“I am always going online, and I am writing down the first and last names of the people who insult him on Facebook and Twitter,” Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said in remarks widely reported in Bolivian media this week.
The vice president’s comments have drawn sharp criticism from some free speech advocates. But lawmakers from Morales’ Movement for Socialism party say they hope to push a proposed law regulating social media through the country’s Congress.
Constructive criticism is fine, said Franklin Garvizu, a congressman from the president’s party. But officials have seen something more nefarious, he said.
“We are very worried because this is a case of systematically using communications mechanisms to plant hatred against the government, to harm the image of our president,” Garvizu said.
Bolivian opposition leaders have a different take. They say such comments show the government’s authoritarian aim to censor social networks.
“Obviously on social networks one cannot expect everyone to be praised. The opposition also receives insults from public officials, criticisms with no meaning, attacks, and it would never occur to us to block social networks,” said Samuel Doria Medina, who heads the opposition National Unity party. “That’s why we’ve recommended to the vice president that he gets an account, that he interacts (with people). He will learn a lot more about young people, and surely not everyone will applaud him, but some will agree with him.”(CNN)