(Credit: AIZAR RALDES / AFP via Getty Images)
(CNN Spanish) -
The former interim president of Bolivia Jeanine Áñez is in preventive prison and is subjected to four liability trials presented by the Ministry of Justice to the State Attorney General's Office.
Ariel Coronado, Jeanine Áñez's lawyer, spoke with Fernando del Rincón in CNN's Conclusions and said that Áñez “is being accused of having assumed as president in a power vacuum.
That is 'terrorism' for the Bolivian Public Ministry ”.
"The crime would have been if Jeanine Áñez did not assume the presidency," Coronado said.
Tension in Bolivia
Thousands of people protest against the arrest of Áñez and several former officials of his cabinet.
The protest was called by the Santa Cruz Civic Committee.
According to the organization, "it is time to defend democracy again" in Bolivia.
The Organization of American States, the OAS, says that it took "due note of the concerns expressed in the statements of various international bodies" about what is happening in Bolivia.
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The agency also expressed concern about the "abuse of judicial mechanisms that have once again been transformed into repressive instruments of the government party."
For its part, the United States said in a statement that it “follows with concern the events surrounding the recent arrest of former officials by the Bolivian government.
"We urge our neighbors and friends in Bolivia to respect civil rights and guarantees of due process, guaranteed by the American Convention on Human Rights and the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter," says a statement.
The daughter of former President Áñez, said that “what is being done is an abuse and an injustice, they cannot do this to a woman, to a woman who what she did was comply with her country.
This is an abuse of an authoritarian government.
The accusations against Jeanine Áñez
The current government continues to add legal proceedings against the former president.
This Monday the Ministry of Justice presented before the Prosecutor's Office four lawsuits of responsibilities against the former president and two of her former ministers, that of justice, Álvaro Coímbra, and that of Energy, Rodrigo Guzmán.
The accusations blame Áñez and the former ministers for the loan that the ministry considers "irregular and onerous" of more than 346 million dollars with the IMF;
the "extension of the Fundempresa concession," which they consider illegal;
the alleged "violation of human rights of Bolivians residing in Chile" and "the restrictions during the pandemic."
These new processes are totally outside the case called "coup" in which the Prosecutor charged the former president and her former ministers with the crimes of "terrorism, conspiracy and sedition."
Precisely in the framework of that case, this Sunday a judge issued four months of preventive detention for Áñez while the charges against him are investigated and ordered his transfer to a women's prison in La Paz.
In the prison, an isolation space was enabled for 15 days by pandemic protocols, but after that time she will occupy a common dormitory with the other inmates because, according to the director of the penitentiary regime, "no person deprived of liberty has privileges." .
Instead, the former president defended this Sunday in statements to Red Uno, a CNN affiliate, that she does have privileges, no matter how much "Evo Morales likes it or not."
Áñez regretted that the constitutional transition is invalid.
The situation in Bolivia forces us to remember
The Public Ministry, according to a document published by Jeanine Áñez on Twitter, is accusing the former president of materializing an alleged coup against Evo Morales by assuming power in the midst of the political crisis of 2019.
However, this crisis has two reasons.
The first, the allegations by the OAS about electoral fraud that would have favored evo morales in the 2019 elections;
and the second, the subsequent resignation of the president, as a result of these accusations.
Likewise, the arrival of Áñez to the Executive was endorsed by the constitutional court, the highest judicial instance in Bolivia.
Quiroga: Evo Morales cried as a child what he did not know how to defend as a man
Former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga also considers the current process to be arbitrary and authoritarian, planned by former President Evo Morales.
«Evo Morales cried as a child what he did not know how to defend as a man;
cowardice in the face of the crisis today wants to make retroactive courage, which is double cowardice, justifying that he was the victim of a coup, "said Quiroga.
For former President Quiroga, what the government of Luis Arce does is criminalize "something essential for democracies: constitutional succession in the midst of a crisis."
Quiroga calls Morales a "fraudulent escaped pharaoh."
With information from Fernando del Rincón and Kay Guerrero
Evo MoralesJeanine ÁñezTuto Quiroga