Jockeying for power amid street chaos
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s interim leader said Friday that Evo Morales will face possible legal charges for election fraud if he returns home, even as the ousted leader contended he is still president despite resigning after massive protests.
Interim President Jeanine Anez escalated the confrontation with Morales on Friday, a day after she said he would not be allowed to participate in upcoming presidential elections meant to heal the Andean nation’s political standoff.
Morales stepped down last Sunday following nationwide protests over suspected voterigging in an Oct. 20 election in which he claimed to have won a fourth term in office. An Organization of American States audit of the vote found widespread irregularities.
On Thursday, Morales told the Associated Press in Mexico, where he has been granted asylum, that while he had submitted his resignation, it was never accepted by Congress. “I can say that I’m still president,” he said.
Morales said he left because of military pressure — the army chief had “suggested” he leave — and threats of violence against his close collaborators.
Anez dismissed the explanation. “Evo Morales went on his own. Nobody kicked him out,” she said at a news conference.
“He knows he has accounts pending with justice. He can return, but he has to answer to justice for electoral fraud,” she added. “Justice has to do its work without political pressures.”
Supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president have been staging their own disruptive protests since his ouster, setting up blockades that forced closure of schools and caused shortages of gasoline in the capital.
“Evo: Friend, the people are with you!” shouted largely indigenous protesters in the town of Sacaba.
Many protesters waved the national flag and the multicolor “Wiphala” flag that represents indigenous peoples. They said they did not accept Anez as interim president.
Anez, the highestranking opposition official in the Senate, proclaimed herself president, saying every person in the line of succession ahead of her —all of them Morales backers — had resigned. The country’s
Constitutional Court issued a statement backing her claim that she didn’t need to be confirmed by Congress, a body controlled by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party.