposed by the Bolivian government, since this registration conditions the distribution of aid among the country’s regions.
The Technical Mission in Bolivia of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) condemned the violence of the protests in the Bolivian capital, Santa Cruz, and called for an investigation into any violation of rights. In addition to categorically rejecting the violent events of recent weeks in the country, OHCHR has stressed the importance of the right to peaceful assembly and protest as a way «to exercise other rights such as the right to participate in public affairs or freedom of expression».
The Executive of the Latin American country announced last week that it would take criminal action against those responsible for the protests in Santa Cruz, after announcing that the balance of victims is four dead and 178 injured in 20 days.
