Bolivians awoke Monday, leaderless and dazed, to the smoldering embers of the torched homes of socialists after the resignation of longtime president Evo Morales, the leftist icon driven from office amid accusations his party stole last month’s election. As South America’s poorest nation processed the fast-moving events of the day before, its citizens confronted a key question: Had democracy failed, or prevailed?
Morales, who transformed Bolivia during his nearly 14 years in office, called the pressure that forced him out on Sunday a “coup.” Early in the day, the Organization of American States (OAS) said it had found “clear manipulation” of the Oct. 20 election. Violence that had simmered since the vote escalated. The heads of the armed forces and police withdrew their support, and the opposition unfurled a wave of attacks on Morales’s socialist allies.
By late Sunday, all four socialist officials in the constitutional chain of command — the president, the vice president and the heads of the senate and chamber of deputies — had resigned. What was left of Bolivia’s congress was set to meet Monday to pick an interim leader.
Carlos Mesa, the former president who finished second to Morales in the Oct. 20 vote, rejected the word “coup.” He called it a “democratic popular action” to stop a government that was seeking to install itself as an authoritarian power.
Mesa said Monday that Bolivia’s legislature should select a new president to lead until the country can hold new elections, required within 90 days. Mesa said Sunday that no one from Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) should be picked as interim leader, but he insisted Monday that MAS members should not fear persecution.
“The clear will of the democratic opposition is to build a new democratic government, respecting the constitution,” he said.
Jeanine Añez, the fiercely anti-Morales second vice president of the senate, said Monday she would accept a caretaker presidency if offered. Some opposition officials rallied around her, arguing that, constitutionally, the job should fall to her. My “only objective would be to call elections,” she told reporters.
The OAS, a U.N.-like body for countries of the Western Hemisphere, said it would reject “any unconstitutional resolution of the situation.”
“The General Secretariat calls for peace and respect for the Rule of Law,” the OAS said in a statement. It urged the Bolivian legislature to install new election officials and “guarantee a new electoral process.” It also called for legal action against those responsible for election fraud.
Bolivia was confronting deep divisions and lingering violence — with the strong possibility of more. Overnight, with Morales’s whereabouts unknown, opposition protesters looted and burned the homes of socialist politicians — including Morales. At least 20 MAS officials sought asylum at the Mexican Embassy. La Paz Mayor Luis Revilla Herrero said 64 buses had been burned since Sunday. Schools and businesses were closed Monday, and transportation was shut down.
Some in the opposition were clearly out for vengeance against a government that had ruled Bolivia since 2006. Right-wing leader Luis Fernando Camacho called Sunday evening for two more days of protests and said he would present proposals for the prosecution of Morales, former vice president Alvaro Garcia Linares and MAS legislators.
“Let’s start judgments of the criminals of the government party, putting them in jail,” Camacho said in a video statement.
Two members of the electoral tribunal — its former president María Eugenia Choque and former vice president Antonio Costas — have already been detained. An election official in Santa Cruz, Sandra Kettels, was arrested Monday morning. The prosecutor’s office has announced warrants against all electoral officials.
“A night of terror,” the national newspaper La Razón declared. On Monday, angry Morales supporters set up barricades to block roads leading to El Alto-La Paz airport, the Associated Press reported.
Morales claimed late Sunday that an arrest warrant had been issued against him. Vladimir Calderón, the head of the national police, denied Sunday that an arrest order had been issued. But Calderón resigned on Monday, adding to the confusion on the ground.
Morales and the opposition blamed each other for the violence.
“The coup mongers who attacked my house and my sister’s, threatened ministers and their children with death, and attacked a mayor, now lie and try to blame us for the chaos and the violence they have provoked,” Morales tweeted Monday morning. “Bolivia and the world are witness to the coup.”
One key question revolved around whether the right-wing opposition, now clearly in control of the country, would allow the socialists to field any candidate in new elections after the OAS found evidence of election fraud. Morales had claimed a 10 percent margin of victory in the Oct. 20 vote — just enough to avoid a second round, in which his chances of losing would have been high.
Morales, who won past elections in landslides, had worn out his welcome. He ran for a fourth term despite losing a national referendum on term limits. But the socialists still command significant support in Bolivia, and a decision to bar them would risk more conflict.
The dizzying succession of events Sunday reverberated across Latin America. In Venezuela, analysts said, the left-wing, authoritarian government could take the attacks on Bolivian socialists as proof that voluntarily ceding power would be dangerous.
“In Venezuela, you have the statements by the opposition saying they want to work with [the left], that there won’t be any revenge,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “I think there’s going to be a lot more skepticism of that after seeing what’s happening in Bolivia.”
Debate over whether democracy had been restored or broken raged in Bolivia and across the region. Morales’s socialists were accused of stealing an election. But critics said the military’s decision to pull its support and the mob rule that forced him out were anything but constitutional.
Views fell largely along ideological lines, exposing the political divisions among and within Latin American nations.
Some nations criticized the OAS for largely standing by while Morales was forced from office Sunday.
“We are going to urgently request a meeting of the Organization of American States, because yesterday, silence prevailed,” Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican foreign minister, said Monday. “How can silence be maintained in the face of an event of this gravity?”
He reiterated that Mexico believes what happened Sunday constituted a coup and repeated Mexico’s offer of asylum for Morales. Ebrard said the former president had not yet requested it.
“What we can’t tolerate is when a military tells a president that he has to leave office,” he said. “What happened yesterday is a setback for the entire continent.”
Argentina, run by outgoing center-right president Mauricio Macri, took a different view.
“For our government, there was no coup,” Normando Alvarez García, the Argentine ambassador to Bolivia, told a local radio station. “There’s an interruption of the constitutional order based on social unrest.”