By Lucinda Elliott, Monica Machicao and Daniel Ramos
(Reuters) -Bolivian leftist President Luis Arce advised Reuters on Friday assist on the streets had strengthened his authorities after a failed navy coup simply days in the past and that he would hold working till his final day, in certainly one of his first interviews because the dramatic assault.
The quiet economist was thrust into the worldwide highlight on Wednesday when rogue navy items seized the central sq. of La Paz and rammed a door of the presidential palace with an armored automobile to permit troopers to hurry in.
Flanked by armed troopers, a rogue basic, Juan Jose Zuniga, had demanded a shake-up of the federal government. Arce had warned that the landlocked nation of some 12 million individuals was dealing with a coup and referred to as for supporters to mobilize.
Face-to-face he ordered the final to face down, and hours later as assist for the coup disintegrated the troopers pulled again.
Zuniga and dozens of others have since been arrested. The assault is probably the most dramatic try to overthrow the federal government in Bolivia in recent times, regardless of its mottled historical past with round 190 coup makes an attempt in simply two centuries.
“The support of the people in the streets and the international support we received has strengthened us to be here again to continue our work,” mentioned Arce, a scholar of Karl Marx credited for driving Bolivia’s “economic miracles” within the early 2000s as economic system minister beneath iconic chief Evo Morales.
“For us absolutely nothing has changed … We are going to keep working until the very last day,” he mentioned on the authorities headquarters in highland political capital La Paz the place armed troopers had burst in solely meters (yards) away days earlier.
Arce and Morales, whereas each from the identical MAS socialist occasion and former allies, have develop into fierce rivals. Morales, who resigned in 2019 after a disputed election sparked violent protests, desires to unseat Arce in a 2025 presidential election.
Arce, 60, acknowledged the monetary strains on the gas-producing Bolivian economic system, which has led to a scarcity of {dollars}, petrol on the pumps and rising voter dissatisfaction.
“There is a temporary lack of liquidity of U.S. dollars,” Arce mentioned, including that his administration had taken “several measures” to resolve the issue, with out giving specifics.
The president blamed “external and internal interests” for including to the nation’s financial pressures, “that do not like that we are industrializing our natural resources”, a reference to the nation’s gasoline and big, however untapped lithium reserves.
“They do not like that we have taken a very sovereign position in the national economy.”