Bolivian Constitutional declares Morales’ disqualification “illegal” in 2020

The Constitutional Court (TC) of bolivia declared “improper and illegal” the disqualification that a judicial court ruled in 2020 against the former president’s candidacy Evo Morales as a senator and ordered that a “financial compensation” for the restriction of his right to be a candidate.

The constitutional sentence that was known this Thursday establishes “comprehensive reparation of violated rights” of the former Bolivian president and orders a series of actions after declaring the “nullity” of a judicial sentence of October 2020 that gave reason to a previous resolution of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) for the disqualification of Morales.

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The opinion of the TC admits the “damage rating” and set the “consequent financial compensation” in favor of Morales in which they incorporate “judicial expenses”, “lost profit” and “consequential damage caused by the defendant authorities”.

It also determines that the country’s electoral entity must formulate regulations “timely and appropriate” to avoid such situations.

BACKGROUND

For the 2020 general elections, in which the members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies were also elected, Morales’ name was presented as a candidate for the first senator for the department of Cochabamba, despite the fact that he was in Argentina in political refugee status.

The TSE had decided to disqualify Morales for not complying with the requirement of residing in the country established in the Constitution, which caused his lawyers to continue the process in court to argue that he left the country for not having “constitutional guarantees”.

At that time, Morales had a series of complaints pending for alleged crimes of genocide, terrorism, electoral fraud and rape for which the Prosecutor’s Office had issued arrest warrants, for accusations that the interim government of former president Jeanine Áñez had filed.

After the 2019 elections, which were later annulled, there were a series of protests from sectors opposed to Morales who denounced electoral fraud and which caused the resignation of the then president, although he asserted that in reality a “coup”.

Morales left the country first for Mexico, according to what he said as an asylum seeker, and shortly after he went to Argentina where he specified that he had requested that same condition to, from there, also carry out the work of campaign manager for his party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS). .

The sentence that was known this Thursday indicates, in one of its most important parts, that an element “that was not considered or analyzed” was the argument of Morales’ defense that mentioned that due to “force majeure” his permanent residence became intermittent.

The TC established that “a constitutional precedent regarding the “exception” of residence was “not fully applied”, so “due process was affected”.

In statements to the media, the senator from the opposition party, We Believe, Centa Rek specified that this constitutional ruling was issued on May 7, 2021 and that it was actually “a letter saved” by Morales to appear as a “victim” and not appear as someone that he “committed electoral fraud.”

After the 2019 crisis, Bolivia is experiencing a latent polarization, which is often manifested in the streets, between those who assure that these events were due to electoral fraud and the Government that, together with the MAS, insists that there was a “coup d’état”. ”.

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Source: Elcomercio

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