The key moments that led Bolivia to its current political crisis

Bolivians relived the fear and tension of the 2019 political crisis, after an assault by a group of heavily armed soldiers, led by the dismissed Army commander Juan José Zuñiga, against the Government of Luis Arce was recorded on Wednesday.

In recent months, Bolivia has gone through several situations that have caused discontent among many sectors of the population, polarization in the Government and a fight between President Arce and former president Evo Morales for the leadership of the ruling party Movement towards Socialism (MAS). ).

Below are some key moments that led to the current Bolivian crisis:

The political crisis of 2019

In 2019, Bolivians faced a political and social crisis in which the Government of then-President Evo Morales (2006-2019) was forced to resign from the presidency, claiming to be the victim of a “coup d’état”, after disputed elections that They gave him the winner for a fourth consecutive term.

The opposition and Morales’ then electoral rival, former president Carlos Mesa (2003-2005), accused the Government and the MAS of having orchestrated a “self-coup” after the “electoral fraud” because they did not get the expected votes to win the presidency in the first place. lap.

Morales announced his resignation on November 10, 2019 and said he was forced by the Armed Forces, and the next day he left the country.

After two days of power vacuum, on November 12, 2019, the then opposition senator Jeanine Áñez assumed office as interim president of Bolivia, after the resignation of all positions in line of succession.

The country was plunged into chaos with several clashes between civilians and the armed forces that left at least 37 dead and more than 800 injured.

In 2020, elections were held again, in which Luis Arce, MAS candidate and former Minister of Economy under Morales, won with 55.1% of the votes and assumed the Presidency in November of that year.

At the beginning of 2021, the Bolivian Justice began several processes due to the 2019 crisis, which for the ruling party was a “coup d’état” against Morales.

Áñez and other opponents such as the governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, were arrested and are the main defendants in the proceedings known as “coup d’état I and II.”

The struggle between Arce and Morales

Arce and Morales have been estranged since late 2021 and their differences deepened last year over the holding of a national party congress in which, in the absence of the president and his loyal sectors, the former president was ratified as the party’s leader and named “sole candidate” for the 2025 elections.

In recent months, Morales called Luis Arce “the worst president of the democratic era,” and also accused him of taking the country’s economy to its worst historical levels.

For Arce, Morales is his “main opponent” and several officials loyal to the president have described the former president as a “mythomaniac” and as wanting to “take over the country.”

MAS candidacy

The ruling MAS party is divided into two factions, the ‘Evista’, loyal to Morales, and the ‘Arcista’, of the followers of the Bolivian president.

Both sides have tried since last year to hold national congresses to appoint a new board and proclaim a presidential candidate for the 2025 elections.

However, all attempts to formalize a MAS congress have been rejected by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which asked both factions to hold “a joint congress” to comply with all internal party statutes.

The ‘arcistas’ held a congress in May in the city of El Alto, where they elected a new president of the MAS, removing Morales from the leadership of the party after 25 years, but the TSE did not approve said conclave.

The Evistas, for their part, tried to hold their congress in Villa Tunari, in the Cochabamba region, Morales’ political and trade union stronghold, but the electoral body did not recognise that meeting either.

This left, until now, the candidacy of the ruling MAS on hold for the 2025 presidential elections.

Economic crisis

In recent months, there has been a lack of liquidity in dollars, fuel shortages and an increase in the price of some products and foods.

Traders and transporters have been “blockading” roads in recent weeks demanding solutions to the country’s economic crisis, while the Government claims that this is due to “speculation” and “political interests” that seek to “shorten” Luis Arce’s term.

The opposition and experts agree that the lack of foreign currency and other problems are due to the fact that natural gas, which has been the mainstay of the Bolivian economy for decades, has run out and that the government has not been able to replace the nearly 4 billion dollars that the state has lost from the sale of this resource abroad.

Arce was recently criticized for saying that gas in Bolivia had “run out” and blamed the Morales government for not carrying out the necessary explorations to find more resources.