Following a controversial legal process, the Bolivian justice system has issued an arrest warrant against former leftist President Evo Morales, who governed Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. The Prosecutor’s Office is seeking a 20-year sentence against one of the Andean country’s most prominent opposition leaders.

The prosecution accuses Morales of having had a romantic relationship with a minor who allegedly had a daughter with Morales while he was president of Bolivia.

“The incident did not occur”: says alleged victim

“The maximum sentence is 20 years in prison, and that is what the Public Prosecutor’s Office, after presenting its evidence and proving its case, will seek,” said Prosecutor José Mogro. Additionally, the Tarija Department Prosecutor’s Office asserts that the act is very serious because the alleged victim was a minor in 2015, when the alleged crime occurred.

However, the news outlet Telesur reported that the alleged victim, named Cindy Vargas, appeared before the Court Against Violence Against Women and requested that the case be dismissed: “I am not a victim; the incident did not occur, nor was there any exploitation.” In light of this, Vargas objected to public institutions pursuing legal action on her behalf and requested that the case be dismissed.

For his part, Evo Morales asserts that the proceedings seek to destroy his reputation and integrity through political persecution via the ordinary courts: “To cover up its disastrous and corrupt administration—and its tremendous national disapproval—the [Rodrigo Paz] government is carrying out a brutal judicial and media persecution against me with fabricated cases designed to annihilate me morally and physically; as in all cases of lawfare, it presumes my guilt and condemns me without the due process mandated by the Political Constitution of the State.”

Furthermore, Morales stated: “For more than 40 years, not only have they accused me of being a drug trafficker and a terrorist, but they have investigated me through every possible avenue without having found a single piece of evidence of those crimes or of corruption. The iconic leader demanded that his accusers present “legal and factual evidence” of the alleged crimes he committed. “I do not seek impunity,” Morales asserted.

“I demand justice that is impartial, honest, objective, and independent of political power.”

Despite what he describes as a targeted lawfare campaign, Morales emphasized that his accusers will never be able to “silence the organized, combative, and outraged people in the face of a government of the rich, of neocolonialists, and of traitors.”

Read more: Paz suffers a stinging defeat in Bolivia’s regional elections

Contempt of court or fraudulent trial

So far, Evo Morales has not attended the hearings because he claims there are no guarantees of a fair trial; furthermore, he asserts that his life could be at risk due to the threats he has received over the past several months. As a result, the prosecution has declared that Morales has committed the crime of contempt of court, which could lead to a longer sentence.

For now, several media outlets speculate that Morales is in Cochabamba, where his most loyal supporters are protecting him against any possibility of imprisonment. Furthermore, several of his supporters have promised that if the former president is arrested, they will launch nationwide protests.

In this regard, union leader Dieter Mendoza said that if they touch Morales, there could be an insurgency and the country could descend into chaos: “If they touch Evo Morales, this is going to cause chaos. The country is going to be thrown into chaos in ways you can’t imagine; there will be an insurgency across Bolivia.”

For his part, former prosecutor Wilfrido Chávez, a member of Morales’s defense team, asserted that the trial is flawed because the former president was never personally notified, but rather through a public notice, which, the lawyer argues, prevents the trial from proceeding under Bolivian law. Thus, Chávez asserts that all actions taken by the prosecution lack due process and are therefore illegal, as is any potential imprisonment of the former president.

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