By Sazzad Haider
The most short-lived military coup attempt in Bolivian history failed on 26 June in just three hours. Electronic media played a major role in countering this subversive effort. The stricken President Luis Arce was able to speak live on television from his palace. The telecasted footage, filmed inside the presidential palace, unfolded the coup attempt. President Arce confronted Gen. Zúñiga, ordering him to stand down and asking him to vacate his role.
In addition to Bolivia, it caused a wide reaction throughout the world. The Bolivian people took to the streets in protest against the attempted coup. As the situation worsened, the army Chief General Juan José Zúñiga broke off the battle. Zúñiga was arrested shortly afterward on the same day. The Head of the Bolivian Navy, Vice-Adm Juan Arnez Salvador, has also been arrested.
Gen. Zúñiga, who was first appointed commander of the Bolivian Army in 2022, two days before his coup attempt, vowed to arrest the country’s former president Evo Morales if Morales ran for office again next year. Both Mr. Arce and his predecessor Evo Morales belong to the same political party. The political feuds come after Morales tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term in 2019. Mr. Morales went on to win the vote, but he was forced out of office by military chiefs and fled the country, being exiled in Mexico.
The centre-right Jeanine Áñez was the country’s interim leader between 2019-20. The incumbent president, Mr. Arce, went on to win a re-run vote in 2020. The USA-supported Jeanine was sentenced to 10 years in jail for a coup against her predecessor Mr. Morales.
The left-wing governments in Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia, and the centre-right president of Paraguay, were quick to condemn the coup attempt. Washington did not condemn directly, saying, “The United States is closely monitoring the situation in Bolivia and urges calm and restraint.”
Since 1946, Bolivia has experienced almost 40 attempted or successful coups. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the USA has been accused of involvement in every coup attempt in Bolivia. Now, the United States does not have good relations with Bolivia’s current leftist government. The US has stated that it is monitoring the situation of the ongoing failed coup attempt but has not condemned it like its European allies. It would not be surprising if, in the near future, Bolivian leaders, especially Evo Morales, blame the United States for attempting to overthrow the democratic government.
One of the biggest developments of this century is the political importance of social media—the latest reflection of which is the recent failed coup in Bolivia. Since the second decade of this century, the revolution of social media and cell phones has been seen. In 2010, Arab youth launched the Arab Spring through cell phones. Mass movements erupted in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain against corruption, economic woes, and dictatorships. This movement started through mobile phones and social media. As a consequence of the Arab Spring, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya in 2011, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 2012 were deposed.
Another occurrence was staged in Turkey on 15 July 2016. A faction within the Turkish Armed Forces, organized as the Peace at Home Council, attempted a coup d’état against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Following the coup d’état, Erdoğan did a FaceTime interview with CNN Türk, in which he called upon his supporters to take to the streets in defiance of the military-imposed curfew, saying, “There is no power higher than the power of the people. Let them do what they will at the public squares and airports.” Millions of supporters of Erdoğan contacted each other over cell phones, organized themselves, gathered at public squares, and opposed the coup d’état. The civil resistance thwarted the coup, and the coup attempt failed because the plotters failed to secure control of the media. The Turkish government alleged that Gülen—a terrorist organization led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish businessman and a well-known Islamic scholar who lives in exile in Pennsylvania—was behind the coup (which Gülen denied) and that the United States was harboring him.
In recent years, there have been military coups in African countries such as Burkina Faso and Mali. Electronic media was used in all those countries during the uprising. But all those campaigns went in favor of the insurgents because the majority of the people were on the side of the rebels and the ousted statesmen in those countries were not democratically elected. After Bolivia and Turkey, it has been proved that coup attempts cannot be successful if people support and electronic media are not combined. Therefore, nowadays, cameras can foil the infamous coup d’état.
