The President of Bolivia, Luis Arce Catacora, discusses the failed coup attempt and incidents of June 26th, 2024, before journalists in a press conference from La Paz, Bolivia. teleSUR
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I categorically say I have never given an instruction of that sort.
00:20When I assumed for the first time our national government, the first commander that I met
00:34in 2020, when I met those commanders, I told them clearly that we had to sanction all militaries
00:47that participated in the coup of 2019. And I told them clearly that we will never allow the army's
01:00forces to be against the people. What he did yesterday, former General Zúñiga, was to raise
01:10himself against the Bolivian people, against democracy that has voted the people of Bolivia.
01:18So it's very outrageous to justify himself for personal interests or for something else.
01:32Also, you have asked a question about what has been planning in the investigations.
01:45We still have many things to investigate. This is only the beginning. We only have found the people
01:56that executed the operation. We don't know the people that have designed it, those who have planned it.
02:03And I also respond to two questions. One of the main issues of the Bolivian army is the area of intelligence,
02:23military intelligence. And in this military intelligence unity, they have to inform any movement
02:34which is not in line with the military conduct. And somebody from General Zúñiga's confidence should be involved.
02:54So it seems that the military intelligence was working for the army chief. One of the main issues here, why,
03:09and this is being uncovered and doesn't come to light yesterday, the area of intelligence that should be informing,
03:21alerting, didn't take any action. That's why we have more than 17 arrested. There's a lot of people involved that cover information
03:35that didn't report information, including what I was saying. When we know about this movement of armored vehicles,
03:49we communicated with the person that was supposed to know what was happening and didn't know that.
04:01That movement that our Minister of Defense was suspecting, there was no information about it. The information didn't arrive.
04:15So something was being covered. Something was being tried to avoid that the information arrive to the people that have to be in charge of doing based on that information.