Evo Morales is experiencing his worst political moment since he stepped up for the leadership of the country’s left. He had just suspended last week and also the road closures that his followers had carried out almost a month ago without obtaining any concessions from the Government. Just then, this Friday, the Plurinational Constitutional Court (TCP) issued a ruling that not only confirms, which had already been previously ruled, but also expands it to prevent him from being vice president or president of the legislative chambers.
The argument is that “the purpose of the Constituent Assembly, based on what is determined by the Constitution” is to “prevent in any way” that an elected authority is in office for more than 10 years in the Executive Branch, that is, plus two continuous administrations. or discontinuous. since he governed for almost 14 years, between 2006 and 2019. The new ruling, requested as a clarification of another issued at the end of 2023, also indicates that someone who has already served the maximum time allowed cannot be vice president or president of the Chambers, since that would put him in the line of succession to a president he could not replace. So far Morales has not commented on the ruling. Arce has not been affected by it, because until now he has only held his position for four years.
The president has not been able to enjoy this outcome because the country continues to be convulsed by fuel shortages, the economic crisis and the fact that he was prevented from reading the report on his fourth year in office in Parliament, as is traditional, for fear of attacks from the evistas. Arce had to do it in front of the façade of the Palacio Quemado, the historic seat of political power in Bolivia, surrounded by its officials.
“It has been determined that brother Evo Morales can end the hunger strike at the request of the six federations. [de campesinos cocaleros] and brother Evo Morales has accepted,” was the only explanation given for the suspension of the former president’s fast. Previously, Morales had insisted on his request that the road blockades of his adherents cease, although the Government had not agreed to dialogue with the former president, much less granted the movement’s two main requirements: that the prosecutor’s office stop persecuting Morales within of an investigation of “rape and human trafficking” and that the State enables him as a presidential candidate for the 2025 elections; On the contrary, this possibility has been removed with the new ruling of the Constitutional Court.
Nor have the almost 80 detained in the blockades been released, as the strikers requested. The peasant leaders agreed to a “72-hour humanitarian pause,” but it is unlikely that they will return to battle after this period because there are signs of fatigue in their ranks.
After the road closures, the Government has not managed to completely restore the gasoline dispensing system, so the queues at service stations continue. The diesel shortage, on the other hand, has been constant for months. For this reason, numerous strikes and protests by the transport and producer sectors are anticipated for the coming days.
According to the evista and traditional oppositions, they attribute it to the lack of dollars in the country, which prevents the Government from importing fuel in the amount that is demanded by the population.
Bolivia’s hydrocarbon deposits have been depleting in recent years. Therefore, the country needs to import more gasoline and diesel and, at the same time, has less foreign exchange income to do so. Currently, dollar reserves are not even enough to pay for one month of imports. These days it has been reported that, to obtain liquidity, the Central Bank is preparing to sell a part of the 22 tons of gold that it owns and that the law prohibits it from touching. The lack of dollars has led to a “de facto” devaluation of 57%, which is making imported products more expensive. Some analysts believe that next January Bolivia will once again have double-digit annual inflation, which has not happened since the late 1980s. Inflation will exceed 7% until October 2024.
The Evistas avenged their defeat in the streets by creating a scene in the Legislative Assembly. They threw flowers, water and some light objects at its president and, simultaneously, vice president of the Executive David Choquehuanca. For this reason, the session was suspended and Arce could not attend to give the usual speech when a president concludes a year in office. In the one he finally gave, he rejected the “acts of vandalism” of his rivals, blaming the problems of the last four years on the international crises and the sabotage of his former political mentor Evo Morales. “My Government has suffered all the global effects; However, as incredible as it may seem, the greatest adversities he faced came from internal sources that have not rested in their attempt to make the Government shipwreck,” he argued. For his part, Morales wrote in
