Bolivia - Añez arrested

Arce is politicizing the judicial system. He’s likely to succeed.

Former Interim President Jeanine Añez was detained on charges of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy linked to her ascension to the presidency following the coup/removal/resignation of former President Evo Morales in late 2019. She has been sentenced to four months of pre-trial detention. Several of her cabinet members were also arrested on similarly vague charges.

Supporters of Morales will argue that this is the correct response to an anti-democratic coup and thuggish interim administration. Prosecuting the abuses is necessary to prevent impunity and discourage others from attempting similar anti-democratic actions in the future. 

However, there are indications this detention is part of a politicization of the judiciary and retribution against Morales’s political opponents who similarly engaged in unfair prosecutions of the MAS while they were in power in 2019 and 2020. President Arce’s opposition has suggested that this detention is a warning signal that further repression and authoritarianism will come under the MAS-controlled government. 

There may be criminal cases to be made against the former interim president and some of her allies. Those potential crimes would likely relate to the excessive force in repressing protesters or the corruption that occurred in economic and health policy. While Morales’s supporters have tried to pin the blame for the coup on Añez, that is rewriting history. Añez wasn’t particularly influential in Morales’s removal, even if she maneuvered herself into an accidental presidency in the days following Morales leaving the country. 

In any event, prosecutors have not made a case that she or her ministers committed crimes before or during her presidency nor provided evidence. Instead, Añez has been detained on vague charges and will be held pending a trial. Without clear indictments or evidence, her detention creates the image of an unfair political persecution. 

Even as his government targets political opponents, they also took steps to benefit political supporters. Days before Añez’s arrest, the government of Luis Arce published a decree offering amnesty to those accused of crimes during the Añez government. While it’s true that the Añez government unfairly persecuted MAS partisans during her time in office, the broad nature of the decree appears to grant amnesty to even those MAS supporters who committed serious crimes.

Two reasons Arce’s attacks on Añez will succeed

First, Arce controls most of the levers within the national government and the mandate he and the MAS won in the 2020 national elections will allow him to consolidate control. No checks or balances are going to stop him from being able to target Añez and her allies. While there will be some international criticisms, anyone who wants to help Bolivia succeed is not going to let this be the issue that breaks relations or leads to sanctions.

Second, Añez is a very unsympathetic and unpopular figure in Bolivia and internationally. She grabbed on to the presidency with questionable legitimacy and then acted as if she had a popular mandate to impose her ideological point of view rather than act as a transitional figure to bring the country out of crisis. Everyone deserves due process including Añez, but Bolivian citizens and international analysts likely believe that she sort of deserves the treatment she’s receiving given how she attacked and persecuted her own political opponents during her time in office. Perceptions of karmic retribution are not how democracy and rule of law issues should be handled, but that’s sometimes how politics goes.

Three risks for Bolivia’s long term outlook and one risk for the hemisphere

First, it’s possible that Arce’s opponents are correct in their fears that this is a warning of further authoritarianism to come. I think that it’s too early to make that call, but it is a risk to monitor moving forward.

Second, there is a real risk that Arce is dividing rather than uniting the country and those divisions will fall along geographic and urban vs rural lines. Getting economic policies passed and implemented requires some level of cooperation from the local governments that are controlled by political opponents of the president. Similar risks of divides within the country were discussed throughout the Morales presidency and never really came to fruition, but the local election results earlier this month demonstrated significant weakness by the MAS in many of the country’s major cities.

Third, this entire discussion exacerbates Bolivia forever fighting over interpretations of past events, from the Goni gas wars to Evo’s authoritarian maneuvers to the anti-democratic actions of an illegitimate interim Añez government. Getting some truth and closure about the past is generally positive, but when it becomes the top issue in the country, then it uses all the political attention and capital that should be spent debating the issues of today and the future. Bolivia’s current health, economic and political problems are far too urgent for this to be the top issue of the day.

Finally, authoritarian leaders across the rest of the hemisphere will watch Añez’s detention and trial closely. For all of her failures, Añez did hold the election and transfer power back to the MAS when they won a majority of the vote. Bolivia then held democratic municipal elections in which the MAS took a beating in urban capitals and accepted their losses. In spite of everything I wrote above, Bolivia right this moment should be considered a success story in terms of transitioning from institutional crisis back to democracy. However, an Añez trial, particularly one based on political retribution rather than due process, is going to make it much more difficult to convince leaders like Daniel Ortega or Juan Orlando Hernandez or Nicolas Maduro that they should also hold elections and transition power to their political opponents. 

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