Bolivia

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez said on Friday that she will be a candidate in upcoming elections that will serve as a re-run of October’s disputed vote that sparked protests and prompted former leader Evo Morales to resign.

The former Senator announced her candidacy at an event in La Paz, despite previously having suggested she would not run, saying she wanted to help unite a fragmented electorate and a country left sharply divided by the recent political upheaval.

LA PAZ (Reuters) - A former foreign minister and a coca farmer are the front-runners to be on the ticket for exiled Bolivian President Evo Morales’ political party in the May elections in the South American country, officials said on Friday.

Former Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, an Aymara Indian, was picked as the presidential candidate for the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party in the vote, which will serve as a re-run of a disputed October election.

LA PAZ, Jan 5 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) – Diego Pary, who served as Bolivian foreign minister, under Evo Morales, returned to La Paz on Saturday, to run for the presidency in the upcoming general elections.

Pary arrived from neighbouring Argentina,where Morales and several of his senior officials stayed, since early Nov, to seek political asylum.

In an interview with a local radio, Pary said, Bolivians wanted him to return, as a potential candidate. “I will be where the social movements decide I should be.”

LA PAZ (Reuters) - A rerun of Bolivia’s election has been set for Sunday May 3, the president of the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal said on Friday.

Salvador Romero said both presidential and parliamentary elections would be held on the same day.

“When we announce the electoral calendar over the next few days, together with the formal call for the election, all the deadlines that both political organizations and citizens must meet will be specified,” he told reporters in La Paz.

LA PAZ, Jan 4 (NNN-Prensa Latina) — The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) is leading a poll in the run-up to Bolivia’s presidential elections, even though it has not chosen its candidates for the posts of president and vice president of the Republic.

According to local media, the television channel Unitel released the poll in which the candidate of former president Evo Morales’ political party would secure 20.7 percent of the vote, surpassing his closest rival, de facto president Jeanine Añez (15.7 percent), by five percentage points.

29 December 2019; AFP: Bolivia on Saturday accused Spain of an abortive attempt to extract a wanted former government aide from Mexico's embassy in La Paz, prompting a sharp denial from Madrid.

It was the latest twist in a murky incident Friday involving embassy personnel in the Bolivian capital that has sparked a bitter diplomatic spat.

LA PAZ, Dec 28 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Bolivia on Friday slammed its former colonial ruler Spain for allegedly “trampling” its sovereignty in a deepening diplomatic row.

The two countries have been in a spiraling spat since Mexico granted asylum to Bolivian ex-president Evo Morales, who resigned on Nov 10 in the face of mass protests, and granted refuge to top officials from his leftist government at its embassy.

La Paz (Reuters) - Bolivian former President Evo Morales on Saturday appealed for his supporters to attend a rally on the border between Argentina and Bolivia on Dec. 29 to choose a candidate for Bolivia’s election early next year.

In an interview with Argentine radio, Morales, who has sought political asylum in Argentina, said he had called the meeting of the Movement for Socialism party, which he helmed for 14 years as president.

“We will choose our candidate with a view to the upcoming elections in Bolivia,” Morales told Radio La Network.

COROICO (Bolivia), Dec 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — For the coca farmers of western Bolivia’s Las Yungas region, the loss of president Evo Morales – himself a one-time coca grower, and a champion of indigenous rights – is less worrying than the drop in price of their “holy leaf” crop.

And the growers of the coca leaf – the raw material for making cocaine but also a mainstay of pre-colonial life – are warning of “war” if the amount of land under legal cultivation is reduced by the interim government in power since Morales resigned last month.

30 November 2019; AFP: Bolivia's interim government will file a case in The Hague against former president Evo Morales for "crimes against humanity," the interior minister announced Friday.

The government will file the lawsuit "in the next few days," the minister, Arturo Murillo, told state radio Patria Nueva.

The International Criminal Court sitting in The Hague has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity.