Evo Morales is banned from running in Bolivia's presidential elections in 2025 | world

Bolivia's Plurinational Constitutional Court disqualified former President Evo Morales from running for president in 2025. The court invalidated the indefinite re-election mechanism that had already allowed the indigenous leader to run again in 2019.

The 82-page decision, published on Saturday (30) on the court's website, notes that “restricting the possibility of re-election indefinitely is an appropriate measure to ensure that a person does not remain in power.”

This decision overturns another decision adopted in 2017 by the same court, the highest body in constitutional consultations, which considered re-election a “human right.”

The new decision is not subject to appeal, and Morales described it as “political.”

The former leftist president wrote on the social networking site

The Supreme Court decision stipulates that the president and vice president cannot serve a term more than twice, continuously or intermittently.

Morales has expressed his desire to run in the 2025 presidential elections amid verbal confrontations with Luis Arce, the current president and former political ally as well as the Minister of the Economy during almost his entire term from 2006 onwards.

For constitutional lawyer María Rene Soroco of San Pablo Catholic University, “If reelection was previously allowed, it would be a violation of the Constitution itself.”

“It's a late decision,” Soroko adds. “It's not about Evo Morales, it's about defending the rule of law.”

The TCP decision in Bolivia was supported by a review of the standards of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which excludes re-election as a human right.

In 2021, this independent international judicial body issued an advisory opinion, at the request of the Colombian government, on indefinite re-election.

Evo Morales resigned from the presidency in 2019 amid social unrest that broke out following accusations of election fraud. After leaving the country, he was replaced by Jeanine Anez, who is currently facing trials and convictions for the alleged coup.

“TCP puts an end to Evo Morales’ illusion of re-election once and for all,” Anez wrote on her social media account X.

In the same context, opposition leader Carlos Mesa noted: “Evo Morales and… [o então vice-presidente Álvaro] García Linera violated the Constitution […] In collusion with TCP.”