Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and Evo Morales in Bolivia are “active” former presidents. Evo Morales has launched his supporters to try to take over La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, and military barracks, confronting Luis Arce, the current Bolivian President and his former subordinate. López Obrador, for his part, is actively pushing legislative lines for his legislators in the national Congress, provoking, whether he wants to or not, the political weakening of his successor and former subordinate, Claudia Sheinbaum.
The significance of this confraternity of stubborn ex-presidents is that both claim to be retired but act as active politicians. Both swore they would go to their “ranchos” after leaving power. Lopez Obrador said so several times and then qualified it: “I will return only if the President asks for my opinion or if I see that there are deviations from the correct route”. The latter should be taken as a threat or warning from López to his successor. He has corrected her several times and has been out of the office for less than a month.
Both Evo and AMLO represent and are the number one problem of their respective successors. Evo Morales’ phrase is memorable: “I once said that I finish my years in office with my cato de coca, my quinceañera (fifteen-year-old girl), and my charango.” The “quinceañera” has remained as a burnt seal on his forehead. The Bolivian justice system is prosecuting him for statutory rape, pederasty, sexual abuse and rape. Evo says it is political persecution. But there is his phrase “la quinceañera” and several pregnancies attributed to his sexual activity while he was President of the Republic. Evo is an example of how power serves as an aphrodisiac. In Mexico, we have many examples of this (flights of love, etc.). For the time being, Evo is a confessed pedophile whose ideas enlighten and educate AMLO.
Evo Morales justified his followers taking over a military barracks to seize their weapons because, he said, he needed the population to protect him.
AMLO always said that the people protected him. At the beginning of his mandate, he ordered to eliminate all security for former presidents, alleging that if the people attacked him, it was because of his bad presidential administration. He also argued that the reasons for austerity and frugality in his administration justified the decision. However, he himself acknowledged that he spent more than 2 billion pesos from the public budget to fix up the area around his ranch in Palenque, including a first-world hospital for his care and an elite military barracks for his protection and security. In addition, parks and public recreation areas were built, as well as a hotel to house distinguished guests of the ex-president. Five kilometers from the door of his ranch, there is a convenient Mayan Train Station (500 billion pesos and counting).
Former presidents have no security, despite threats against them, while AMLO has a personal military barracks.
Evo Morales was the ideologist of the election by popular vote of judges and magistrates, as the best way to take over the Judicial Power. Even though he has destroyed the justice system in Bolivia, having transformed it into a wing of his party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), Bolivia continues with the model, now with political confrontations between judges, some allied with Evo and others with Luis Arce, the current President.
The Bolivian example awaits the Mexican Judiciary: its fragmentation into small islands, some controlled by Morena, others by the drug cartels, and what remains as local expressions of specific interests. We anticipate a Mexico without the rule of law.
Evo was the one who convinced AMLO of the methodology to subjugate judges to political power. Evo as AMLO’s ideological guide and mentor. And the left, without the slightest restraint and lacking any self-criticism.
@rpascoep
Further Reading: