"This is an emergency press conference," said Evo Morales, visibly annoyed, barely sat down before reporters at a hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, the city where he has been in exile since December last year. The former president of Bolivia said that his disqualification as a candidate for senator, decided on Thursday by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of his country, has been a step towards what he considered his "final ban" and evidence of possible fraud " by mandate of the United States ”. "With this fact, some members of the Court are not guaranteeing a clean or transparent election," he said.
Escorted by his lawyers, Morales also revealed that he maintains contacts with sectors of the Armed Forces and the police that are "worried" about the drift of the interim government of President Jeanine Añez. "They feel they have been deceived by the dictatorship," he warned.
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The electoral justice of Bolivia did not authorize the candidacy for senator of Evo Morales for the general elections of May 3. He used as an argument that the former president does not meet the requirement of having a “permanent residence” of two years in Cochabamba, the Bolivian district he intended to represent. Morales lives in the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, since 2006, when he came to the presidency, but he never left his electoral domicile in Cochabamba. On November 11, he left Bolivia for Mexico, victim of a military civic revolt that resulted in 30 deaths and precipitated his resignation. After a stay in Mexico, Morales settled in early December in Argentina, from where he organized the return to his country and the electoral campaign of his party, the Movement to Socialism (MAS).
Disabled as an aspiring president, Morales presented by proxy his candidacy for a senator from the region who saw him born into political life as a leader of the coca growers, in Cochabamba. The rejection of the Electoral Court was a blow to their plans to return to Bolivian political life. “The Electoral Tribunal submits to the dictatorship and American politics. They do not want Evo to return to Bolivia, it is an instruction from the United States, they do not even want Evo to go to the border with Bolivia, in [the Argentine provinces of] Salta and Jujuy. All the measures of the national Government and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal obey that American mandate, ”he denounced from Buenos Aires.
Morales also revealed that he maintains contact with military and police sectors that, he said, gradually take away from the government of President Añez. “The National Police has been deceived; the Armed Forces too. I am in contact with members of the Armed Forces and the police and they are worried and angry at the dictatorship. There are patriotic military, who are reflecting, regretful, for having been allies of the coup. Nationalism begins to be reborn, ”Morales said, without clarifying at what level he maintained these conversations. “These contacts will continue, let the right know. I have the right to communicate, although it is known who communicates with me is already considered terrorist or seditious, ”the former president added.
The former president cannot return to Bolivia without being arrested because he faces charges of "sedition and terrorism." The interim government of Jeanine Añez accuses him of organizing the roadblocks that followed his resignation from the presidency from exile. Candidate Carlos Mesa, meanwhile, denounced Morales for alleged electoral fraud in the elections that on October 20, 2019 gave the ruling party a victory in the first round. Mesa and other candidates opposed to Morales celebrated the electoral disqualification of the former president.
The legal paths of Morales to achieve his authorization are reduced to resources before the same court that disabled him, although his rulings are considered unappealable, and at international levels. The lawyers of the former president, Argentines Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni and Gustavo Ferreyra, denounced this Friday that the principle of residence should not be taken into account because Morales "is not in Bolivia for reasons beyond his control." "If he stayed in Bolivia, he was killed," said Zaffaroni, former minister of the Supreme Court of Argentina. For Zaffaroni, his client faces "a drip ban." “They are proscribing candidates, generating problems. We suspect that we are on the way to banning the political force of Evo Morales, the MAS, ”he explained.
The Supreme Electoral Court rejected Morales' candidacy, but approved that of Luis Arce, the candidate for president of the MAS. The first electoral survey that was carried out after the registration of candidates put the MAS in front, with 31% of the votes, followed by Mesa, with 17% and Añez, with 16%. At the tail of the polls is the civic leader of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Luis Fernando Camacho, with 9%. To win in the first round, in Bolivia it is necessary to obtain half plus one of the votes or 40% and 10 points of difference over the second. A second-round scenario could complicate the MAS, due to the eventual electoral union of the forces of the right that promoted the dismissal of Morales.
