The defeat of Movimiento Al Socialismo at the polls was a historic moment. After twenty years of a hegemonic and authoritarian government, the possibility of a change of direction opened up. Of course, that change was not guaranteed: starting with the candidates who faced each other in the run-off, who in many respects raised more doubts than certainties.
The magnitude of the change to come can be gauged by the fact that the directive from the President of the Supreme Court of Justice to the rest of the judiciary to review the legal situations of those accused who are being held in pretrial detention and who, once procedural deadlines have elapsed, still do not have a sentence.
This, to begin with, is a bad sign. Having to wait for a government to leave office before judges do their jobs — nothing more, nothing less — says a lot about the situation of the Bolivian justice system. This observation is far from a subjective opinion or an unfounded value judgement. If one looks at indicators produced by the World Justice Project or V-Dem, the quality of Bolivian justice — civil and criminal — falls far short of what it should be.
There are signs that this situation could — I insist on the provisional and conditional character of my assertion — be reversed: several courts have begun to review and reconsider the legal status of Luis Fernando Camacho, the elected governor of Santa Cruz de la Sierra; Jeanine Añez, Bolivia’s former interim president; and Marco Antonio Pumari, a civic leader. All three played important roles in the protests of late 2019 and are today prosecuted for, according to their accusers, orchestrating a coup d’état. Is there any basis for such a claim? Let us begin with a bit of context.
Evo Morales assumed the presidency in 2006, his first term. In 2009, a new political constitution was approved; it recognised re-election but barred the possibility of a third term. That same year, 2009, Morales would again win the presidential election, exercising his right to re-election. However, through the capture of democratic institutions — a clear affront to the separation of powers in a rule-of-law state — Morales managed to enable himself for a third term, contravening what his own constitution, which he had signed with his own hand, prescribed in Article 168.
Thus, Morales ran in the 2014 elections and won again, thanks to his broad popular base and his scant regard for democratic norms. The dramatic turn came next: not content with forcing a third term, Morales sought to perpetuate his hegemonic project by proposing a modification of Article 168 of the Constitution through a constitutional referendum. This popular consultation took place on 21 February 2016 and was not free of controversy; nevertheless, the result was clear: 51% of Bolivians expressed their wish that Morales not run in the 2019 elections.
As could be expected, Morales ignored the referendum’s results and disregarded the popular will. Seeing that he did not obtain a favourable outcome at the ballot box, he turned to the institutions, long since captured by officials servile to his interests. Through Constitutional Ruling 0084/17, Morales was enabled to run for a fourth term. This was done via a legal remedy known as an “abstract action of unconstitutionality,” which was used to argue that the Constitution — yes, the very constitution Morales had signed—violated his “constitutional and political right” to indefinite re-election.
As the reader can imagine, the degree of authoritarianism displayed by Morales by then — even considering only the electoral component — was more than enough to call the legitimacy and legality of his government into question. In short, formal liberal democracy had been dismantled and replaced by a clientelist system — a mere façade of popular government that served a party and its leader at the top of the pyramid, rather than the rule of law and the constitution.
This brings us to the 2019 elections. When election day had concluded and the results were being processed by the preliminary results system, the TREP, there was an abrupt and unjustified interruption in the transmission of results. This anomaly set off alarms among the citizenry and international observers. The little remaining confidence that civil society had in the electoral authorities evaporated. Subsequent forensic analyses first found indications, and later produced strong evidence, of willful manipulation of the electoral results — a technical euphemism for what, in colloquial language, we call fraud. Shifts in the TREP trend, the use of modified preliminary data in the official count, altered ballots and inconsistencies were some of the elements pointing to a deliberate strategy to favour Morales and Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) to the detriment of the opposition candidate, Carlos Mesa.
A preliminary report from the Organization of American States pointed in this direction, while citizens, led by Luis Fernando Camacho, then president of the Comité Pro Santa Cruz, called for Bolivia to enter an indefinite strike while the electoral panorama was clarified. As new evidence of fraud emerged and the situation of national authorities — from President Morales to the officials of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) — worsened, the rhetoric radicalised, moving toward demanding the resignation of those responsible for this attempted theft of the elections. While Camacho pushed the protests in eastern Bolivia, Pumari did the same from the Comité Cívico Potosinista in the west.
After twenty-one days of mobilisation, which spread across all departments and even won the support of actors who until then had been important MAS allies, such as the Central Obrera Boliviana, and included institutions of the Armed Forces and the National Police, Morales was forced to resign. In keeping with the Constitution, the constitutional succession resulted in Jeanine Añez, second vice-president of the Senate, becoming interim president, given the successive resignations of the state vice-president, the president and first vice-president of the Senate, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies. It is here that the “coup” narrative, which had been articulated days earlier, began to gain traction.
Did a coup d’état occur on 10 November 2019 in Bolivia? The preceding contextualization is not superfluous; it allows us to identify the elements that, contrasted with theory, enable us to evaluate whether the political figure of a coup d’état actually took place. To that end, I have listed up to seven characteristics commonly present in coups d’état, regardless of their motivations, geographic location, or any other particularity that might cloud our judgment. Thus, one can say that coups d’état are:
- Exceptional: They are deviations from the regular political process.
- Violent: They involve an armed uprising.
- Illegal: They violate democratic norms of constitutional succession.
- Secretive: They are planned and executed in the shadows, away from public scrutiny.
- Sudden: They consist of an abrupt seizure of power.
- Led by minority groups: A small clique or group carries out the action.
- Military: They are executed by the armed forces or with their consent.
A careful look shows that, in the Bolivian case, only one of the seven elements is present, namely the element of being exceptional. Morales’s resignation was an atypical and unexpected event, even though resignation as an institution exists within the legal order. Aside from that, the twenty-one days of strike in Bolivia did not show signs of generalised violence, nor did they contravene basic norms of Bolivian law. Nor can one speak of secrecy in the presence of mass assemblies of more than a million people demanding Morales’s resignation, nor of an abrupt conquest of power when Bolivia was left leaderless between 10 November — the day Morales resigned — and 12 November, when Añez formally assumed office. One can barely speak of minority groups when vast crowds filled the streets in massive protests, nor of the military seizing power — especially when it is understood that their call for resignation was backed by Article 20 of the Armed Forces’ Organic Statute.
Clearly, the events of October and November do not fit what can be academically defined as a coup d’état. For a better description of the events, we should appeal to other categories in Political Science, such as insurrection or civil disobedience, where, after identifying a clear violation of principles of justice and morality, the citizenry rises in protest against the authorities, partially disregarding the legal order. While the exact definition of what happened in those days can be considered an open debate, calling it a coup d’état would be to stretch the term and empty it of its content.
In conclusion, no, there was no coup d’état in Bolivia in 2019. The trials faced by Luis Fernando Camacho, Marco Pumari and Jeanine Añez — at least under this accusation — are nothing more than yet another example of the politicisation of the judiciary. The acid test is found in the accused themselves: shouldn’t, in addition to Camacho, Pumari and Añez, the millions of Bolivians who took to the streets demanding the resignation of Morales and his collaborators also be prosecuted? Undoubtedly, this is an uncomfortable question for those who defend, with little success, the thesis of a coup.
The cry for justice is a cry for freedom. Let us hope that winds of change reach Bolivia, bringing with them a structural reform of our justice system, allowing every accused person to defend themselves under proper conditions and following due process.
