Bolivia’s attorney general on Wednesday ordered the arrest of exiled former Bolivian president Evo Morales after the interim government accused him of sedition and terrorism.
Public prosecutors in La Paz signed a warrant for police to detain the 60-year-old — who is in Argentina — and take him to the attorney general’s office.
Morales last month fled Bolivia after civil unrest broke out following his re-election in an Oct. 20 poll widely dismissed as rigged.
Photo: AP
The former trade union leader denounced the arrest order as “illegal, unfair and unconstitutional.”
“I’m not worried. As long as I’m alive I’ll continue with greater strength in the political and ideological struggle for a free and sovereign Bolivia,” Morales said on Twitter.
Morales governed the South American country for almost 14 years before resigning last month and leaving Bolivia.
He initially received asylum in Mexico and then traveled to Argentina last week.
The allegations against him stem from an audio recording released by Bolivian Minister of Government Arturo Murillo.
In the recording, Morales allegedly tells one of his supporters to block trucks and interrupt the food supply to several cities.
Morales was in Mexico at the time, the complaint alleges.
Murillo last month began legal action against Morales, after weeks of roadblocks caused food and fuel shortages in La Paz following his resignation.
The former president countered by accusing the interim government of manufacturing the recording to damage him politically.
The controversial October poll was annulled following an Organization of American States audit that found clear evidence of vote-rigging.
Right-wing then-Bolovian Senate president Jeanine Anez took over as interim president and has vowed to call new elections early next year, although no date has been set.
The interim government has barred Morales from standing in the ballot.
Bolivia’s constitution limits a president to two consecutive terms, but Morales stood for a potential fourth term in October.
Ahead of the past two elections, the Bolivian Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal — filled with Morales loyalists — made controversial decisions authorizing him to run again.
His detractors accused him of corruption and authoritarianism.
Speaking from Buenos Aires on Tuesday, Morales pledged to back another candidate from his Movement for Socialism party.
“I’m convinced that we’ll win the next elections. I won’t be a candidate, but I have a right to be in politics,” Morales told reporters.
“My obligation now that I’m not a candidate, now that I’m not president, is to accompany candidates so that they can win the elections,” added Morales, who was Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president.
He previously insisted that he had been the victim of a coup, and has launched near-daily Twitter attacks against Anez and her allies.
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