Is it the principle of removing term limits you find objectionable? Plenty of functioning democracies don't have them.
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Bolivia's Jenine Áñez finally allows election effectively at gunpoint, loses and is going to jail
- Thread starter crimson5pheonix
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The way he went about removing is what is shameful. Getting a rubber stamp court to claim that an inter national treaty superseded the constitution, right after the public rejected the modification, is lame even by dictator playbook.
The public rejected the modification by a razor thin margin, and voters opted to re-elect Morales by a much larger one later. The largest and most recent indication of the popular will we have shows it endorses a continuation of Morales' government.
Whether you think it lame or not, the reelection of Morales was both legal and endorsed by the electorate. You know what smacks more of dictatorialism? Deposing an elected ruler by force and replacing them with an unelected ruler.
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I dont see Capitalism as that much better.
But I love how you automatically think I want Communism just because I dislike Capitalism. (I dont.) This has always been the most effective way to keep Capitalism in power: blame something else and pretend ìt problems doesn't exist. It's the exact reason why it doesn't improve. It's the exact reason why it will die unless it adapts.
(And I completely agree with the second paragraph. It just doesnt deal with people willing to excuse Capitalisms flaws. If you want Capitalism to be top dog, make it worthy.)
Morales could have set up a puppet from his party instead of breaking the referendum result. He didnt and sent the country into a crisis that the US could exploit. I dont know why it can delvove to the next person in power from his party but definitely shouldn't go to Morales or Anez
This. I think one can reasonably criticize Morales, but what occurred to oust him was a coup organized by fanatic white nationalists. The protests after he was ousted against Anez were larger for a reason, and the brutality against those protesters has been far worse than any suppression carried out by Morales (effectively nil).
Should he have tapped someone else to run? Yep. Does that make a murderous anti-Democratic coup or the succeeding fascist dictatorship justifiable? Nope.
A puppet would be better? I thought we valued transparency and accountability for the ones making decisions?
Morales, by pursuing a legal avenue, can not be said to have caused this crisis. That blame would lie with those that resorted to force in order to undo a legal and democratic vote. Some of the blame may also lie with the OAS, who may well have publicised shoddy data on the 2019 election and stoked protest and outrage to begin with.
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Actually it wasn't even legal, another court later rule the previous ruling illegitimate, but Morales just ignore that ruling and ran anyway. And here we have to discuss what "legal" mean when it comes to the government. If Putin kill an opposition figure and the cop don't investigate it, does it make the killing legal? In 2017 the constitutional court of Bolivia rules that the constitution was unconstitutional because it "contradicted" an extra territorial treaty vague statement on human rights (that's right, Morales, 3 time leader of Bolivia, was being oppressed by the Bolivian government) that was signed before the constitution was adopted. If that sound like an oxymoron, that's because it is, it makes no sense and most banana republic would be ashamed to pull that off.
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The Constitutional Tribunal that ruled in Morales' favour is the highest court in Bolivia. No other court can legally overrule it.
Something is legal if it abides by the written law as interpreted by the judiciary. In this instance, Morales did abide by the law and his opponents did not. It's not a complexity or an ambiguity.
It's not an oxymoron at all: the role of the judiciary is to determine between two different legal interpretations. In this case, a treaty was found to be the overriding authority, partially (I suspect) because it was signed first: if you legally commit yourself to something, then legally commit yourself to something else contradictory later, then the court would be right to determine the later move to be unlawful. You were already committed and cannot legally renege on your first commitment. The same principle is respected in most legal systems around the world.
The rights in question were those of his voters to choose their own elected leaders, something that every globe emoji neo-Wilsonian who brings this up forgets are real human beings and not the demon possessed vermin the fanatic white supremacists they propped up frame them as.
Cue Trump stacking the supreme court, then the supreme court allowing Trump to run for re-election because of his human right to be elected, and then running Trump 2024.
If he wins all three of those elections I doubt the single court case allowing him to ignore one constitutional amendment will be the most significant failing of American democracy. Shit, I’d say the Patriot Act and the mere existence of DHS makes more of a mockery of the constitution than that would, and the continued existence of the electoral college more anti-democratic than the violation of term limits.
Ok so you're in favor of it, at least you're consistent. I skimmed the rest of what you wrote and I don't get it, it's like hate-diarrhea.
Firstly, the US has not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, so the US Supreme Court could not use the same basis for the decision. So it would be perfectly consistent to recognise that it was legal in Bolivia, but would be illegal in the USA because the two countries have different laws.
Secondly, members of the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal in Bolivia are elected, not chosen by the ruling party. Neither system is perfect, but the US system is far more open to partisanship and abuse.
American Convention on Human Rights doesn't allow abortions, btw. I didn't say US supreme court would use the same argument. I said Trump could stack the court to be in his favor. The members were elected after the president created the institution, and during his presidency. Ask yourself why didn't he go through the supreme court before the referendum. It was because of optics, which he botched, and then he shoved it down the collective throat of the political machine.
Uhrm, okay. I'm not arguing the Convention is always right, I'm saying that Morales' actions were legal.
Which is something he can do anyway, and which Morales did not do (and could not have done). What's the relevance of any of this? Are you saying the decisions of the Bolivian judiciary are illegitimate because the US judiciary is susceptible to abuse?
Yes, he botched the optics in the referendum. The Bolivian electorate, who chose to overwhelmingly re-elect him afterwards, evidently don't believe that's grounds to oust him.