Court holds ex-president Morales’ re-election plans in Bolivia against Drug lord caught… and converts his luxury cars into police cars

Bolivia’s Constitutional Court has banned former President Evo Morales from participating in the 2025 presidential elections. Morales described the decision as “political” and as evidence of the “complicity of some judges in the black plan” of President Luis Arce’s government , as he said on Platform X on Saturday. It was only in September that he announced that he would run again in the next elections.

The 82-page ruling, quoted by local media, states: “Limiting the possibility of re-election indefinitely is an appropriate measure to ensure that no one person remains in power.” The court thus overturned an earlier decision from 2017 in which re-election was described as a “human right”.

Morales became the South American country’s first indigenous president in 2006. Following the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the term limits, he stood for a fourth re-election in October 2019. The former leader of coca growers declared himself the winner of the presidential election and the opposition accused him of fraud. Unrest broke out and under pressure from the military, Morales resigned and spent a year in exile in Mexico and Argentina. His supporters spoke of a coup.

Conservative Jeanine Áñez became interim president and a new election in October 2020 was won by Luis Arce of Morales’ socialist MAS party. Áñez was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2022 for dereliction of duty and constitutional violations. Human rights activists expressed concern about the independence of the Bolivian judiciary.

Morales and Arce, his former economy minister, have now fallen out. The government wanted to eliminate him, the former head of state said in September before announcing his candidacy. (sda/dpa)