The military "suggested" Morales leave the country

The argument

On November 10th, after several weeks of civil unrest following the national elections of October 20th, the commander of the Bolivian armed forces publicly requested that president Evo Morales step down from the presidency. The wording was a request, but the source of it was not one that a sitting president can treat as advice. When the officer who controls the country's armed forces tells the head of state to leave office, the choice presented is between going and finding out what happens if he does not — and that is what distinguishes a resignation from a removal. The involvement of the army is therefore taken as indicating the violent nature of the power takeover, even if the military was partially supported by popular calls for Morales to resign. Popular pressure and military pressure are different in kind: the first is a demand that a government may lawfully refuse, the second is not. Further evidence of the violence involved comes from what surrounded the request. Right-wing gangs attacked elected politicians from the ruling left-wing MAS party — the Movement for Socialism. Morales' own home was ransacked by these mobs. Those attacks incited further acts of violence in support of his resignation, among them the public torture of the mayor of Vinto, a town in the province of Cochabamba. This was not an orderly constitutional process running alongside street protest; elected officials were being assaulted while the demand for the president's departure was being pressed. A government leader removed from office by the military, amid a show of force and violent repression directed at his party, is on this view the very definition of a coup — whatever language was used when the demand was made, and whatever popular support accompanied it.

Context

Coups are defined as "ejections from power of political leaders, through unmistakably unconstitutional means, mainly by part of the army, either on their own or in conjunction with civilian elites such as civil servants, politicians and monarchs." Bolivia, like most Latin American countries, has a long-standing history of military coups taking over power by force, including the coups led by Barrientos (1964), Banzer (1971), Natusch (1979) and García Meza (1980). As such, the state is highly sensitive to the possibility of a military takeover and the repression it entails.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There are no similarities between the current situation and previous coups d'état in Bolivia. In this case, there was no military presence in the streets leading to the coup. Therefore, the military did not force the population to respond to the change in power in a given manner. In fact, the military did not aim to take control of the government, and the country was left in a power vacuum until the next person in the chain of command, as laid out in the constitution, took control. Crucially, the military was not the only force pushing Morales out and driving regime change. unlike previous coups, many organizations and civil society groups wanted Morales to step down, including major labor unions, civic groups and student organizations. Lastly, there is simply not enough information at this point to understand the politics that took place behind the scenes, nor the exact motivations of the head of government or the army leaders at the time.

Rejecting the premises

1. There is little verified information over the politics that took place behind the scenes as Morales was asked to resign. 2. There is no way to know with certainty if there was violence involved in ousting Morales. 3. Therefore, we can't know there was a military coup.