Tongo Announces Candidacy Backed by Gunmen

The discredited mayor of Santa Cruz, Jhonny Fernández, participated on Monday in a political event from the balcony of the Santa Cruz city hall, surrounded by union organizations aligned with masismo  that were previously accused of asking the government for weapons to attack the people of Santa Cruz.

To understand who supports the mayor today, it is necessary to go back in time. In November 2022, while the civic protests in Santa Cruz were taking place, which demanded the government to promptly conduct a national census to reconfigure the distribution of economic resources and seats in the country,  groups aligned with the Movement for Socialism emerged, requesting weapons from the government to attack the protesting population in the streets.

Among these groups was the faction of traders led by Rene Troncoso, who even took to the streets announcing a civil war that would confront the people of Santa Cruz, all to ingratiate themselves with the masista leadership. It is this type of union movements (with paramilitary tendencies) that today support and applaud the disastrous management of the mayor.

This authoritarian way of acting, along with that thirst for blood, are part of the practices of the Movement for Socialism, a political organization that doesn't hesitate or feel remorse when it comes to mourning the Bolivian population.

The sudden presidential aspirations of Fernández and his political party UCS (Unidad Cívica Solidaria) have taken the people of Santa Cruz by surprise due to the inconsistencies that this action brings with it. It is difficult to understand how a mayor whose citizens have openly expressed their intentions to end his administration through a recall and have repeatedly asked for his resignation, now projects himself as a national alternative.

The only alternative Fernández can offer the country is that of failure  and this is easily verifiable by observing his disastrous management at the helm of the Santa Cruz municipality. An administration plagued by corruption cases, economic deficit, no development of public works, and a total neglect of the city's cleanliness and maintenance.

During his troubled administration, the mayor has done nothing but wear down his already tarnished reputation to the point of becoming a clown of local politics who ridiculously excuses himself to justify the horrors of his management. Not content with that and taking note from the manual on authoritarian practices of masismo, he has pursued his political detractors in the municipal council with judicial processes, all thanks to the support of the judicial body (one of the tentacles of masismo).

The emergence of spurious leaderships, financed or sponsored from Chapare, turns out to be the new strategy that masismo intends to use to create discord in the country and thus be able to fragment the opposition. This hypothesis is neither far-fetched nor lacking justification since we can see that it is the Movement for Socialism that rents or prostitutes social movements to go support the political rallies of their allies and thus generate the false sense that they have popular support.