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The Bolivian government is insistent upon running Evo Morales as a candidate again in the next presidential election, despite the rejection of Morales’ reelection bid in a national referendum. Social sectors allied with Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party will open up offensives on two fronts.
The measure was approved by MAS delegates during party’s national convention held just over a week ago.
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The first strategic activity will take place on January 7, in a town hall where the Confederation of Neighborhood Juntas (Conaljuve) will launch the effort to collect signatures for the popular initiative, while the second front will be through the social sectors related to MAS, who will ask the current head of state to resign from office in order to qualify for the ballot in the next elections.
According to an article in the daily El Deber, the plan of the ruling party is that affiliated social organizations ask the head of state to resign from office with more than six months remaining in his term in order to qualify for the 2019 elections.
Bolivians in favor of the reelection of Evo Morales will start collecting signatures to obtain 20% of the eligible voters in the entire country. They estimate that they will need to collect 60,000 signatures of people older than 18 in each region.
Morales, who said he would not change Article 168 of the Constitution to be a candidate in presidential elections for the presidential term 2020-2025, could resort to other methods to achieve reelection without technically breaking that promise.
Morales has already managed to bypass the article of the constitution that indicates that a president can not be reelected more than twice. He could now opt not only for the partial reform of the constitution that he promised not to change, but also for resignation of the presidency as a strategy to run for the 2020-2025 presidential term.
It should be noted that the Bolivian leader lost a referendum in February, in which the Bolivian population rejected amending the Constitution in order to allow for a third reelection bid.
Source: El Deber
