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Bolivia’s new interim president, until now a second-tier lawmaker, faces the challenge of stabilizing the nation and organizing national elections within three months at a time of bloody political disputes that pushed the nation’s first indigenous leader to fly off to self-exile in Mexico after 14 years in power.
Some people took to the streets cheering and waving national flags Tuesday night when Jeanine Añez, who had been second-vice president of the Senate, claimed the presidency after higher ranking successors to the had post resigned.
But furious supporters of the ousted Evo Morales responded by trying to force their way to the Congress building in La Paz yelling, “She must quit!” The constitution gives Añez 90 days to organize an election, and her accession was an example of the problems she’ll face.
Morales’ backers, who hold a two-thirds majority in Congress, boycotted the session she had called to formalize her accession, preventing a quorum. Frustrated in that effort, she took power in any case, with no one to swear her in, noting the constitution did not specifically require congressional approval.
“My commitment is to return democracy and tranquility to the country,” she said. “They can never again steal our vote.” Morales’ backers called her rise illegitimate, but Bolivia’s constitutional court issued a statement late Tuesday laying out the legal justification for Añez taking the presidency, without mentioning her by name.
While the constitution clearly states that Añez didn’t need a congressional vote to assume the presidency, “The next two months are going to be extraordinarily difficult for President Añez,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian political scientist at Florida International University.
She will need to arrange formation of a new electoral court, find a non-partisan staff for the electoral tribunal and get Congress to vote on new election. All of it must be done before Jan. 22, when Morales’ current term and everyone else’s was meant to end. And all of it must be done while Morales’ Movement for Socialism party still controls both houses of Congress.
Morales resigned Sunday following the weeks of violent protests fed by allegations of electoral fraud in the Oct. 20 election, which he claimed to have won.
