HOSTAGE OF THE MASSES, CONGRESS PREPARES TO SWEAR IN A NEW PRESIDENT
Econoticiasbolivia

 http://www.econoticiasbolivia.com
Translated by: Latinsol
La Paz, October 17, 2003 (Hrs. 16:30).- Prisoners of the revolted masses, leaders of neoliberal political parties who had control of Bolivia's Parliament until yesterday, and that until today were part of the government, were trying this evening to recover what they had lost on the streets by preparing the constitutional exit of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada allowing the formalizing of his resignation to the Presidency, to abandon the country and give up power to the vice-president Carlos Mesa. Goni's resignation is already a fact.

Negotiations have concluded and awaiting to be executed. Deputies and Senators are already arriving to Parliament, conformed of two thirds by representatives of neoliberal parties, to listen the last presidential message of Sanchez de Lozada. At the presidential residency, journalists are already speculating about the imminent arrival of a helicopter to take Sanchez de Lozada to the international airport of El Alto.

At the entry steps of El Alto, a few kilometres away from the airport, there are some disturbances, gases and stones flying across military police and residents, called there by the Regional Workers Central (COR). "We must be vigilant to stop the gringo (Sanchez de Lozada) from escaping", says their leader Roberto de La Cruz.

"It only takes one hair of a gringo to defeat neoliberalism, to defeat the empire. Triumph belongs to the poor, to the workers and peasants", proclaims de La Cruz, cheered by a multitude by his side.

City streets and country roads are dominated by revolted masses of miners, peasants, students and neighbours of poor neighbourhoods. It is the real power that has dominated the formal power. It is the stone and wooden stick defeating the tanks and machine gun. But among the leaders there is doubt and debate about whether to accept or not Carlos Mesa, at least temporarily.

In Parliament, several deputies are already washing their hands on the massacre. Hoping to distance themselves in order to have some option, some authority, allowing them to place Carlos Mesa as the new president, so that COB and the multitude of thousands of heads, don't take their anger on them and destroy them also. "We are going to listen to the people, as we have always done", said with cynicism the officialist deputy Jaime Paz Pereira.

His father, former president Jaime Zamora, leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), which abandoned Sanchez de Lozada on the early hours of this afternoon, is very clear: "I make a call to the population to look after Congress as if it were a baby, as if it had been born again", he says to the media inviting them to preserve democracy.

"We must unite in democracy", he points out, highlighting the importance of achieving a presidential succession within a constitutional frame, so as to not damage "the international trust", the foreign investment, the foreign cooperation and the foreign credits to Bolivia. The same speech, the same government program of Sanchez de Lozada, but without Sanchez de Lozada.

Out on the streets of El Alto, Roberto de La Cruz warns and calls the residents to make sure that Sanchez de Lozada and his minister of Defence , Carlos Sanchez Berzain, "do not escape". "We are also not going to forgive Jaime Paz Zamora, Manfred Reyes Villa (leader of the, until today, co-governing Nueva Fuerza Republicana) who must go to jail", he says.

From TV and radio stations, including the popular media, there are calls for the population to keep calm, to allow Congress to resolve the constitutional succession. They are saying that "Sanchez de Lozada is already resigning".

On San Francisco square, four blocks from Congress, thousands of miners, dynamite on hand, are cheered by a multitude. It is four thirty in the afternoon and among the leaders of COB, the proposal of allowing Carlos Mesa to be sworn in as the new President of Bolivia is gaining terrain, hoping for him to give resolution to our demands of nullifying the project of exporting gas to United States and to re-nationalize the gas and oil industry, along with other demands seeking to shrink neoliberalism and free market.

"We are going to negotiate with the new President and if he does not resolve our demands, we will make a call for a Popular Assembly with representatives of every social, labour and popular organizations of the country, to recover the gas by our own means and to satisfy the rest of the popular demands", says to Econoticiasbolivia one of the highest leaders of COB, few moments before the initiation of a wide assembly to define the final worker's position.