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The former interim president who oversaw a bloody crackdown on protesters in Bolivia has been freed from prison after almost five years, following a supreme court ruling that overturned her conviction for allegedly staging a coup to seize power.
Jeanine Áñez, 58, left the Miraflores Women’s Orientation Centre in La Paz on Thursday, saying that “the monster had to go” for her to walk free – a reference to the end of nearly two decades of rule by the leftwing Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas) party.
This Saturday, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, the 58-year-old president-elect, is due to be sworn into office, replacing Luis Arce of Mas, whose unpopularity led him to abandon plans to seek re-election amid the country’s worst economic crisis in four decades.
“The monster had to go for me to return to life,” said Áñez as she left prison, holding a Bolivian flag.
“The monster had to go for it to be recognised that there was never a coup d’état in this country – what there was, was an electoral fraud that drove all Bolivians to rise up,” she added.
A day earlier, her children told local media they hoped she would be invited to Paz Pereira’s inauguration.
Áñez was second vice-president of the senate when, on 12 November 2019, she assumed the interim presidency two days after the resignation of then president Evo Morales of Mas and all other officials in the line of succession.
That year, despite the constitution barring him from running again, Morales sought a fourth term, claiming it was a “human right”. A blackout during the vote count was followed by results showing him as the winner. The country erupted in violent protests, and Morales resigned and fled to Mexico.
Supporters of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president immediately branded Áñez’s assumption of power a coup – a perception reinforced when she postponed presidential elections initially scheduled for May, citing the Covid-19 pandemic.
Her interim government was also marked by protests met with brutal repression by police and the army, with reports stating that Bolivia under Áñez persecuted opponents through “systematic torture” and “summary executions” of more than 20 protesters.
She initially stood as a candidate in the 2020 election but, polling poorly, withdrew from the race, which was ultimately won by the current president, Arce.
In June 2022, Áñez was sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly placing herself illegally in the constitutional line of succession. But on Thursday, the supreme court annulled the ruling, declaring that there had been no coup but rather “a constitutional necessity aimed at preserving the institutional continuity of the Bolivian state”.
