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LatinNews Daily - 1 September 2015

Bolivia: More heads roll over Fondioc corruption scandal

Development: On 31 August Bolivia’s rural development & land minister, Nemesia Achocollo, and Bolivia’s ambassador to Paraguay, Rosendo Alpiri, announced their resignations.

Significance:  The two stepped down over the corruption allegations involving the government’s indigenous development fund (Fondioc) after Lariza Fuentes- a lawyer appointed to intervene in the agency, which sits under the rural development & land ministry - announced on 25 August the results of its probe into Fondioc. Fuentes found 30 phantom projects worth B$14.51m (US$2.1m). This brought the total economic damage to the State caused by corruption at Fondioc to B$102m (US$14.8m), B$30m more than was first reported in February when the scandal first broke. In the post for five and a half years and previously considered one of President Evo Morales’s “untouchables”, Achocollo maintains her innocence. However, her departure is widely considered as an attempt by the ruling Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) to close the chapter on what has been a highly embarrassing episode for the government, ahead of a push to change the 2009 constitution to allow President Morales to run for a fourth consecutive term in 2020.

  • Yesterday President Morales named as Achocollo’s replacement, former La Paz governor, César Cocarico, (MAS, 2010-2015). Morales has yet to name a replacement for Alpiri, who had been in the post since October 2014 and was linked to one of the phantom projects.
  • The Fondioc scandal proved highly damaging for Morales and the MAS in the March gubernatorial and local elections, particularly in La Paz department, where the (defeated) MAS candidate, Felipa Huanca, a leader of the indigenous organisation Federación de Mujeres Campesinas Bartolina Sisa (Bartolina Sisa), was directly implicated.

Looking Ahead: The local press has been quick to link Achocollo’s departure to the MAS’s efforts to change the constitution to allow President Morales to stand for election again. The 2009 constitution allows for two consecutive presidential terms and Morales, first elected in 2005 and re-elected in 2009, was permitted to run again in 2014 on the grounds that he had only served one term under the new constitution. The MAS, which has the necessary two-thirds majority in the national bicameral legislature to approve a constitutional amendment- with 89 of 120 seats in the chamber of deputies and 25 of 36 in the senate – is due to discuss the issue of re-election during a party congress scheduled for November.

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