Bolivians face power vacuum as president steps down

Bolivians, leaderless and dazed after weeks of protests, confronted a gaping power vacuum and the outbreak of more violence Monday following the resignation of longtime President Evo Morales, the leftist icon who was forced from power a day earlier amid accusations his party stole last month’s election.

As new protests erupted from both the right and the left — some peaceful, some not — Mexico’s foreign minister announced that Morales had accepted that country’s offer of asylum. In La Paz, a cross-section of politicians struggled to find a solution to a constitutional crisis of leadership. A protracted period without a legal head of state, some feared, could deepen the violence and stall attempts to hold fresh elections.

All four officials in the constitutional line of succession — the president, the vice president and the heads of the senate and chamber of deputies, all socialists — resigned Sunday. That left remaining lawmakers scrambling to cobble together a quorum to appoint a new leader — something they appeared unable to do Monday. Opposition leaders tried to reassure their socialist counterparts of their safety should they return to chambers.

Senior U.S. State Department officials said they expected a new interim leader to be named by Tuesday. Jeanine Añez, the fiercely anti-Morales second vice president of the senate, said she would accept a caretaker presidency if offered, and some opposition officials rallied around her. My “only objective would be to call elections,” she told reporters.

As South America’s poorest nation processed the fast-moving events, its citizens confronted a key question: Had democracy failed, or prevailed? Morales, who transformed Bolivia during his nearly 14 years in office, described the pressure that forced him out on Sunday as a “coup.” Hours before his resignation, the Organization of American States said it had found “clear manipulation” of the Oct. 20 election in which he claimed to win a fourth term. Violence that had simmered since the vote escalated. The heads of the armed forces and police withdrew their support, and the opposition unfurled a wave of attacks on Morales’s socialist allies.

Carlos Mesa, the former president who finished second to Morales last month, rejected the word “coup.” Speaking to reporters Monday, he called the events of the previous 24 hours a “democratic popular action” to stop a government that had committed election fraud to install itself as an authoritarian power.

Mesa said no one from Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) should be picked as interim leader, but he insisted that MAS members should not fear persecution.

“The clear will of the democratic opposition is to build a new democratic government, respecting the constitution,” he said.

The U.S. government hailed Morales’s departure. Officials said there had been no “coup,” but an expression of “democratic will.” They cited the OAS finding of fraud, and noted that Morales had sought a fourth term despite losing a 2016 referendum to extend term limits (he later won a court ruling that enabled him to run).

“The United States applauds the Bolivian people for demanding freedom and the Bolivian military for abiding by its oath to protect not just a single person, but Bolivia’s constitution,” President Trump said in a statement. “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail. We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, said Morales had accepted the country’s offer of asylum. “A few minutes ago we received a call from President Evo Morales,” he told a news conference. “He responded to our invitation and is verbally and formally requesting asylum in our country.”