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Demiurge4 posted:Being president for life isn’t usually conducive to human rights Dude, you're literally just retracing my steps from the last few weeks. Please just go look at my post history in this thread and find out why you're wrong.
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Nov 11, 2019 18:03
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Instant Sunrise posted:A free and fair election is one where the US-backed candidate wins. If they don’t win then by definition it wasn’t free or fair, and if the opposition has to set a few ballot boxes on fire, drag a mayor through the streets pouring red paint on her, cutting her hair off and forcing her to resign to make it a free and fair election, then that’s what you gotta do.
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Nov 11, 2019 18:16
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of course capitalism prepares for the switch to green energy in the shittiest and most destructive way possible
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Nov 11, 2019 18:49
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RottenK posted:why should term limits exist, they never do anything to stop fascists and other authocrats I've always disagreed with this. Important reforms should go beyond just one man. Power and popularity shouldn't be so concentrated in one person that Morales having term limits would completely destroy any progress made. There should be other leaders on the left being cultivated in the decade or so he's in power that someone else can continue the work after him. Not that it excuses the whole shitstorm and possible coup or whatever but I still think attempting to abolish term limits is a huge mistake and just makes me ask why it has to be him specifically and why there aren't any protégés waiting in the wings who could stand for election instead?
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Nov 11, 2019 19:02
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joepinetree posted:This argument about term limits to justify this coup is the most ignorant loving thing. I don't think Evo Morales was a dictator nor did he deserve to be the target of a coup, but he did clearly lose a refendum on term limits in 2016. 51% said no, 48% said yes. Is it entirely democratic to go against what the majority voted for in that case? Nor did the recent presidential elections give him a higher percentage of support in this regard. He got 47%, which is the largest plurality yet not a majority. Looking at the other candidates is rather depressing, but most Bolivian voters didn't choose Morales this time around either. He should still be the rightful president, either way, according to the rules. It's fair to say that a coup may have ended up happening, sooner or later, even with a different candidate or with term limits in place. Which says more about the state of politics in Bolivia than about the inherent value of having or removing term limits. Saying that a popular president should simply stack the courts and abolish term limits in order to keep fascists away sounds great in theory, yet things won't always go as planned under that scenario either. It can end up being counter-productive later. Also, it can be argued that lack of term limits at the local and state level (not the same as a national presidential election) has been a bad thing for the United States too. You end up with a bunch of old men who literally die in their posts after reelection. Not a good way to foster generational change. Parliamentary systems shift the equation by giving the office of the president or prime minister much less power in the first place. wielder fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 19:17
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wielder posted:I don't think Evo Morales was a dictator nor did he deserve to be the target of a coup, but he did clearly lose a refendum on term limits in 2016. 51% said no, 48% said yes. Is it entirely democratic to go against what the majority voted for in that case? So is it right and proper that you can referendum away somebody's human rights? Because that's the crux of the matter here. Also term limits are a stupid idea and don't even loving work. If somebody ever gets to the kind of dominant political position that term limits are supposed to guard against they can just install one of their stooges into office and keep ruling from behind the scenes. See Putin's Russia for an example of how this shakes out in practise. All that term limits do is act as an anti-democratic and arbitrary barrier to genuinely popular leaders.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:27
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:I've always disagreed with this. Important reforms should go beyond just one man. It's undisputably a coup. It's not just Morales who was forced to resign, it was also everyone in the succession order before an opposition senator.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:37
