The Plurinational Constitutional Court of Bolivia (TCP), accepting an opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court) on the matter, suspended the indefinite re-election in the country this Friday with a ruling that disqualifies the candidacy of former President Evo Morales in the 2025 elections.
Constitutional Ruling 1010/2023, approved by the TCP this December 29, establishes that reelection “is not a human right” and therefore can be legally restricted. Thus, it annuls a previous ruling, approved by this same court in 2017, which stated the opposite. This last ruling allowed Morales to run for his third reelection and generated a movement of citizen rejection that ended in the overthrow of the Bolivian president in 2019, after the elections that he won that year and that were later annulled due to accusations of fraud.
The TCP has also indicated that “the president and vice president in Bolivia can only exercise their mandate for two continuous or discontinuous periods.” This clause means the disqualification of Morales for any future election, because the politician has already governed in three periods: 2006-2009; 2009-2014 and 2014-2019. Furthermore, it implies a change in the Constitution, which only prohibits more than two continuous terms and nowhere does it restrict or even refer to discontinuous reelections. According to jurist Farit Rojas, this is an “overinterpretation” of the Constitution by the TCP. Rojas recalled that, in Bolivian political history, discontinuous reelection has always been allowed. It would therefore be, according to this expert, an innovation that is not supported by the letter of Bolivia's fundamental charter.
Evo Morales is engaged in a total confrontation with the Government of President Luis Arce, who in recent years went from being his dolphin to becoming his “worst enemy”, as the former president himself described it. Morales has already proclaimed himself a candidate for 2025 and is currently fighting against the ruling party and the Electoral Court to keep the party he founded, the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), in his hands. The former president repeatedly denounced that Arce and his Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, had the intention of disqualifying him for the next elections. He also announced that, in exchange for this disqualification, the Executive would support the Constitutional Court in the extension of its functions and the mandate of the rest of the judicial authorities. The magistrates were due to leave their duties on December 31, but the judicial elections that were scheduled for this year have not been called. The “self-extension” was completed on December 12. Then, the opposition denounced that the TCP and the other courts of justice acted in coordination with Minister Lima to sabotage the judicial elections and ensure that the current authorities remained in their positions indefinitely. In any case, to avoid further questions, the ruling on re-election has been approved within the original term of office of the TCP; For this reason, this body had to meet in the middle of the traditional recess for the end of the year holidays.
At the same time that it restricted reelection for president, vice president, senators and deputies, the TCP expanded this benefit for judicial magistrates, including the members of the Constitutional Court themselves, by authorizing them to opt for reelection in a court other than the one in which they were elected. they occupy a position. Previously, the reelection of magistrates was absolutely prohibited.
Some opposition spokespersons have celebrated the TCP's restriction on re-election and the disqualification of Morales as an achievement of the democratic struggle of the Bolivian people against Morales's continuity. “Evo: you had 3 mandates, you used 2, you owe us 1, no MORE, never again,” former right-wing president Jorge Quiroga wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Also Fernando Camacho, governor of Santa Cruz, currently in prison for an accusation regarding his role in the overthrow of Morales, expressed in a statement that “with this TCP ruling, we Bolivians ensure that an apprentice of “A tyrant who tramples on the vote, ignores a referendum, commits fraud, with the sole intention of perpetuating himself in power.” This support for the TCP decision does not take into account that, without Morales in the electoral race, the prospects of Arce being able to mobilize the vote of the majority of the Bolivian left increase, and with this, simultaneously, the options of other currents decrease. policies.
#Constitutional #Court #Bolivia #annuls #indefinite #reelection #disqualifies #Evo #Morales