Bolivian court prevents indefinite re-election of Evo Morales for 2025

The Plurinational Constitutional Court (TCP) of Bolivia decreed, this Friday night, a constitutional ruling in which it indicates that “indefinite reelection does not exist and is not a human right,” Several Bolivian political actors reacted to the measure, especially the former president’s detractors. Evo Morales (2006-2019), who seeks a new re-election for 2025.

Disseminated by local media, Constitutional Ruling 1010/2023 establishes that in Bolivia the president and vice president can only be elected and serve a mandate for two periods, whether continuous or discontinuous.

This year a sector of the ruling party Movement towards Socialism (MAS) proclaimed Evo Morales as the sole candidate for 2025, however the Lauca Ñ congress where Morales was elected is in question by the Electoral Court, which indicates that there were irregularities in the process and ordered its repetition.

In recent months Evo Morales has had a struggle with the current president of Bolivia Luis Arce, who has described Morales as “his main opponent” for the constant criticism of his government.

Evo Morales alleges “black plan” against him

Morales, upon learning of the ruling, pointed out that it is “victim of the Government” of Luis Arce and of “imperialism” who intend the “extermination of the indigenous movement.”

“The plan is not only to take away the MAS, but to ban and eliminate Evo as a candidate,” the former president stated in a meeting in the town of Ivirigarzama in the Tropics of Cochabamba, his political and union stronghold.

Hours before, the former president wrote on his social networks that this TCP ruling is proof of “complicity” of the magistrates with the “black plan” against him executed by the Government of Arce por “orders of the empire and with the conspiracy of the Bolivian right.”

Despite the ruling, he still believes he is a candidate

Morales stated in his Sunday program on Kawsachun Coca radio that he can still present himself as a presidential candidate in the 2025 elections in Bolivia, since the TCP resolution responded to a ““protection for freedom of expression and not for authorization or disqualification” of the former president.

”Evo is still qualified, that is my interpretation, neither the State political commission nor the advisory opinion establishes any limitation for discontinuous re-election”Morales said.

Inter-American Court

The TCP relied on a resolution of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of 2021, in which said court refuted Evo Morales’ argument and established that indefinite presidential reelection is not a human right.

The Inter-American Court also published at the time,“The authorization of indefinite presidential re-election is contrary to the principles of a representative democracy and, therefore, to the obligations established in the American Convention on Human Rights and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.”

With this measure, Evo Morales would be disqualified from a future election, because he has already governed the Executive for three periods, 2006-2009, 2009-2014 and 2014-2019, and in his last attempt he denounced electoral fraud against him that resulted in a political crisis.

The former president of Bolivia Carlos Mesa (2003-2005) also published his opinion on his social network account X: “Evo Morales and Garcia Linera violated the Constitution, international norms, laws and the decision of the people when they imposed their candidacy in 2019 with the complicity of the TCP. They stole the presidency from us with monumental fraud and corrupted democracy. “There can be no impunity for those who did so much damage to the country nor for their accomplices.”