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Cerebral Bore posted:So is it right and proper that you can referendum away somebody's human rights? Because that's the crux of the matter here. I think this is overplaying your hand a bit here. My understanding is that the term limits were implemented by the opposition midway through his third (?) term, he brought a referendum and narrowly lost, and then the Supreme Court ruled that they cannot apply retroactively so therefore he was allowed to run for another term. That chain of events could be interpreted charitably or uncharitably depending on your political leanings, but it is definitely not to the point where “he’s a dictator now, bring in the army” and even entertaining otherwise is astonishing. It’s also my understanding that the Supreme Court justices are elected and not appointed, so I fail to see how the court would be packed. Term limits are rather contentious in the US and usually looked down upon as a tool for lobbyists to have an ever-refreshing pool of junior lawmakers who don’t know what they’re doing to prey on. I don’t think “term limits are automatically good and opposing them makes you power hungry” flies unless you are already sympathetic to conservative politics.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:41
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A Gnarlacious Bro posted:Hope you guys like your ethnostate She, and a lot of other Bolivians, might greatly enjoy their ethnostate; after all, plenty of people were fine with it pre-Morales, too. Three quarters of my family live in various cities in Bolivia. Not everyone in the opposition is a full on cosplaying Nazi, but you have to be willfully blind to not notice the cosplaying Nazi type is part of it just by going to social media, and they have such a long and proud tradition too! You have to be even more willfully blind to claim that it took the hundreds of jubilant facebook posts and tweets of "democratic opposition" accounts filming themselves taking down, burning or ripping wiphalas of their uniforms for you to notice that a very ugly anti-indigenous sentiment has been a part of the opposition basically from the day Morales took office. Hell, plenty of them promised to do just that publically well in advance!. Morales election sent a shock to a lot of people in the same way that the "refugee crisis" in Europe did, only on a larger scale: it made people feel like suddenly there are 6 million more people, 51% of the combined populace, that demand to fully participate in society, not just one tenth of a percent. After all, he's building fancy cable car public transit for those people, and my pension is too low! My family has both moderate Morales supporters and moderate opponents, and all of them would probably qualify as either well-meaning-liberals or very-compassionate-conservatives in the US or EU, none of them would actually support this; and still just reading the social media feeds of everyone flushed soo much anti-indigenous sentiments into my timelines. (I deleted facebook etc. like two years ago, so this was all before this insanity, too). The thing is though, no one on the center or center-right spectrum ever had to justify themselves for working with the far-right to defeat the evils of a socialist "authoritarian", that poo poo only applies to those on the left.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:44
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Lightning Knight posted:I think this is overplaying your hand a bit here. My understanding is that the Supreme Court ruled that term limits are in fact a violation of the human right to stand as a candidate. In which case said referendum would be illegitimate in the first place unless you think that human rights can be referendumed away.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:46
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Cerebral Bore posted:My understanding is that the Supreme Court ruled that term limits are in fact a violation of the human right to stand as a candidate. In which case said referendum would be illegitimate in the first place unless you think that human rights can be referendumed away. That isn’t what I’ve read and also doesn’t really make sense to me but ok I suppose.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:50
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wielder posted:I don't think Evo Morales was a dictator nor did he deserve to be the target of a coup, but he did clearly lose a refendum on term limits in 2016. 51% said no, 48% said yes. Is it entirely democratic to go against what the majority voted for in that case? You are in a room, There is a delicious hamburger you want that sits on a pedestal. You say, let us voted I can get that hamburger. 48 say yes and 51 no. You see the margin was close. Do you give up your quest for this delicious hamburger or continue through different, legal, means? You keep switching up terms: Legal, justified, democratic, etc.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:52
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wielder posted:I don't think Evo Morales was a dictator nor did he deserve to be the target of a coup, but he did clearly lose a refendum on term limits in 2016. 51% said no, 48% said yes. Is it entirely democratic to go against what the majority voted for in that case? You realize that the examples that I listed are, mostly, example of either courts overturning laws passed by legislatures or referendums, or legislatures overturning referendums, right?
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Nov 11, 2019 19:52
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Lightning Knight posted:That isn’t what I’ve read and also doesn’t really make sense to me but ok I suppose. What's unclear here? Putting arbitrary restrictions on who can run for office and who can't seems to me like a pretty clear abuse of human rights, and as I've understood it that was the rationale behind the Supreme Court decision.
