Far Right-Wing Leader Put in Place to Replace Evo Morales

By: Sammy Quarrato

Áñez Chávez brings the Bible while announcing her legitimacy. Credit: foxnews.com

The former President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has been forced to resign due to the military and police force of the country suggesting that he should step down.

This was due to many reasons, but the main scapegoat used was during the 2019 election of Bolivia in which votes were quickly counted from the urban areas.

83.85% of the votes had been counted with Morales having 45.71% and Mesa with 37.84%. If these were the final results, an obligated second round would have taken place.

There were still votes being counted during the quick count and the vast majority of those ballots were in rural areas where Morales had most of his support due to him being the first indigenous president of a mostly indigenous country. That specific demographic dominates the rural parts of Bolivia.

Electoral authorities eventually temporarily ended the quick count which is not the official count that is constitutionally recognized. 

Therefore, it is not the legitimate count but one that gives information to the people and the media on how the official election results may look like.

The electoral authorities eventually had to suspend the quick count and restart it again due to the pressure from the Bolivian media alongside the political party of former President Mesa which is the Civic Community Party.

What eventually occurred was that the electoral authorities were 95% done with the quick count and it showed that President Morales was slightly above 10% ahead of Mesa. This meant that if this trend continued in the official vote, it would indicate that a second round wouldn’t be required as stated in the Bolivian Constitution. 

If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote or 10% more than the second place candidate, no second round was necessary. 

This is where the controversy basically skyrocketed. Before the election, Evo Morales attempted to abolish term limits in order to run for another term in office.

He did this by calling for a referendum where the Bolivian population barely voted against the idea.

Despite that, the Supreme Court of Bolivia declared that it was no longer unconstitutional to not have term limits for a sitting president which allowed Evo Morales to run in this election where the media misunderstood that the quick count was not the official count.

Protests and riots erupted in the streets of Bolivian cities when the opposition and the media were stating that this was definitely election fraud despite almost all the polls saying that he was bound to win.

This lead directly to the situation that the country has right now which is the military and police have turned against Morales and forced him to resign.

Mind you, Morales already won an election previously while the opposition stated it wasn’t a fair election and demanded a re-match. He complied despite being in a position of power where he could’ve possibly silence his opponents or do anything else unethical, but he didn’t.

The Bolivian government is required to have a president put in place to finish the previous one’s term until the next election cycle which won’t be happening until April 2020.

Áñez Chávez was next in the line of succession, a far right-wing ultra-Christian who is part of the Democrat Social Movement, a political party that won 5% of the vote in the 2019 election.

There were 50 individuals who stepped down who were part of Morales’ political party and it went down to the Opposition Leader, a woman who said that she wanted the ‘Indians’ to get away from the cities with their ‘satanic indigenous rituals’ and that they should stay in the Highlands or Chaco.

She also brought a giant bible before taking office and stated that “God has allowed the Bible to come back into the [presidential] palace. May he bless us.”

She now has half a year to stay in office and do away with her predecessors’ work and policies until the next election. She is most likely to lose especially with her unpopular political positions and negative comments based off the indigenous people, which make up a little more than half of the population.

The next election in Bolivia, unless rigged, will show just how much the population of Bolivia is politically against someone such as Áñez Chávez.