After 14 years in office, President Evo Morales has
resigned, as reported by The Guardian on 11 November 2019. The army called for him to step down after the police force had withdrawn their support. Since the presidential election on 20 October 2019, Bolivia has experienced weeks of violence and anti-government protests which the ruling party - the Movement to Socialism party (MAS-IPSP) - claimed was an attempted coup. According to a report by Periodista Digital on 6 November 2019, a top official
blamed the Catholic Church for spreading accusations of electoral fraud and giving justification for a coup against Evo Morales.
Rossana Ramirez, persecution analyst at World Watch Research (WWR), comments: "The background for the accusations against the Catholic Church are as follows: It seemed in October that President Morales had won an outright victory in the first round of the presidential election. However, Morales was forced to
agree to fresh elections being scheduled due to the violent protests and serious
irregularities in the voting process, which were confirmed by the Organization of American States (The Guardian, 10 November 2019). This is not the first time that the ruling party has tried to undermine the credibility of the Catholic Church when it has expressed disagreement with President Morales‚´ government policy. Now that the president has resigned, the country's political future is uncertain. The president"s successor will be named In the next few days and expectations are high that any new president will abandon the current repressive practices against government critics and Christian leaders."
