ANALYSIS | The confrontation between Luis Arce and Evo Morales for control of the MAS

( Spanish) – The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, and former president Evo Morales, who announced him in 2019 as a candidate for the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), maintain an open confrontation that has divided the governing party, with mutual accusations of coup plotting, in the midst of a currency and environmental crisis, and with an eye on next year’s elections.

Four years ago, when Morales was a refugee in Argentina, the MAS moved its congress to Buenos Aires to define the electoral formula. The former president anointed, among praises, the former Minister of Economy, Luis Arce, above the former Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, who was the candidate for vice president. The leftist party achieved a comfortable victory in the first round with 55.10% of the votes and more than 25 points ahead of second place.

Morales returned to his country after the change of government and from then on the problems began.

“From the moment Evo crosses from Argentina to Bolivia, a long period of electoral campaign begins. A series of actions regarding Morales trying to control who would have to be ministers,” political scientist Marcelo Arequipa, professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (La Paz), told .

Arce, one of the faces of Bolivia’s economic growth and promoter of the nationalization of strategic sectors, described Morales as the “historic leader” at that time, but clarified that he had no plans to include him in any position in the Government.

Arequipa said that “Arce built a cabinet tailored to him and his more technical, perhaps less political profile, far from what Evo Morales would have done and that made him uncomfortable.” According to the political scientist, Morales had other expectations: “He thought that Arce was going to be an administrator and that he was going to be able to control everything, that he was going to have the State apparatus at his disposal.”

However, the break had not yet materialized. Until the beginning of 2023, they still shared public events.

But the pressure to make changes in the cabinet became more evident. In June 2023, the Legislative Assembly, with votes from sectors related to Morales, approved a motion of censure to dismiss the Minister of Government, Eduardo del Castillo, critical of the former president. However, Arce removed him in compliance with the regulations and immediately reappointed him to the position.

The political scientist Arequipa highlighted that “in Congress there is a break that is being reflected” in the financial and energy crisis faced by the Arce government. As he noted, “the strategy of the Evista sector and the opposition is to try to ensure that Arce arrives as worn out as possible (by 2025), without electoral possibilities.”

In September of last year, Morales rejected in a public speech that Arce had been an “ideologist of the economic model,” and added that in the cabinet he was known as a “cashier.” In addition, he accused him of sinking Bolivia’s economy. Two days later, and with almost two years left until the vote, he confirmed that he will run for the presidency again.

His candidacy was made official at a MAS congress attended only by the Evista faction, a meeting that was later annulled by Justice. Something similar happened later with the Arcista faction, which in May elected a new party president to replace Morales, but the meeting was also rejected by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Last month, when Morales called and led a demonstration against the Government, called the “March to Save Bolivia,” Arce sent him a televised message in which he expressed: “I did not agree to be your puppet.” Furthermore, he asked him: “Do not drag the people into confrontation and death because of your whims of power.”

Political analyst Jorge Márquez Meruvia told : “The MAS is demonstrating what the decline of a hegemonic party is. In this type of party there are disputes, but the fight for internal power has come to break it.”

“The economic, ecological and hydrocarbon crises are a sign that the Government has not had the capacity to make decisions and carry out the corresponding reforms, surely fearful of what the response of the Morales faction would be,” added the political scientist.

It is not the first time in recent years that a leader from the region has experienced difficulties in the succession of the party and its management, as happened in Ecuador to Rafael Correa (confronted with Lenín Moreno) and in Argentina to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ( in bad relationship with Alberto Fernández). The analysts consulted agree that in the Bolivian case there are no polarizing programmatic differences between the factions, but rather it is reduced to a fight for control of the party.

Not even the failed coup attempt in June, led by General Juan José Zúñiga, former head of the Army, led to their unity.

Former Vice President Álvaro García Linera, who has not openly taken sides in this dispute, then commented to that it is “worrying and dangerous” that Arce and Morales trivialize the issue, after Morales said that it was a “self-coup,” something which Arce denied. “Evo Morales has responded based on his political income, Evo wants to be qualified as a candidate, Luis wants to disqualify Evo as a candidate. And in the middle they are dancing with the Armed Forces, they are politicizing them, and that is very risky for both of them and for the democratic stability of Bolivia,” García Linera said in an interview with Carmen Aristegui.

Morales’ presidential aspirations were harmed by a ruling by the Constitutional Court that ruled in December against indefinite reelection, pointing out that it is not a human right and that presidents can only serve for two terms, whether continuous or discontinuous, nullifying a 2017 ruling in the opposite direction that had allowed Morales to compete in 2019. The Bolivian Constitution states that leaders can be re-elected “once on a continuous basis.”

For his part, Arce in August suspended the holding of primary elections and proposed holding a referendum to ask citizens whether or not they would agree to extending presidential re-election. Morales, who then accused him of wanting to stop his campaign, had already reaffirmed that he would be a candidate no matter what. “If it’s not good, it’s bad,” he said at an event in Cochabamba.

Political scientist Márquez explained: “Within the political culture of Bolivia, caudillismo is not something new, it is almost natural. There are internal fights and parties that have disappeared. So far the MAS has not been divided (formally), we will know that in December or at the latest in February.” It refers to the deadline that the court has given for the parties to renew their directives at the end of the year, and to the closing of alliances for next year for the August elections.

“The hegemonic party is cracked, we don’t know if it will accommodate its national leadership,” Márquez pointed out. If the conflict continues, the MAS risks losing its legal status.

However, the internal crisis does not seem to be paying off for the opposition, which still does not have a renowned figure to compete against the MAS. Arequipa, from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, said that “today, everything is concentrated on the two of them, and there are no leaders who are strategically taking advantage of the moment.”

According to him, it is unlikely that two candidates can surpass both of them to leave them out of a possible second round, which is why he said that both Arce and Morales, who insists on running despite the judicial obstacles, are betting that the elections become a primary to define the winner of the MAS in the so-called bicentennial elections, when 200 years have passed since the independence of Bolivia.