LA PAZ, Dec 31: Bolivia’s Constitutional Court has barred former President Evo Morales from taking part in the 2025 presidential election, the German news agency, dpa, reported.
“Restricting the possibility of indefinite re-election is an appropriate measure to ensure that a person does not remain in power,” the court ruled.
In doing so, the court overturned a previous decision from 2017 that had described re-election as a “human right”.
In a post on the platform X on Saturday, Morales described the decision as “political” and as evidence of the “complicity of some judges” with what he called “the black plan” of the government of Bolivian President Luis Arce.
In September 2023 Morales, who in 2006 became the South American country’s first indigenous president, announced that he would run for office again.
After the Constitutional Court’s 2017 decision to declare term limits invalid, he ran for a fourth term in the presidential poll in October 2019.
The former coca grower leader declared himself the winner of the presidential election and the opposition accused him of fraud.
Unrest broke out and, under pressure from the military, Morales resigned and spent a year in exile in Mexico and Argentina. His supporters spoke of a coup.
Conservative politician Jeanine Áñez became interim president, and a new election in October 2020 was won by Arce.
Áñez was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2022 for dereliction of duty and constitutional violations. Human rights activists expressed concern about the independence of the Bolivian judiciary.
Morales and Arce, his former economy minister, have now fallen out.
Before announcing his plans to run for office again, Morales claimed that the government wanted to “eliminate” him, potentially even physically.
–BERNAMA-dpa
TAGS: Bolivia, election, Evo Morales, barred