Bolivia: Evo Morales accuses Luis Arce of “lying” about the coup

Former Bolivian head of state Evo Morales on Sunday accused current President Luis Arce, his former ally, of “lying” about the recent thwarted military plan to overthrow the latter, even suggesting that he could have been a “self-coup”.

“I thought it was a coup, but now I doubt: it looks like a self-coup,” Evo Morales said in his Sunday radio show, broadcast from the department of Cochabamba (center) .

Evo Morales was one of the first to warn on his social networks about the armed uprising last Wednesday, when troops with tanks, led by former army commander Juan José Zúñiga, besieged the presidential palace.

“He deceived us”

“I feel, I don’t know if I’m wrong, that Lucho (Arce) did not respect the truth; he deceived us, he lied, not only to the Bolivian people, but to the whole world,” added the influential indigenous leader. Luis Arce maintained on Sunday that “clearly” “a failed military coup” took place on Wednesday.

“Evo Morales, don’t make any more mistakes! (…) Don’t side with fascism that denies what happened,” wrote Luis Arce on X. “Those who sought to seize power by force of arms” will be judged, he added.

Evo Morales had already questioned on Friday the official version of the coup d’état project of Juan José Zúñiga – detained since then in a high security prison -, but this time he clearly distances himself from Luis Arce, who was his Minister of Finance during his almost 14 years of presidency (2006-2019).

21 arrests

The two men are competing within the ruling party, with a view to the nomination in the presidential election of 2025. This Sunday, Evo Morales assured that he had received information which “convinces” him that in reality “he is “it was a self-coup.”

According to the former president, he learned from ministerial sources that Arce was going to cede the presidency to a “military junta” to prevent him “from being president again.”

At the time of his arrest, Juan José Zúñiga had said that Luis Arce himself had asked him to “stage something to increase his popularity”, something that was later denied by the Bolivian president, in power since 2020. A total of 21 active, retired and civilian military personnel were arrested after the coup attempt, including the three former commanders of the armed forces.

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