Bolivia

LA PAZ, May 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Bolivia’s health minister has been arrested on suspicion of corruption related to the over-priced purchase of ventilators to fight COVID-19, the police chief said.

Marcelo Navajas was detained by police in La Paz, Colonel Ivan Rojas said, a day after interim President Jeanine Anez ordered an investigation.

Two other health ministry officials have also been arrested.

Bolivia bought 179 ventilators from a manufacturer in Spain for $27,683 each, costing almost $5 million.

LA PAZ, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Bolivia's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on Saturday called on all political parties to set a new date for the general elections due to the impact of COVID-19.

TSE President Salvador Romero said that the new date of the elections, originally scheduled for May 3, must get the parliament's approval.

LA PAZ, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Bolivia’s supreme electoral court disqualified exiled former president Evo Morales from running for a Senate seat in May’s general election, saying he did not meet residency requirements.

Morales is currently living in exile in Argentina having fled Bolivia in November after resigning as president following three weeks of protests at his controversial re-election.

17 February 2020; AFP: Former Bolivian president Evo Morales said Sunday that he is returning to Argentina from Cuba, where he had gone for medical treatment last week.

"I feel very healthy. I am still in Cuba, but today is my return trip to Argentina," Morales said by telephone to Bolivia's Radio Kawaschum Coca (RKC) -- owned by the coca planters union to which he belongs.

Morales, 60, traveled to Cuba from Buenos Aires on Monday for medical treatment.

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez said on Friday that she will be a candidate in upcoming elections that will serve as a re-run of October’s disputed vote that sparked protests and prompted former leader Evo Morales to resign.

The former Senator announced her candidacy at an event in La Paz, despite previously having suggested she would not run, saying she wanted to help unite a fragmented electorate and a country left sharply divided by the recent political upheaval.

LA PAZ (Reuters) - A former foreign minister and a coca farmer are the front-runners to be on the ticket for exiled Bolivian President Evo Morales’ political party in the May elections in the South American country, officials said on Friday.

Former Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, an Aymara Indian, was picked as the presidential candidate for the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party in the vote, which will serve as a re-run of a disputed October election.

LA PAZ, Jan 5 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) – Diego Pary, who served as Bolivian foreign minister, under Evo Morales, returned to La Paz on Saturday, to run for the presidency in the upcoming general elections.

Pary arrived from neighbouring Argentina,where Morales and several of his senior officials stayed, since early Nov, to seek political asylum.

In an interview with a local radio, Pary said, Bolivians wanted him to return, as a potential candidate. “I will be where the social movements decide I should be.”

LA PAZ (Reuters) - A rerun of Bolivia’s election has been set for Sunday May 3, the president of the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal said on Friday.

Salvador Romero said both presidential and parliamentary elections would be held on the same day.

“When we announce the electoral calendar over the next few days, together with the formal call for the election, all the deadlines that both political organizations and citizens must meet will be specified,” he told reporters in La Paz.

LA PAZ, Jan 4 (NNN-Prensa Latina) — The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) is leading a poll in the run-up to Bolivia’s presidential elections, even though it has not chosen its candidates for the posts of president and vice president of the Republic.

According to local media, the television channel Unitel released the poll in which the candidate of former president Evo Morales’ political party would secure 20.7 percent of the vote, surpassing his closest rival, de facto president Jeanine Añez (15.7 percent), by five percentage points.

29 December 2019; AFP: Bolivia on Saturday accused Spain of an abortive attempt to extract a wanted former government aide from Mexico's embassy in La Paz, prompting a sharp denial from Madrid.

It was the latest twist in a murky incident Friday involving embassy personnel in the Bolivian capital that has sparked a bitter diplomatic spat.