Bolivian President Luis Arce condemned the shooting of the car in which former head of state Evo Morales was in, and ordered a detailed investigation.
"Any use of violence is condemned and must be investigated. Therefore, I have given instructions to immediately conduct a thorough investigation to establish the circumstances of what happened,”, he wrote in the Telegramchannel.
Earlier, Morales published a video that he called an “attempted arrest at the direction of the government”. The footage shows Morales in the car being shot at, with blood visible on the back of the driver's head. Morales later wrote that he was the victim of an assassination attempt. Deputy Interior Minister Roberto Rios said that police do not have an arrest warrant for the former president.
In mid-October, El Deber reported that the Tarija department's prosecutor's office was seeking an arrest warrant for Morales due to his failure to appear for questioning in a case of child abuse and human trafficking. According to investigators, the parents of a 15-year-old girl introduced her to Morales for a career in the government sector. As the Bolivian Minister of Justice Cesar Siles reported earlier, as a result of a relationship with the former president, the minor became pregnant.
On October 26, Bolivia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement accusing Morales of trying to undermine the constitutional order and destabilize the situation in the country due to the blockade of highways by his supporters.< /p>
Arce was Morales' economy minister and his protégé in the October 2020 presidential election. However, disagreements later arose between the politicians, in particular over who should become the presidential candidate of the ruling Movement towards Socialism party .