Conservative Bolivian Ex-President Jeanine Áñez Marks 3 Years as Political Prisoner

Former Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez marked three years as a political prisoner of the current Bolivian socialist government on Wednesday, releasing a public letter in which she reaffirmed her innocence and demanded the Bolivian courts free her.

Áñez, a lawyer and a conservative politician, assumed the presidency of Bolivia between November 12, 2019, and November 8, 2020, as a result of a political crisis caused from former socialist president Evo Morales’s voluntary resignation. Morales and his cabinet, members of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Party, fled the country after his resignation.

The absence of Bolivia’s cabinet of ministers and other high-ranking officials left  Áñez, who at the time was the second vice-president of the Bolivian Chamber of Senators, as the next in line in Bolivia’s presidential line of succession.

Morales, who is still presently attempting to return to power by trampling over the nation’s constitutional term limits, is believed to have forced the nation’s courts in 2017 to issue a ruling to allow him to run a fourth time claiming that term limits were a “violation of his human rights.”

Opponents to the government of Bolivian President Luis Arce protest against the arrest of former interim president Jeanine Anez and her former ministers with a sign reading I love my country. I am ashamed of my government in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on March 15, 2021. (RODRIGO URZAGASTI/AFP via Getty)

Morales then “won” in a highly fraudulent October 2019 that was met with local protests and international condemnation, resulting in his voluntary resignation and flight to Mexico a month later.

Although eligible, Áñez chose not to present her candidacy in the 2020 election. The election saw the return of MAS to power through current socialist President Luis Arce.

On March 12, 2021, the Bolivian Prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant for Áñez, charging her with conspiracy, sedition, and terrorism for allegedly having participated in a “coup” against Morales even though Morales voluntarily resigned and Áñez was constitutionally obligated to assume the presidency.

Bolivian courts sentenced Áñez to ten years in prison in 2022. Her sentences may get increased to 20 years as a result of a separate “coup” case investigation led by the Bolivian prosecutor’s office against her and other opposition politicians.

On Wednesday, the third anniversary of her arrest, Áñez published a handwritten open letter on her social media accounts in which she reiterated her innocence and status as a political prisoner of the ruling socialist government.

“Three years ago, 1095 days ago, I was kidnapped, torn from my family and my place in the city of Trinidad, Beni, to the city of La Paz, in an illegal detention center [as ordered] by Evo Morales,” she wrote, “to imprison his political adversaries through judicial records fabricated on the basis of his story as a fugitive from justice and from the country.”

The former president also attacked Morales and MAS, accusing them of having the “intellectual and material authorship” of the actions that led to the fraudulent October 2019 election, Morales’ resignation, and then the purported “coup” claims.

She wrote:

Evo Morales is guilty of abandoning his functions and fleeing the country when, while still President of Bolivia, he publicly resigned from office through the media and social networks, without formalizing the acceptance or rejection of his resignation by the Legislative Assembly, which resulted in 18 hours of State vacuum, chaos in the country and in the Executive Branch, escalation of violence and [a] state of necessity; and he is free with impunity.

Evo Morales is guilty of being a criminal apologist and [enacting] crimes against the security of the Bolivian State, in his condition of political refugee of the complicit socialist governments of Mexico and Argentina in 2019 and 2020 and he is free with impunity.

Áñez asserted, “the hunger for unlimited and perpetual power has consumed the MAS with Evo Morales” and now also with President Luis Arce, who she described as Morales’ “augmented and corrected alter ego.”

The former president continued by accusing Bolivia’s legislature, accusing it of being an “appendix” of the ruling socialist party that is “unable to work on its own agenda to address the serious problems that plague Bolivia.”

Similarly, she accused the nation’s judiciary of succumbing to Justice Minister Ivan Lima Magne, who she accused of being President Arce’s “hired assassin.”

“The same magistrates and Attorney General Lanchipa, who inaugurated with me as President of Bolivia the Judicial Year 2020 in Sucre, capital of Bolivia, are the ones who like Peter to Jesus have denied me several times, under pressure from the government of Arce Catacora,” the letter read. “They are more afraid of temporal power than of Divine Power, of God, of their consciences and of complying with and applying the Constitution.”

Supporters of Bolivia’s former interim President Jeanine Anez gather outside the Court of Justice on Anez’s first trial day, in La Paz, Bolivia, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Anez is being tried for breach of presidential duties and making resolutions contrary to the Constitution. (Juan Karita/AP)

Áñez concluded her letter by demanding the rights and freedoms taken away from her.

“Three years after my kidnapping and illegal ‘preventive detention,’ which every day reaffirms my condition as a political prisoner, even the ‘MASistas’ themselves, accomplices of the cowardice and crimes of their narco-blue circle, have confessed the instructions they received from their boss before and after their attempted self-coup on November 12, 2019,” the letter reads.”

“Beloved Bolivia: I demand the release of the more than 250 political prisoners,” she concluded.

During her almost year-long presidency, Áñez made efforts to restore Bolivia’s ties with the United States and Israel after Evo Morales had Bolivia cut ties with both nations during his presidency. Socialist and pro-Iran President Luis Arce would then have Bolivia cut ties with Israel again over its self-defense operations against the jihadist terrorist group Hamas.