Bolivia: president imprisoned by decision of Evo Morales

By: Luis Gonzales Posada - 05/04/2024

Latin American democrats cannot remain indolent or hide in the face of the infamous humiliations suffered by the former president of Bolivia, Janina Añez, detained more than three years ago and who will be sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment as demanded by a prosecutor under the orders of the officialdom.

This pantomime or charade of a process began in May 2022 when Evo Morales himself revealed that “in a meeting called by brother Lucho Arce (president), where David Choquehuanca (vice president), Iván Lima (Minister of Justice) and the heads of benches of senators and deputies of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), we decided that the former president should be prosecuted in an ordinary trial and not of responsibilities.”

Then he adds, cynically, that they agreed to it because “we do not have two-thirds of the votes of the Assembly” that article 184 of the Constitution requires to prosecute a former head of state.

What was said by the coca leader is overwhelming, irrefutable proof of a criminal impersonation of the functions of the Legislative Branch and the crude submission of justice to political power.

Following that template, precautionary judge Marco Amuru, imprisoned in 2022 for favoring murderers and feminicides, ordered the former president to be taken through ordinary means, but on October 30, 2023, the Fourth Criminal Sentencing Court of El Alto declared itself incompetent. to follow that mechanism “because (the former president) is responsible for a trial of responsibilities.”

Given that decision, Arce and Morales exerted maximum pressure on the judiciary, getting the Fourth Chamber of the Court of La Paz to revoke the previous resolution.

For this reason, the high Andean analyst Agustín Exchalar maintained that “the right people, whether they are Masistas or not, have to feel disgust at this precedent and try to stop it. A good government cannot endorse legal nonsense of that caliber, a scoundrel form of perjury, or a variant of the inquisition in its worst times.” (The Times. 02/13/22)

The barbarism, however, has been consummated, ignoring a request from the OAS to release the affected woman "until there are impartial mechanisms to determine responsibilities," adding that "the Bolivian judicial system is not in a position to provide the minimum guarantees of a fair trial, impartiality and due process.”

For his part, the Secretary General of the UN, Ambassador Antonio Guterrez, demanded “due process” and “transparency.” The European Union, in turn, expressed that the Bolivian judicial system “has structural flaws” and its highest authority for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, expressed that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had concluded that “it has not been respected.” fully due process of Mrs. Añez.”

The UN Committee against Torture and 23 former leaders of Latin America, as well as several humanitarian organizations, have spoken along these lines.

To do? For now, do not remain silent, because silence legitimizes an act of barbarism that could be interpreted as complicity, fear or endorsement of a repressive regime.

A tyrant only retreats from the force of sanctions, diplomatic isolation, the suspension of international economic cooperation and credits from multilateral organizations such as the CAF, the IDB, the World Bank and the IMF.

Let us also remember that not only the former president is imprisoned, but also other opposition politicians such as the governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho.

It is time for democratic governments to request the convening of an extraordinary meeting of the OAS Permanent Council to analyze the abuses of the Arce regime.

Peru should do so for principled considerations and because we share a common border of more than a thousand kilometers loaded with smuggling and drug trafficking, and because Evo Morales is a subversive agent who intends to cut off part of our territory to constitute an Independent Republic of the South.

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