Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo
A backer of former President Evo Morales kneels in front of soldiers guarding a street in downtown La Paz, Bolivia, November 15, 2019.
Bolivia has been in turmoil since its October 20 presidential elections. As of mid-November, there are a reported 32 dead and more than over 700 wounded as a result of violence and state-backed repression stemming from the political crisis. This profoundly dangerous moment for Bolivia calls for restraint, conciliation, and compromise. Fortunately, in recent days, leaders on both the left and right seem increasingly willing to recognize that no single political force in the country is capable of imposing its agenda, and that the path ahead towards new elections will have to involve negotiations and dialogue rather than unconstitutional shows of force.
Ahead of the October 20 vote, tensions were already high because many Bolivians were angry that President Evo Morales was even a candidate. Morales, who first took office in 2006, sought to amend the constitution in 2016 through a referendum that would have allowed for indefinite reelection. Morales narrowly lost that referendum, but his supporters on the Constitutional Tribunal later overturned the results with a controversial ruling. This cleared the way for Morales to run for a fourth term, but fueled mistrust in an already deeply polarized society.
After Bolivians cast their ballots, Morales was declared by the electoral tribunal to have scored a narrow first-round win. However, in the face of unrelenting protests, Morales invited the Organization of American States (OAS) to conduct an audit of the election, and agreed to abide by its conclusions. On the morning of November 10, when the OAS announced that the results of the October 20 vote could not be validated, Morales called for new elections and naming of new electoral officials.
If fervent opponents to Morales been content with that scenario—fresh elections with new electoral authorities and robust international observation to ensure a fair vote—Bolivia’s path toward a peaceful and constitutional resolution of its political crisis might have been easier than it is today. But instead, hardline sectors of the opposition demanded Morales’s immediate ouster. In the afternoon of November 10, already facing an uprising by some factions of the police, Morales resigned as president under pressure from the armed forces—which violated the constitutional prohibition against military interference in political affairs by publicly calling for Morales to step down. Morales fled to Mexico, where the Lopez Obrador government has granted him asylum.
Since then, a climate of fear and violence has intensified in Bolivia, provoking statements of alarm from international human rights groups, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Morales’s forced resignation and abrupt departure from Bolivia created an immediate power vacuum, since the other office holders in the constitutional line of succession—the vice president, and Senate and Chamber of Deputies leaders, all from Morales’s MAS (Movement to Socialism) party—had also resigned. The minority bloc of the Senate, acting without the required quorum, put forward Senator Jeanine Áñez as the new Senate leader. Áñez promptly declared herself to be Bolivia’s interim president, a move the Trump administration quickly applauded.
But Áñez’s constitutionally dubious ascension to interim president brought even greater upheaval to Bolivia. Riding the wave of popular protest sparked by allegations of electoral fraud, extreme voices within the opposition used the moment to fulfill their obsessive goal of ousting Morales from the presidency. Instead of seeing the interim presidency as merely a caretaker authority, tasked fundamentally with convening new elections within a 90-day period, Áñez and her right-wing backers have sought to use the interim presidency to dramatically realign Bolivian government policies. So far, this has included expelling Cuban doctors and recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president.
Further exacerbating the situation was the way in which Áñez and her ministers launched their interim government amidst a wave of threatening rhetoric, fanning the flames of the country’s political crisis. Her ministers have made inflammatory statements about “hunting down” former MAS officials “like animals.”
The threats have not been confined to words. On November 14, the Áñez government issued a decree that grants immunity for security forces who commit abuses while imposing order. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights quickly criticized the move as an illegal shielding of the armed forces from prosecution. But the Áñez government rejected such criticisms, and within days the military was accused of having opened fire with live ammunition on protestors in Sacaba (November 15) and in El Alto (November 19), leaving 17 people dead and scores wounded. Far from condemning the killings, the interim government has denied any responsibility: Despite numerous eyewitness reports regarding the military’s role in the El Alto shootings, the interim defense minister told reporters that “not one bullet” had been fired by the military.
Far from being in position to dictate events, Áñez’s interim government is now facing the reality that it needs to negotiate with a legislative body still dominated by the MAS. Crucially, the MAS holds two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. And under Bolivia’s constitution, Congress plays a central role in naming the electoral authorities responsible for dictating the country’s electoral calendar, and the conditions in which the vote must take place.
At the same time, nor is the MAS in a position to act alone. In the coming weeks, both the Áñez’s interim government and the MAS-led Congress will need to enter into dialogue and negotiate an agreement that all parties find acceptable.
Recent days have witnessed two significant developments that may help calm the waters and reinforce democratic institutions. On November 22, a peace-building dialogue was launched under the auspices of the Bolivian Conference of Bishops, the European Union, and the United Nations. Over the next two days, the MAS-led legislature approved a bill to pave the way to elections, and interim president Áñez signed it into law. The new law annuls the October 20 vote and effectively bars former president Morales from being a candidate.
What role, if any, should the U.S. government play as Bolivia claws its way out of its political crisis? The Trump administration, for its part, originally described Morales’s ouster as a “significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” and quickly embraced Áñez as interim president. Having bolstered Áñez at the outset, that makes it all that more important that the Trump administration unambiguously denounce abuses committed by the interim regime. The administration should also make clear that the U.S. government supports the efforts of the international community to facilitate dialogue, with the goal of convening credible new elections as quickly as possible and restoring social peace. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress should call for prompt and thorough investigations to hold accountable those responsible for abuses, and demonstrate bipartisan support for the dialogue needed to a path towards a peaceful, inclusive democracy in Bolivia.
