Bolivia’s Electoral Court rejects Evo Morales as head of the ruling party

The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has lost a new legal battle that leaves him out of next year’s presidential race, after the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) recognized a political rival – related to President Luis Arce – as head legitimate of the ruling Movement towards Socialism (MAS). Morales anticipated that he will continue his fight.

Through a resolution released on Tuesday by Groover García, it was learned that the TSE endorsed a ruling by the Constitutional Court in mid-Novemberwhich already ignored Morales and recognized García – akin to President Luis Arce – as head of the MAS, the ruling party.

This ends a legal dispute over the acronym of the party that Morales founded in 1997 on behalf of the coca growers unions.

García said that he was notified and that the TSE resolution “does justice with the social and union organizations that are recovering the party” from the hands of “a single person,” referring to Morales.

“We are going to wait for the TSE to officially notify us to announce the measures we will take, but this is a political genocide,” anticipated Morales’ lawyer, Cecilia Urquieta.

The decision means that García is the only one authorized to register the country’s presidential candidate for the MAS for the August 2025 elections. The ruling is a political victory for Arce against his mentor, Evo Morales, with whom he maintains a relationship. long dispute that has moved to the streets and the courts, in the search to control the party apparatus ahead of the elections.

Morales did not speak out immediately but last Friday at a meeting of his followers he said that he will not give up the electoral race and that he will continue to be a candidate and head of the MAS, while accusing Arce of a “judicial siege” and “interference.” in justice” to “ban” him from the presidential race.

The 65-year-old politician, who was the first indigenous president (2006-2019), faces another judicial investigation for the alleged abuse of a minor that occurred in 2016, when he was still president. Morales has refused to answer to justice.

For more than a month he has been entrenched in his Chapare fiefdom in central Bolivia, protected by the coca growers unions. From there he said last week that the court case was “weaponized” to “eliminate him politically.”

“They tried to eliminate me morally, judicially, politically and even physically,” Morales said in reference to a confusing episode that occurred in October, when police officers shot at the car in which Morales was traveling in Chapare. The government’s version was that the former president resisted a routine search by an anti-drug patrol.

The dispute between Arce and Morales fractured the MAS and has put at risk the hegemony of the party that has been in government for 18 years; first with Morales and now, with Arce.

The current president accused Morales of boycotting his administration “just to defend his candidacy” and “seeking impunity.” He said that the road blockades called by Morales against his government last month have caused losses to the country of more than a billion dollars.

Morales warned last weekend that he would undertake another march to La Paz, against the government of his heir and successor, whom he accuses of “sinking the economy” of the country whose economic crisis is the largest in more than a decade.

For several analysts, the MAS, one of the most important left-wing parties in the history of the country, with strong indigenous and union roots, is “self-destructing” and is on its way to a “terminal crisis,” which could reconfigure the political table. in Bolivia in favor of the center and right-wing parties.

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