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Nov 11, 2019 19:54
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Cerebral Bore posted:What's unclear here? Putting arbitrary restrictions on who can run for office and who can't seems to me like a pretty clear abuse of human rights, and as I've understood it that was the rationale behind the Supreme Court decision. I disagree with term limits because I think they’re dumb and a tool of entrenched establishment interests to manipulate new politicians, but the idea that they violate human rights doesn’t make political sense to me, I don’t agree with that logic. However, what the Bolivian Supreme Court decides about Bolivian law is on them and if that is indeed the justification then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Nov 11, 2019 19:58
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The term limits wouldn't violate his rights, the retroactive enforcement would. You wouldn't pass a single term limit and then expect him to be automatically kicked out of office either if he was in his second term. e; lmao i am mistaken, good poo poo vvv Homeless Friend fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 20:02
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Lightning Knight posted:I disagree with term limits because I think they’re dumb and a tool of entrenched establishment interests to manipulate new politicians, but the idea that they violate human rights doesn’t make political sense to me, I don’t agree with that logic. The good thing about constitutional courts is that whatever they say go, they don't have to justify anything. That's how they work. They are the ultimate arbiters of what is correct, regardless of what anyone else thinks. And by good I mean abolish them all. EDIT: This coup is actually a great example of how constitutions lose to institutions every single loving time.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:06
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Lightning Knight posted:I think this is overplaying your hand a bit here. As I understand it, the term limit was implemented by the opposition near the end of his first term. He went on to win a second term shortly afterward, and was able to run for and win a third term on the basis that the limit shouldn't retroactively include his first term. That was back in 2014, and is entirely unrelated to the Supreme Court ruling and current events. The most recent election was for his fourth term. The elected Bolivian courts determined that term limits violated the American Convention on Human Rights, which states that barring people from running for office is an anti-democratic measure and a violation of their human rights.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:06
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Main Paineframe posted:As I understand it, the term limit was implemented by the opposition near the end of his first term. He went on to win a second term shortly afterward, and was able to run for and win a third term on the basis that the limit shouldn't retroactively include his first term. That was back in 2014, and is entirely unrelated to the Supreme Court ruling and current events. Ahhhhhh. Interesting. I apologize CB, you were right.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:07
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Lightning Knight posted:I disagree with term limits because I think they’re dumb and a tool of entrenched establishment interests to manipulate new politicians, but the idea that they violate human rights doesn’t make political sense to me, I don’t agree with that logic. Well, it's a restriction specifically targeted at a single potential candidate that doesn't apply to everybody else in the race and it's imposed for what you yourself agree to be no justifiable reason, so logically I'd have to conclude that it is a violation of civil and human rights. E: Made this post before I saw your most recent one LK. No problem.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:08
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wielder posted:
We can argue about term limits, I don't think they help much even in the ideal case and are probably harmful in the face of capitalism, but why would we in the face of a blatant fascist coup?
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Nov 11, 2019 20:26
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So what do we know about the news-site Erbol? They seem to be in favour of Mesa and Camacho, but are they particularly big or central? Are they mainstream or fringe? I'm just asking so I can understand who is signal-boosting Camacho - whether it's the official opposition or his own people.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:29
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The term limits were struck down because they were added to the constitution post-assembly basically at gunpoint
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Nov 11, 2019 20:42
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Cup Runneth Over posted:The term limits were struck down because they were added to the constitution post-assembly basically at gunpoint This veers dangerously close to paying attention to context rather than leaping at any pretext you can find to justify a military coup. And friend, that's unamerican
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Nov 11, 2019 20:56
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What I have learned from watching media coverage of this is that if you're the opposition and you lose an election, what you should do is just "dispute" the election results instead of accepting your loss. That way when you then coup the government, every news story about your coup will insist that the last election was "disputed", thereby delegitimizing the person who won the election and granting your coup legitimacy.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:59
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vyelkin posted:What I have learned from watching media coverage of this is that if you're the opposition and you lose an election, what you should do is just "dispute" the election results instead of accepting your loss. That way when you then coup the government, every news story about your coup will insist that the last election was "disputed", thereby delegitimizing the person who won the election and granting your coup legitimacy. Yep, that's the right wing playbook now
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Nov 11, 2019 21:03
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vyelkin posted:What I have learned from watching media coverage of this is that if you're the opposition and you lose an election, what you should do is just "dispute" the election results instead of accepting your loss. That way when you then coup the government, every news story about your coup will insist that the last election was "disputed", thereby delegitimizing the person who won the election and granting your coup legitimacy. Fun fact: here in Brazil, the right prepared that during the last elections, by spreading lies and misinformation about fraud and "hacked ballots" (we use a electronic voting system) during the voting Had they lost, Im pretty sure they would have tried just that. Since they won, the fraud allegations were promptly forgotten
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Nov 11, 2019 21:05
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Elias_Maluco posted:Fun fact: here in Brazil, the right prepared that during the last elections, by spreading lies and misinformation about fraud and "hacked ballots" (we use a electronic voting system) during the voting Bevins in Kentucky and Roy Moore in Alabama also preemptively managed expectations by accusing the other side of fraud before the election even started.
