Bolivia’s Constitutional Court has banned former President Evo Morales from running in the 2025 presidential elections after annulling the indefinite re-election provision that allowed him to run in 2019.
“Limiting the possibility of re-election indefinitely is an appropriate measure to ensure that someone does not remain in power,” said the 82-page decision published today by the Bolivian Court.
This decision cancels another decision adopted in 2017 by the same court, the highest in the field of constitutional deliberation, which considered re-election as a “human right”.
The new decision, which Evo Morales describes as political, cannot be appealed.
“This is proof of the complicity of certain magistrates in the Black Plan that the government is carrying out on behalf of the empire and with the conspiracy of the Bolivian right,” the former left-wing president wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter). ), referring to the United States.
The decision of the Constitutional Court stipulates that the President and Vice President may not serve more than two terms, uninterrupted or discontinuous.
Morales had expressed his desire to be a candidate in 2025, in conflict with Luis Arce, the current president, his political ally and Minister of Economy for most of his term, since 2006.
According to constitutional law specialist Maria Renée Soruco, from the Catholic University of San Pablo, the re-elections are rather contrary to the Constitution itself: “It is not about Evo Morales, but about defending the rule of law,” Soruco added. to the EFE agency.
The Constitutional Court’s decision is based on a revision of the criteria of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which excludes re-election as a human right.
In 2021, this international consultative body issued an advice on the indefinite re-election at the request of the Colombian government.
Evo Morales served as president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, after being re-elected in 2009 and again in 2014.
In 2019, he resigned as president amid social unrest and accusations of election fraud, and when he left the country he was replaced by Jeanine Añez, who is being prosecuted and convicted over an alleged coup.
Source: DN
