Morales’ fight with the Bolivian Judicial Branch

The fight between Evo Morales and the Bolivian Judicial Branch began when the country’s Constitutional Court dismissed from the Supreme Court four judges who Morales had named by decree to temporary positions on December 30, 2006. But what are the roots of the problem? These four judges were preparing to bring ex-president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to justice for his role in the killing of 18 people during the mass movements in 2003 which eventually forced him to resign. In response to the dismissal of these four Supreme Court justices, Evo Morales issued a formal complaint against four members of the constitutional court for incompetence and obstruction of justice.

As a result, right-wing reactionaries in Bolivia strongly attacked Morales and his government. Jorge Tuto Quiroga, the leader of Podemos, the largest neoliberal party in Bolivia, publicly asked that Morales free himself from the tutelage of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and respect Bolivian sovereignty and democracy. According to the right-wing, Morales and his MAS government is trying carry out some form of “judicial coup” that involves the hanging of the Judicial Branch as one more link in the chain on the way towards taking absolute power and establishing a totalitarian government.

On the other hand, left-wing would ask “Is the Judicial Branch really independent? And who is it independent from? Each one of the Justices on the Supreme Court was named by one of the previous right-wing governments which never truly had popular support in the first place, much less represented the peasant, worker, and indigenous majority of Bolivia. Why then should Evo Morales, who heads the first government to really have been elected with the majority support of the population not have the right to name members of the Supreme Court?”

http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2007/06/18bolivia.html