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Nov 11, 2019 21:09
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Also Trump, don't forget that. Claimed something like 2 million illegal votes or something
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Nov 11, 2019 21:15
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To provide the links and the background to this whole thing once and for all. These links are from the now defunct International Herald Tribune, which was traditionally pro-US, so they can't in any way be accused of being pro-Morales sources. http://web.archive.org/web/20080209031644/http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/09/america/LA-GEN-Bolivia-Constitution.php The constitution, as approved by the constitutional assembly of 2006, had NO term limits. Morales, at the time, even agreed on a recall election. The constitution then had to be approved in a referendum: http://web.archive.org/web/20080915022114/http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/12/america/LA-Bolivia-US-Venezuela.php Which led to the opposition to rebel, attack government buildings and try to establish autonomy in the provinces they controlled. Because this was the height of the pink wave in Latin America, other nations stood with Evo. As a way out of the impasse, Evo agreed with the opposition on the inclusion of term limits: https://web.archive.org/web/20090215203323/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gB5oDjsDucD02k7d0na6LgLzUYMg But again, the term limits were only included because of the 08 uprising, which happened with the blessing of the US, at a time when even mainstream news sites were discussing how the US had a policy of infiltration in Bolivia: https://web.archive.org/web/20190108141135/http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4262036&page=1
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Nov 11, 2019 21:28
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 No coup, you're the coup
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Nov 11, 2019 21:31
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joepinetree posted:As a way out of the impasse, Evo agreed with the opposition on the inclusion of term limits: Yet almost ten years later, long after this compromise, most Bolivians were in favor of keeping the term limits, as the 2016 referendum shows. There isn't a current majority of Bolivians in favor of continued reelection without limit. Maybe that will change, but it hasn't so far. I don't buy the idea of having an inherent human right to indefinite reelection, because the American Convention doesn't talk about reelection at all. I doubt anyone was thinking of allowing that when the Convention was drafted, so it's a very novel reasoning.
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Nov 11, 2019 21:55
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The Bolivian constitutional assembly did not include term limits. It's a moot point.
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Nov 11, 2019 21:56
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Very normal opposition doing very normal genocidal things.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:03
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Regardless of the merit of term limits as a point of political contention, the resolution is not to loving launch a coup lmao. It’s so dumb how easy it is to muddy the waters with this poo poo.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:04
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Imagine loving devil's advocating for a fascist coup.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:04
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Baronjutter posted:Imagine loving devil's advocating for a fascist coup. https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/1193938807323803648
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Nov 11, 2019 22:07
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Lightning Knight posted:Regardless of the merit of term limits as a point of political contention, the resolution is not to loving launch a coup lmao. Obviously. Coups are bad. It's worth opposing this one. Nothing I've written is meant to deny that. Removing term limits isn't nearly as bad, but it's not an inherent and absolute good either. People can disagree about whether that was wise or convenient.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:14
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The obvious takeaway lesson here has nothing to do with term limits but instead the crucial need to 1) minimize connections with “international” (read: Yankee) institutions and 2) collaborate closely with counter-powers like Russia and China, especially on security matters, and 3) develop homegrown hard power counterpoints to the traditional police and military. No matter how warm and fuzzy of a law-abiding, norm-respecting, democratic socialist or even social democrat you are, if your constituents are not White.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:53
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:The obvious takeaway lesson here has nothing to do with term limits but instead the crucial need to 1) minimize connections with “international” (read: Yankee) institutions and 2) collaborate closely with counter-powers like Russia and China, especially on security matters, and 3) develop homegrown hard power counterpoints to the traditional police and military. No matter how warm and fuzzy of a law-abiding, norm-respecting, democratic socialist or even social democrat you are, if your constituents are not White. Consider that when the Chinese built a naval base in Djibouti, the president received a bunch of bribes and economic favors. Also consider that when the president granted that concession to the PRC, the state department sent out ominous press releases implying that he had been in power for too long as a despot and there needed to be regime change in the country. It's more or less standard policy for the US to menace even its closest cronies if they step out of line.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:59
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