Evo Morales Shows Interest in Becoming a Bolivian Senator

Morales walks through a city in 2008, two years after becoming president. (Wikipedia)

Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, granted his lawyer the power of attorney to register him as a candidate for a Senate seat in the coming elections. The Bolivian people will elect a president, a vice president, 36 senators, and 130 representatives in the May 3 elections. 

Morales, who fled his country in November as people protested his attempt to stay in power, is currently in Argentina where he has been granted political asylum. Bolivia’s interim government has issued an arrest warrant for Morales. 

His party, the leftist Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), registered his candidacy with the country’s electoral tribunal on Monday. Not long after, Morales spread the news via Twitter by congratulating the party for choosing “the best men and women for the next legislature.”

Morales has “no [legal] impediment” to running for a seat, said Gonzalo Lema,the former spokesman for the national electoral tribunal, because “he has no enforceable sentence” to stop him. 

He is, however, impeded from appearing on the ballot as a presidential candidate due to the irregularities detected by the Organization of American States— by which Morales was declared victor in the first round—that led to the cancellation of last October’s votes.

Silvia Salame, lawyer and former magistrate of the Electoral Court, agreed with Lema, and held that a Senate seat would not grant Morales immunity in the cases against him for “sedition and terrorism.” Parliamentary immunity was eliminated in the 2009 Constitution that Morales enacted while president. 

Morales will be able to run for Senate. However, according to Santiago Anria, a professor of Latin American politics at Dickinson College, in order to run for office, “he needs to demonstrate continued residency in Bolivia for at least two years, and over the past few months, he’s been in Mexico and Argentina,” so Morales might be barred from running on that technicality. 

Jeanine Añez, the conservative Catholic interim president of Bolivia, has said that Morales can return to the country “whenever he wants,” but the charges against him (sedition and terrorism) mean that he could be arrested upon arrival. 

These reactions to Morales’ desire to remain involved in politics highlight the deep divisions present in the country. His supporters are mostly from the country’s indigenous majority, while the opposition consists of the long-ruling elite of European descent. 

Añez has done little to ease the tensions. She has begun an aggressive effort to repeal many of Morales’ policies. She has sought a closer alliance with the United States, which Morales firmly opposed, and sent Venezuelan diplomats and Cuban doctors back to their countries. Rather than ensuring that Morales’ followers will be represented no matter what government is in place, her anti-leftist rule has confirmed peoples’ beliefs that the MAS party is the best hope for representing marginalized interests.

In a poll by the firm Mercados y Muestras released in January, economist Luis Arce, Morales’ political heir, is leading with 26% of people supporting him. While this would not be enough to win in the first round of the elections, it is still more than any other candidate and showcases the continued strength of Morales’ constituencies in the election process.