The political dispute between Morales and Arce divides the left and raises questions about the future of Bolivia

An alleged case of child abuse committed by Morales bursts into this crisis, while those close to the former president denounce ‘lawfare’

The dispute between Evo Morales and the current president, Luis Arce, has been at the center of the political debate in Bolivia in recent years, although it has been in recent weeks when it has reached new peaks of intensity, deepening the division even further. of the left with the 2025 elections on the horizon.

Although Arce became Minister of Economy in the Morales governments for twelve years and was chosen by the former president to be his substitute in the 2020 elections and thus solve the political crisis of 2019, since he assumed the Presidency the The relationship between the two has continued to worsen.

Morales appears not to have digested his abrupt departure from the country amid accusations of electoral fraud in the 2019 elections and since his return has been criticizing Arce for what he considers mismanagement of his legacy. Meanwhile, the new president warns that they are trying to remove him from power.

This increasing tension between both figures has greatly influenced their followers, who have taken this dispute to the streets, with demonstrations and clashes that left dozens of people injured during the first stop of the march called at the end of September by Morales to reach to La Paz.

Beyond the support for the legitimate demands of a part of the population protesting the shortage of fuel and dollars, as well as the devaluation of the Bolivian peso and the fall in exports, the truth is that the dispute seems to center on who He will be the candidate of the left for 2025.

Everything exploded after the celebration in October 2023 of a congress of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) that left the party in a kind of bicephaly, which Morales’ followers tried to break by expelling Arce from the party, something that was annulled by the Superior Court Electoral, thus delving deeper into the feeling among the ‘evistas’ of the alleged collusion of the judges with the Government.

The judicial decisions have diminished the political aspirations of Morales, who in December 2023 the Constitutional Court dealt a blow by denying him indefinite re-election, establishing that in Bolivia no political office can hold a mandate more than twice, either continuously or discontinuous.

However, a Morales supported by a part of the MAS bases insists on this idea – “by good or bad means,” he even said – and does not give up recovering the influence that he once had in the Government and that It began to dilute when Arce formed his governments with profiles far removed from the former president.

“If he had been the ideologue, in three years he would have raised Bolivia’s economy,” said Morales, who defined his former Finance Minister for more than a decade as a mere “cashier.”

COUP ATTEMPT

Before the march last month of Morales and his people towards La Paz, this city already experienced at the end of June what is for now the most critical moment of a crisis that raises questions about the political future of Bolivia.

On June 26, Murillo Square in La Paz – the country’s political center – was the scene of a short-lived coup attempt by General Juan José Zúñiga. An attack of which Morales and Arce accuse each other. For the former, it was a trick by the latter to show strength, while Arce points out that it is a new way of trying to oust him from office.

The controversy opens this week with a new episode when it was learned that for a few hours there was an arrest warrant against Morales for an alleged crime of abuse and trafficking of minors, which was finally canceled, amid protests by prosecutors of having received pressure from the prosecutor. General, Juan Lanchipa.

At the end of the week, the Government, through the Ministry of Justice, announced that it was joining the investigations. President Arce announced that he will ask the Prosecutor’s Office to confidentially carry out the appropriate proceedings in order to avoid the politicization of a case in which Morales is accused of being responsible for a sexual relationship with a minor under 15 years of age, of whom a child was born.