2024-02-07 03:01:00
Groups close to the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, announced this Tuesday the end of the roadblocks that they maintained 16 days ago, after the parliamentary approval of a law that calls for judicial elections. The “evista” sectors, which support the former governor and leader of the ruling Movement towards Socialism (MAS), demanded the resignation of the judges of the country’s highest courts and the holding of judicial elections, which were to be held last year.
The peasant leader Ponciano Santos declared to the media: “We are going to lift the national blockade and we are going to be in a state of alert and emergency. I am sure that starting this afternoon everything will normalize.” In turn, one of the sectors mobilized in the town of Parotani, one of the most critical points of the protest that began on January 22, resolved to “lift the national road blockade” after the “objective of struggle” was achieved. , although vigil is maintained.
The protest was concentrated in the central department of Cochabamba, where the main routes that connect the east with the west of the country converge. Cochabamba is also the main political bastion of Evo Morales. At the most critical moments, the blockades were established in up to 36 places on different roads, until this Tuesday they were reduced to eight.
The peasant protests began after the Constitutional Court disqualified the former president between 2006 and 2019 from running for president again in 2025, alleging that he had already fulfilled the two terms allowed by the Constitution. The ruling noted that indefinite reelection “is not a human right” and that it is only possible “once only.”
In Bolivia, the senior judges of the judiciary are elected by popular vote every six years. However, the lack of agreements in Congress postponed the holding of these elections in 2023. The lack of elections allowed judges whose mandate expired on December 31, 2023 to remain in office, including some of the judges of the Constitutional Court who disqualified to Morales.
The details of the law
The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approved the bill, which was worked on by a parliamentary commission made up of the MAS and the opposition parties Comunidad Ciudadana and Creo, and went to presidential sanction. The approved law will allow the electoral body to call elections to elect the new 26 judges of the most important courts in Bolivia. Establishes a maximum period of 230 days for the elections to elect the authorities of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Council of the Judiciary and the Agro-Environmental Court.
After the announcement, Morales said on his X social network account this Tuesday that the “illegal” judges still have to go home. Congress has not yet addressed this demand of the peasants, the opposition and parliamentarians related to the indigenous leader. Dozens of farmers, under heavy police surveillance, were stationed all Monday night and part of Tuesday morning outside Congress to continue the discussion of the law.
Once the law was passed in the Senate, the president of this body, Andrónico Rodríguez, stated that blockades in the country were not necessary. “In the end we came to the same thing; pressure measures were not necessary, it was not necessary to confront Bolivians or enter into polarization,” said Rodríguez, who considered that, with these obstacles, there was a “failed strategy of some politicians who have interests very ill-intentioned.”
The crack in the MAS
According to the government of Luis Arce, the blockades caused damage of more than a billion dollars and affected the tourist flow, just before the Oruro Carnival was celebrated, one of the most representative in South America and which was declared a World Heritage Site.
The Ministry of the Interior of Bolivia reported that due to the repression there were 21 detainees and 71 police officers injured. In addition, there were at least three deaths among the people who were stranded by the blockades, two of them due to not having received medical attention.
The Executive held Evo Morales responsible for the protests, which was denied by the former president, who said that the pressure measures were a spontaneous reaction of his followers with which he did not agree. 16 days after the blockade, President Arce promulgated “Law 144 calling for Judicial Elections.” In a strong speech, Arce recalled the serious economic damage generated by the blockades.
“We already have a law convening judicial elections. These blockades have been unnecessary, the desire to wear down, to come for the head of the president, as they have already announced. That is the objective. You cannot deceive the Bolivian people in that way nor strangle the economy of the Bolivian people for those particular interests,” Arce warned.
For his part, Morales celebrated that “the Bolivian people at the head of the indigenous movement triumphed in their struggle, to enforce the Political Constitution of the State and democracy, in an uprising and rebellion of the popular sectors, in colonial times, threatened with extermination.” , marginalized and despised in the Republic”. In X’s account of him, the coca leader assured: “United we are invincible, mobilized we are unstoppable in the defense of our dignity with identity.”
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