Bolivia’s ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party ousted former President Evo Morales from party leadership on Sunday, seven months after ousting incumbent President Luis Arce.
Morales had Arce banned from the MAS party in October in a power struggle between the two to appear as the MAS candidate on the 2025 presidential election ballot. Morales is term-limited out of running for president as per the Bolivian constitution, a ban the Bolivian Constitutional Court affirmed in January. His time in power, from 2006 to 2019, was marked by promoting the cultivation of coca, the plant used to produce cocaine; accusations of pedophilia, including Morales allegedly fathering a child with a minor; and rampant persecution of political opponents.
Morales resigned voluntarily and fled to Mexico in 2019 after “winning” the last standard presidential election; he fled the country along with most of the pro-Morales leadership of MAS after the Organization of American States (OAS) revealed evidence of fraud in the election.
He has since repeatedly insisted that he was the victim of a “coup” and that he is eligible to run for a fifth term in spite of Bolivia’s constitution establishing a maximum two-term limit for a president and vice president. Morales was able to bypass the constitutional term limits in the past through a series of court rulings, one of which essentially gave him a “free” first term that did not “count” towards the two-term limit.
This weekend, Morales insisted he would be on the ballot regardless of the law and threatened to organize mob actions if the government enforced the law.
At an event in Cochabamba on Saturday preceding his removal from MAS leadership, Morales declared that he would run for president “a las buenas o las malas,” an idiom roughly translating to “by hook or by crook” or “by any means necessary.” Morales threatened to organize riots and road blockades if the country respected its constitution and kept him off the ballot.
“Up to this moment we are legally and constitutionally qualified to be president, that is not under debate,” Morales incorrectly claimed. “What they are doing is to see how with the self-extensions they seek is how to eliminate, how to disqualify me. That is the fight and they are not able to do it.”
Morales also asserted that he has the support and “is defended” by “leftist governments of Latin America,” pointing out that Brazil’s radical leftist President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro are among his allies.
MAS held a three-day event this weekend that saw over 6,000 of its members gather in a sports center located in El Alto, a city adjacent to the Bolivian capital city of La Paz. The event, which ended on Sunday evening, was promoted by the pro-Arce faction of the splintered socialist party and saw the election of trade union leader Grover García as MAS’s new president.
García – a representative of the Single Trade Union Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), a pro-government trade union – declared upon being sworn in as the new leader of MAS that “the finger-pointing and discrimination has ended.” He announced that a new MAS congress would be held in the next 90 days to change the party’s statutes to “re-found” it, echoing calls made by Arce shortly before García’s election.
“Evo Morales is the former president of the MAS instrument; there is a new president who is me,” García proclaimed to local media.
“I cannot be with Evo Morales, he is a former president who must surely be in the Chapare [drug trafficking cartel], we are going to work with the social organizations and we will strongly support the administration of Lucho [Arce’s local nickname],” he continued.
García condemned Morales’ threats of blockades, saying “the mobilizations are against the people, against the families and it is not correct.”
Arce, after Morales’ ousting, said in a social media post, “Never again should our political instrument be used to satiate the aspirations of a person or a group, never again should our social organizations be relegated from their own political project.”
In recent months, the rift between Morales and Arce split the ruling MAS party in two factions, one supporting former President Morales and one supporting Arce, the current president and Morales’ “disowned” successor.
The heart of the rift between Arce and Morales is Morales’ decision to attempt to force his way onto the 2019 election ballot. In 2017, a Morales-friendly court ruled that presidential term limits were a “violation” of Morales’ human rights, which allowed him to run for president again in October 2019. It is widely believed that Morales forced the courts to issue the 2017 ruling.
Morales allegedly “won” the 2019 election fraudulently, prompting international condemnation and local protests, and ultimately Morales’ resignation. After resigning, Morales fled to Mexico with most of his cabinet of ministers.
Jeanine Áñez, a conservative senator and at the time the second vice-president of the Bolivian Chamber of Senators, was sworn in as president as she was the highest-ranking person left in the line of succession who had not fled to Mexico.
Deputy Senate speaker Jeanine Anez, waves from the balcony of the Quemado Palace in La Paz after proclaiming herself the country’s new interim president in a session of Congress that failed to reach a quorum, on November 12, 2019. (AIZAR RALDES/AFP via Getty)
Áñez chose not to be on the ballot in the 2020 election, which resulted in MAS’s return to power and the election of current socialist President Luis Arce.
Arce’s election led to a series of events that culminated in Morales’ return to Bolivia and Áñez being sentenced by the ruling socialists to ten years in prison for allegedly having participated in a “coup” against Morales.
The Bolivian Constitutional Court (TCP) issued a ruling hours before the end of 2023 that overturned the controversial 2017 ruling, stating that the concept of an indefinite presidential reelection “is not a human right.” Morales has nevertheless continued to insist on his aspirations to run for president again in 2025, ordering his sympathizers to riot and cause blockades demanding new top justices for Bolivia.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
