The head of Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies, Freddy Mamani, announced that he will denounce what he understands as falsehoods in a report by local Catholic bishops who defended Jeanine Áñez’s self-proclamation as president in 2019.” We are sending this letter of complaint to Brother Francis, Pope of the Catholic Church, with all the arguments that we are specifying on the basis of the report that the parish priests have prepared,” Mamani explained. The sending of the letter to the Supreme Pontiff takes place within the framework of a wide controversy generated by a “report-memory” of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference on its role in the crisis of November 2019, when several bishops participated in the negotiations that led to the assumption of Áñez without parliamentary vote.
In the report released, the bishops aligned themselves with the opposition that defines Áñez’s presidency as a “constitutional succession” after a “power vacuum” due to the resignation of the parliamentary leaders who belonged to the majority blocs of Evo Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS).” We are surprised that the (Bolivian) Church, that minority group that is biased with another group, has presented a report indicating that there was a power vacuum,” said Mamani, who also said that he will send a copy of the text to Cardinal Toribio Ticona, the highest authority of the local Church. Mamani presented official documents as proof that on November 12, 2019, when Senator Áñez declared herself president without a formal legislative session being installed, the mandate of at least the first vice president of deputies, masista Susana Rivero, who resigned two days later, was in force. She also pointed to reports from the legislative archive and press reports showing that Rivero’s resignation was officially known and accepted by the chamber on November 14 and that she herself put the new president of deputies, Sergio Choque, in office.
The debate over how Áñez became President was reactivated in recent days as the Attorney General’s Office extended the taking of statements to leaders who participated in the events of 2019, including former President and candidate Carlos Mesa (2003-05). Áñez is accused of carrying out a coup d’état and has been in pretrial detention since last March, along with two former ministers of his de facto government and several former military and police chiefs.
