MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivian court bans Evo from 2025 candidacy

Bolivian court bans Evo from 2025 candidacy

Bolivia's Plurinational Constitutional Court (TCP) Friday ruled that indefinite reelection is not a human right and therefore former President Evo Morales was banned from running for office in 2025. Under the TCP's new consideration, such a right can now be legally restricted, which reverses a criterion approved by this same court in 2017.

The latest TCP decision took into consideration an opinion submitted by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). The previous paradigm allowed Morales to run for his third reelection, which resulted in an uprising leading to his early departure from office in 2019 amid election fraud allegations.

The TCP insisted that “the president and vice-president in Bolivia can only exercise their mandate for two continuous or discontinuous periods,” which means the disqualification of Morales for any future election after three terms (2006-2009; 2009-2014 and 2014-2019).

The ruling also entails a change in the Constitution, which bans more than two continuous terms but nowhere in its wording does it mention discontinuous reelections.

Some law scholars have argued that the latest TCP construction was an “overinterpretation” of the Constitution because in Bolivian history discontinuous reelections have always been allowed.

Morales is engaged in a total confrontation with the government of President Luis Arce Catacora, who in recent years has gone from being his dauphin to becoming his worst enemy. Evo has already announced his candidacy for 2025 and is waging a legal battle to keep the party he founded, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), in his hands.

He argues that Arce and Justice Minister Iván Lima seek to disenfranchise him for the next elections and, for that, magistrates who were to leave their benches on Dec. 31 will remain in office pending judicial elections that should have been held in 2023.

The TCP ruling also provided for the reelection of magistrates, which had been prohibited.