Evo Morales, former president of Bolivia, during a Puebla Group meeting in Buenos Aires on March 21. Natasha Pisarenko (AP)
Evo Morales, three-time former president of Bolivia, has officially expressed his desire to run in the 2025 elections amid the tough battle he is waging with President Luis Arce for leadership of the Bolivian left. “Forced by the government’s attacks on its plan to ban the MAS-IPSP [Movimiento al Socialismo – Instrumento por la Soberanía de los Pueblos] and defending ourselves with political processes, even physically eliminating each other, we have decided to accept the demands of our militancy,” he justified. His announcement precedes the holding of the MAS congress, which will only be attended by Morales supporters, while Arce’s unconditional supporters are preparing their own meeting.
In a subsequent statement on Radio Kawsachun Coca, the station of the coca growers’ unions that Morales has chaired for more than 30 years and which constitute his most loyal stronghold, the former president identified with the dismembered Aymara leader Túpac Katari for his rebellion against the Spanish crown in 1781. He compared the “government, the empire, the right, the media” to the four horses that pulled the rebel’s limbs until they destroyed him. And he insisted: “You have an obligation to me. So much for Evo; Everyone against Evo.”
The announcement did not surprise Bolivians, who in recent months had seen the former president fight valiantly not to lose control of his party, with the implicit aim of using it to try to return to power. The first obstacle he will have to overcome on this occasion, and if it comes to this it would be his seventh bid for this high office, is the resistance he faces within his party, shaken by a “renewal” movement that is associated with linked to the government of Luis Arce. and Vice President David Choquehuanca. This movement has managed to attract important groups of leaders of the party structure loyal to Morales, who will not join the expected proclamation without discussing it at the party congress that will take place on October 3 in Llauca Ñ, a coca-growing city. The “evistas” fear that, in addition to organizing a parallel congress, which is taken for granted, their rivals will take advantage of their current power to withdraw their acronym, legally disqualify their leader’s candidacy and damage their reputation. In his publication, the former president assures that he “knows the plan they have.” If they fail to stop the Ordinary Congress of Llauca and disqualify us, they will use a woman to attack us, just like the right-wingers did.” In 2016, Morales was forced to admit that he was in a romantic relationship with the manager of a Chinese company that was a contractor to his government, after the birth certificate of the couple’s alleged son was revealed. It later emerged that the child did not exist and that Morales had been deceived by the woman because she recognized a son without knowing him based solely on a fake report from a clinic. In 2019, while he was in exile in Argentina, the country’s interim government tried to implicate him in an alleged case of statutory rape (relationship with a minor). The prosecution was unsuccessful.
In the days leading up to Morales’ announcement, there was a debate about the need to suspend the ruling passed by the Constitutional Court in 2017 recognizing re-election as a “human right”, which was later rejected by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. , whose decisions are binding for the country. If this sentence were to be reversed, Morales’ supporters fear that an attempt would be made to legally prohibit their leader from being re-elected. To this end, the Constitutional Court should interpret the clause of the Constitution that states that presidents “can only be continuously re-elected once” in contrast to the former president. Although the phrase “continuously” is clear enough, the MAS opposition faction does not rule out attempting to ban Morales in this way and has threatened that if they do so, they would “set the country on fire.”
Because of these fights, the judicial elections that were scheduled to take place this year have become strategically important for the candidates. The “Evistas”, in alliance with the “traditional” opposition of the center and the right, have tried by all means, including a hunger strike by the deputies, to call the elections as quickly as possible, with the aim of removing them from office current judges who see them as having “sold out to the ruling party”. At the same time, the MAS ruling faction managed to delay the matter with the help of the judicial authorities, who cornered Parliament with legal challenges against the electoral law. Since Evo Morales is now officially a candidate, it is possible to estimate whether the fears of him and his supporters regarding the unfavorable behavior of the courts will be confirmed or not.
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