2023-12-30 16:16:02
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Former President Evo Morales accused the president and political heir, Luis Arce, of plotting “a black plan” to remove him from the 2025 presidential race following a ruling by the Constitutional Court (TC) that might put end to the aspiration of the indigenous leader to return to power in Bolivia.
“The political ruling of the TC is proof of the complicity of some magistrates with the black plan that the Government executes… to eliminate us politically and even physically,” Morales said on Saturday on the social network X, formerly Twitter, and added that “no fear, the fight continues.”
There was no official reaction at the moment to the 64-year-old former ruler’s complaint.
Hours before, the ruling of the TC was made public, which states that “it is not possible to run for a third term and there is no absolute right to indefinite nomination, and its prohibition is compatible with the American Convention on Human Rights.”
That ruling annuls another constitutional ruling from 2017 that had enabled Morales to run for a third term in 2019. The Bolivian Constitution only allows for consecutive re-election, which Morales had already exhausted when he was re-elected in 2015.
Morales is the leader of the divided Movement towards Socialism (MAS) in power and governed as the country’s first indigenous president from 2006 to 2019 when a social outbreak that left 37 dead forced his resignation following that year’s elections that were reported as fraudulent.
Arce was Morales’ economy minister for a decade and is considered his political heir.
Morales lost a referendum in 2016 in which he sought the approval of Bolivians to run for a third time. However, the coca leader was unaware of the result of the polls and asked the then TC to enable it with the argument that re-election is a “human right” enshrined in the Inter-American Convention.
In 2021, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled indicating that indefinite reelection is not a human right according to a consultation carried out by the then president of Colombia, Iván Duque. A ruling from the TC of Bolivia on that decision of the Inter-American Court was pending and the ruling comes days before the magistrates end their term.
The decision of the Bolivian TC was celebrated by the opposition. “With this ruling, we Bolivians ensure that no apprentice tyrant will ever once more appear who tramples on the vote, ignores a referendum, commits fraud, with the sole intention of perpetuating himself in power,” the governor said in a public letter released on Saturday. of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho.
Camacho has been in prison for a year and governs his region from prison. He is accused of alleged terrorism for the 2019 protests that forced Morales’ resignation.
The ruling is known in the midst of an open political battle between Morales and Arce for the nomination in 2025. Arce is authorized by the Constitution to seek re-election, although he said that this is not the time to talk regarding candidacies. According to the law, a political party can only nominate one person for president.
Morales has denounced an alleged “collusion” between the magistrates and the Arce government to remove him from the political career in exchange for extending the mandate of magistrates and judges.
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