Political crisis in Bolivia: opposition campaigns for a referendum on judicial reform

With the support of the Catholic Church, Bolivian lawyers and volunteers on Wednesday launched a campaign to collect signatures to hold a referendum on judicial reform in Bolivia.

“Enough is enough! I sign,” is the name of the campaign that aims to gather 1.5 million signatures.

The Superior Electoral Court has granted the books for signature collection that, according to the law, will be held for 90 days.

“It is time for all Bolivians to be part of this crusade to reform this justice system,” said Juan del Granado, a lawyer and former mayor of La Paz.

For his part, the vice president of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Ricardo Centellas, explained that the Catholic Church “is supporting the referendum in Bolivia and making the transformation of justice a reality.”

Senator Luis Adolfo Flores, from the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), qualified the campaign as “stories” and sustained that the pre-selection of candidates for the judicial elections scheduled for the end of the year will begin in the Legislative Assembly at the end of March.

Justice reform is one of the demands of the opposition and civil groups critical of President Luis Arce that emerged from the councils convened after the arrest of Santa Cruz Governor Luis Fernando Camacho.

Camacho was sentenced to four months in prison on December 30, while being investigated for alleged terrorism.

The governor of Santa Cruz – Bolivia’s economic engine – is accused of encouraging the protests that followed the failed 2019 elections, in which then-President Evo Morales sought his fourth consecutive term and which were described as fraudulent by the Organization of American States (OAS).

This triggered a political and social crisis that left 37 dead and forced Morales to resign and flee the country.

Subsequently, then-opposition senator Jeanine Áñez assumed the presidency on an interim basis.

Áñez was also arrested for alleged terrorism and was later tried and convicted for illegally holding office.

At the same time, a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) arrived in the country to check on the progress of the recommendations of an interdisciplinary group of experts on the 2019 crisis.

The experts blamed the Morales and Áñez governments for the violence that led to massacres, torture, summary executions, and serious human rights violations.

With information from AP/Gazeta Brasil

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