1 of 1 Image of Evo Morales during an interview on January 6, 2020 Photo: Matias Baglietto/Portal Image of Evo Morales during an interview on January 6, 2020 Photo: Matias Baglietto/Portal
The Plurinational Constitutional Court of Bolivia (TCP) disqualified former President Evo Morales as a candidate for president in 2025. The court canceled the openended reelection mechanism that had already allowed the indigenous leader to run again in 2019.
“Restricting the possibility of indefinite reelection is an appropriate measure to ensure that a person does not remain in power,” says the 82page decision published this Saturday (30) on the court's website.
This decision reverses another decision made in 2017 by the same court, the highest authority in constitutional consultations, which had deemed reelection a “human right”.
The new decision is final and Morales described it as “political.”
“It is evidence of the complicity of some judges with the dark plan that the government is carrying out at the behest of imperialism with the conspiracy of the Bolivian right,” wrote the former leftwing president on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
The Supreme Court decision stipulates that the president and vice president may serve a term no more than twice, continuously or discontinuously.
Morales expressed his desire to run for the 2025 presidential election amid verbal clashes with Luis Arce, the current president and former political ally and economy minister for almost his entire term in office from 2006.
For constitutional lawyer María Renée Soruco of the Catholic University of San Pablo, “reelection, if previously permitted, was a violation of the Constitution itself.”
“It is a late decision, this is not about Evo Morales, but about defending the rule of law,” Soruco added.
Bolivia's TCP resolution was supported by a review of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights' criteria that exclude reelection as a human right.
In 2021, this international autonomous judicial body issued an opinion on indefinite reelection at the request of the Colombian government.
Evo Morales resigned from the presidency in 2019 due to social unrest that erupted following allegations of electoral fraud. After leaving the country, he was replaced by Jeanine Añez, who is currently on trial and sentenced for an alleged coup.
“The TCP puts an end to Evo Morales’ delusion of being reelected forever,” Añez wrote on her account on the social network X.
Opposition leader Carlos Mesa hinted in the same direction: “Evo Morales and [o então vicepresidente Álvaro] García Linera violated the constitution […] with the complicity of TCP”.