Bolivia’s ex-President Anez arrested in ‘coup’ probe
Jeanine Anez, who succeeded Evo Morales as interim president for a year in 2019, has denounced the move as “political persecution.”
Bolivian police arrested former interim president Jeanine Anez on charges of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy, a government minister said on Saturday.
Ánez replaced former President Evo Morales in November 2019 when he fled the country amid widespread protests against his reelection to an unconstitutional fourth term.
Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, now back in power, has claimed that Anez and his allies promoted his overthrow after nearly 14 years in power.
“I inform the Bolivian people that Mrs. Jeanine Anez has already been apprehended and is currently in the hands of the police,” Interior Minister Carlos Eduardo del Castillo said in statements on Twitter and Facebook.
The opposition has criticized the government’s actions, with a deputy, Edwin Bazán, saying that the MAS party had “mounted a judicial operation to implant the lie that there was a coup d’état when what happened [electoral] fraud.”
Anez herself wrote in a Twitter post before the arrest that “political persecution has begun.”
Media reports said that two former ministers who backed Anez’s one-year interim government were also in police custody.
Widespread protests
By the time she took office, Anez was the highest available Senate official, and several of Morales’ allies in senior positions had fled amid the violent protests, which left 36 people dead.
The same leftist Morales at that time called her “a right-wing coup senator” who had declared herself interim president “without a legislative quorum.”
The interim authorities tried to take legal action against Morales and some members of his government, accusing them of rigging an election and repressing dissent.
But Bolivia is now once again ruled by the MAS after winning an easy victory in the October 2020 general elections. Luis Arce, Morales’ chosen successor, is now president, and Morales himself has returned home and assumed leadership of the ruling party. that he founded.
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