Through a “refoundational congress” that made official the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Bolivia by order of a court, the wing of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) that responds to the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has been institutionalized and is projected as the faction that will keep the coveted acronym. At the same time, the party’s traditional leadership, led by former president Evo Morales, has not received authorization from the TSE to convene its own conclave. Arce has presented the officialization of his political group as a recovery of the original idea that drove the founding of the MAS in 1997, that is, the electoral representation of unions and other social organizations, whose main leaders align with him. For his part, from his stronghold in the coca growing area of Chapare, Morales stated that the Arcistas “taking advantage of the trust given to them by the people, intend to turn our democracy into an authoritarian regime” and has warned that there will be “social upheaval.” if they take away the MAS and prevent him from running in next year’s elections.
The two factions into which the MAS has been divided are fighting for the political capital that symbolizes the name and legal personality of a party that has won all the Bolivian presidential elections since 2005. To fight this battle, the arcismo has counted on the Government and , through this, with the leadership of the majority of social organizations, while Morales has clung to his ascendancy over the party leadership and apparatus, as well as his strength in Chapare, an emblematic region in the history of Bolivian social mobilizations.
Although the Bolivian electoral law favors the traditional leaders of the parties and does not allow riots, the TSE has not made it easy for the former president and historical leader of the MAS. He did not validate the congress that he organized in Lauca Ñ, in October 2023, and which proclaimed him a presidential candidate. He used technicalities to ignore it, while Morales denounced that the electoral members had been pressured by the ruling party.
The TSE requested that the evista board organize another congress, which was scheduled for June; Simultaneously, Arce’s followers, who had ignored the Lauca Ñ meeting, called their own in El Alto for May 3. Initially, the electoral members refused to supervise these congresses, because they did not meet the conditions established by the MAS statute and the electoral law. According to these rules, they had to be summoned by the Morales board, but in coordination with the social organizations aligned with Arce, that is, an impossibility. The impasse was broken by a ruling by a court in La Paz that, in the name of constitutional principles, ordered the TSE to supervise the ruling congress. This court is headed by Israel Campero, a judge questioned for having ruled in a political and corrupt manner in the past.
The electoral members had to accept the officialization of the MAS refoundation congress, although “conditionally”, and demanded that the independence of powers be respected. For Morales, they “usurp the functions of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal” in another “blow against democracy” by the Government led by his former minister Luis Arce. “I was wrong to name Lucho president,” Morales has stated in the press these days.
In the enormous rally that served to inaugurate the “arcist” refoundation congress of the MAS, vice president David Choquehuanca announced the end of the “cult of personality, which is a colonial practice,” in reference to Evo Morales, who has been his adversary. since they broke off their old friendship in 2017. He noted that the cult of personality “does not allow people to think on their own.”
Arce, acclaimed by a crowd that chanted “I fight, you are not alone,” spoke that “the MAS is the son, and his fathers and mothers are the social organizations, which today have to take care of their son,” preventing the acronym from being appropriate. by “a group with particular interests.” He exclaimed that “the MAS does not belong to one person.” He promised that it would not be from “Lucho” either, because “history does not revolve around the leaders, but the people” and “the MAS is not a traditional political organization, but the organized people.” He also had a few words for his traditional rivals, who these days attack him for the deterioration of the national economy. He shouted that “the right rejoices and rubs its hands [por la división de la izquierda], but we tell him: they are not going to happen!” For his part, Morales wrote in
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