Bolivia Prosecutor’s Office indicts former military officers for participating in Áñez’s investiture

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Prosecutor’s Office pointed out that the defendants “prevented the legitimate continuity” of the country’s Presidency, which should have been headed by Evo Morales as the winner of that year’s elections, thus perpetrating “criminal deeds in a clear encroachment upon popular sovereignty.”

The Prosecutor’s Office notes that the military commanders violated the “legitimacy of the State institutions and the constitutional succession” jointly with Áñez, who needed the military support to accomplish “her unlawful investiture.”

Former Chief of Staff Flavio Gustavo Arce, former Army commander Pastor Mendieta, former Air Force commander Gonzalo Terceros and former Navy commander Palmiro Jarjury are now defendants in the case known as “coup d’état II,” despite being in prison for the “coup d’état I” case.

The officers’ defense attorney Eusebio Vera said that the case against them occurred in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, a place where “at no time have they (the commanders) been present.”

The defendants are also accused of allegedly having ordered the removal of the presidential medal and sash from the Central Bank of Bolivia to be handed over to Áñez in November 2019, something that Vera also rejected.

The indictment alleges that the officers endorsed the “illegal inauguration and imposition of patriotic symbols to the alleged president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, with no authority to do so and outside of the Legislative Assembly.”

Finally, the Prosecutor’s Office defines the inauguration as the “irregular investiture” of a “purported president” and speaks of a “staging” and “premeditated plan.”

According to the conclusions outlined in the indictment, the former military commanders played a “fraudulent role” in “the final act of an irregular presidential investiture.”

In November 2019, Morales was forced to leave Bolivia, accosted by the opposition, the Organization of American States (which denounced electoral fraud, later disavowed by foreign academic audits) and part of the Armed Forces, which did not recognize his victory in the October 20 elections.

Two days after his departure from Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez proclaimed herself president.

One year later, with the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) back in power after the triumph of the current president Luis Arce in the October presidential elections, Áñez is in pre-trial detention for alleged crimes such as terrorism and sedition for the coup d’état case.