Luis Arce Calls for Resignation of OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, Doesn’t Care for his Congratulations
Arce accused the OAS of taking part in “the preparation for a coup” in Bolivia.
President-Elect of Bolivia Luis Arce expressed the opinion that the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, “should resign, for moral and ethical reasons.”
“I think things are clear, we agree there. There was no fraud, there was a whole preparation for a coup, of which the OAS unfortunately was part of,” the president-elect told La Razón, adding that he didn’t care about Almagro’s congratulations on his victory in the presidential elections. He believes that Almagro “interfered, violated Bolivian regulations, and those of any international body observing an electoral process; he interfered in internal affairs.”
“We do not agree that an important body should be in the hands of people who support a particular political party or political trend in the region, and that it interferes in the internal affairs of a country. If it was able to do that in Bolivia, imagine, you could do it with any other country, and we can’t allow that,” said Arce.
Previously, Evo Morales had demanded Almagro’s resignation due to the role that the OAS played during the 2019 elections, which later led to a coup against the former Bolivian president. For his part, Almagro said that when the audit of the 2019 presidential elections in Bolivia was released, he had asked Evo Morales not to resign, but that he “ran away.”
Almagro’s resignation was also requested by the Puebla Group. The group considers that Arce’s resounding victory confirms that there was no fraud in the 2019 elections in which Morales was reelected.
Meanwhile, the undersecretary of Mexico for Latin America and the Caribbean, Maximiliano Reyes Zúñiga, accused Almagro on Tuesday of making “factious” use of the electoral observation mission to endorse an “alleged fraud” in the 2019 elections.
Political analyst and sociologist Esteban Silva believes that Arce’s electoral victory will allow Bolivia to reestablish diplomatic relations broken by the Áñez government, and to resume a sovereign foreign policy.
Featured image: Courtesy of Primera Linea.
Translation: OT/JRE/SL
