Bolivia’s ex-interim president arrested in opposition crackdown

Bolivia’s conservative ex-interim president, who led the country for a year, has been arrested as officials of the restored leftist government target those who helped oust socialist leader Evo Morales in 2019.

Jeanine Áñez, who Morales supporters say was part of a coup, was detained early on Saturday morning in her home town of Trinidad and was flown to the capital, La Paz, where she appeared before a prosecutor.

“This is an abuse,” she told reporters after the appearance. “There was no coup d’etat, but a constitutional succession,” she said.

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From a police cell in La Paz, Áñez called on the Organization of American States and the European Union to send missions to Bolivia to evaluate what she called “an illegal detention”.

The arrest of Áñez and warrants against numerous other former officials further worsened political tensions in a South American country already torn by perceived wrongs suffered by both sides.

Those include complaints that Morales, whose party is now back in power, had grown more authoritarian in 13 years in office, that he illegally ran for a fourth election and then allegedly rigged the outcome, that right-wing forces led violent protests that prompted security forces to push him into resigning and then cracked down on his followers, who themselves protested the alleged coup.

“This is not justice,” said former president Carlos Mesa, who finished second to Morales in several elections. “They are seeking to decapitate an opposition by creating a false narrative of a coup to distract from a fraud.”

Morales tweeted that: “The authors and accomplices of the dictatorship should be investigated and published.”

Other arrest warrants were issued for more than a dozen former officials. Those include several ex-cabinet ministers, as well as former military leader William Kaliman and the police chief who had urged Morales to resign in November 2019 after the country was swept by protests against the country’s first indigenous president.

After Morales left the country, many of his key supporters also resigned. Áñez, a legislator who had been several rungs down the ladder of presidential succession, was vaulted into the interim presidency.

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Once there, she abruptly wrenched Bolivia’s policies to the right and her administration tried to prosecute Morales and an array of his supporters on terrorism and sedition charges, alleging election rigging and oppression of protests.

But Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism remained popular. It won last year’s elections with 55% of the vote under Morales’ chosen candidate Luis Arce, who took the presidency in November. Anez had dropped out after plunging in the polls.

Two ministers in Áñez’s government were also arrested on Friday, including former justice minister Alvaro Coimbra, who had helped lead the prosecution of Morales’ aides. A former defence minister and others also have been accused.

New justice minister Ivan Lima said that Áñez, 53, faces charges related to her actions as an opposition senator, not as former president.

Interior minister Eduardo del Castillo denied it was an act of persecution, saying the case arose from a criminal complaint of conspiracy and sedition filed against her in November, the month she left office.

Human Rights Watch Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco said from Washington that the arrest warrants against Áñez and her ministers “contain no evidence whatsoever that they have committed the crime of terrorism”.