Claudia Morales\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The court\u2019s unanimous decision Wednesday upheld an earlier ruling that bans presidents from serving more than two terms. Morales has already served three, and, in 2019, resigned under pressure from the military and went into exile as protests erupted over his bid for an unprecedented fourth term. <\/p>\n
Morales returned to Bolivia a year later as the 2020 elections vaulted to power his preferred candidate, President Luis Arce, from his long-dominant Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party. <\/p>\n
Arce, who announced earlier this week that he would not seek re-election, insisted that the Constitutional Court had disqualified Morales, his mentor-turned-rival, from running in 2025. <\/p>\n
But many experts doubt the legitimacy of that decision in a country where political conflicts undermine the courts and presidents have maneuvered to get their allies on the bench. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Constitutional Court issues unconstitutional arbitrary rulings at the whim of those in power,\u201d said Morales, who himself reaped the benefits of favorable judges while seeking to run for a fourth consecutive term in 2017. <\/p>\n
After Morales lost a referendum seeking to do away with term limits while still in power, the Constitutional Court ruled it would be against Morales\u2019 human rights to stop him from running for another term. <\/p>\n
That 2017 ruling allows Morales to register his candidacy, said Oscar Hassentoufel, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. \u201cThen the tribunal will decide whether he\u2019s eligible or not.\u201d <\/p>\n
In defiance of the latest court ruling, Morales called a mass march that marshaled his loyal supporters in the rural tropics. They long have championed the Indigenous coca-grower for transforming the country during his tenure \u2014 redistributing Bolivia\u2019s natural gas wealth and seeking greater inclusion for its Indigenous majority. <\/p>\n
Although he had earlier promised to participate, it appeared that Morales remained holed up in his stronghold for fear of arrest on human trafficking charges that he claims are politically motivated. <\/p>\n
The government confirmed that fear Friday. \u201cWe ask Mr. Morales to surrender voluntarily,\u201d said Eduardo del Castillo, a key minister in Arce\u2019s government whom the MAS party endorsed for president later Friday in place of Arce. \u201cIf we find him walking the streets, we will arrest him.\u201d <\/p>\n
Instead, scores of his supporters walked the capital\u2019s streets on Friday wearing masks of Morales\u2019 face. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvo Morales is each and every one of us. If they want to detain Evo Morales they would need to take every one of us, too,\u201d said David Ochoa, a representative of the marchers. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
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Hundreds of supporters of ex-President Evo Morales marched toward Bolivia\u2019s top electoral court on Friday to push for their leftist leader\u2019s candidacy in presidential elections later this year, a rally that descended into street clashes as police tried to clear out a group of demonstrators. The confrontations come in response to a ruling by Bolivia\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}