Evo Morales' candidacy was unconstitutional

The argument

The case for this position turns on a distinction between how a vote is conducted and who is permitted to stand in it. An election is not fair merely because ballots are cast and counted accurately; it must also be a genuine contest among candidates entitled to compete. If one contender should never have been on the ballot at all, the unfairness is built in before a single vote is cast, and no amount of procedural care in the counting can repair it. Proponents argue that Evo Morales was exactly such a candidate. His run for re-election to a third term in the 2014 elections, they contend, stood against constitutional term limits, the rule whose whole purpose is to cap how long one person may hold the presidency and so stop an incumbent's advantages from compounding indefinitely. Morales then sought to remove that obstacle by the available legitimate route, putting a referendum to Bolivians in February 2016 that asked them to abolish presidential term limits and thereby allow him to run for a fourth term. He lost it, narrowly but clearly, in a split vote of 51.3% against to 48.7% in favour. Having asked the electorate for permission and been refused, he nonetheless chose to run for a fourth term in October 2019. The force of the argument lies in that sequence. On this reading Morales did not merely fall foul of a constitutional restriction; he put the question to the voters himself, treating the referendum as the proper way to settle it, and then acted against the answer he received. His candidacy therefore defied both the constitution and the expressed decision of the electorate. Even if the election had been conducted entirely legitimately, with every ballot properly cast and tallied, it would still have been a contest in which an illegitimate candidate stood, and so, proponents conclude, the election was not fair.

Context

The Bolivian constitution, approved under Morales' government in 2009, established a two-term limit to the presidency.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Evo Morales has defended his right to run for the presidency on both occasions. The constitution approved in 2009 established a new state: the Plurinational State of Bolivia. When Morales run in 2014, it was the first time he was running to become the president of the newly-created state. In regards to the 2016 referendum, Morales argued that it was his human right to be an elected official. In both cases, Morales presented the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor both in regards to the 2014 and 2016 cases.

Rejecting the premises

1. In 2014, Evo Morales was running on his first term as president of the newly-constituted Plurinational State of Bolivia. 2. The Supreme Court further established that it was Morales' fundamental right to become an elected representative of the people. 3. Morales had, therefore, the right to his own candidacy under Bolivian law.