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00:00Yeah, a very strange case.
00:02So first we have to understand the political context where you have a fight inside the
00:07governing Socialist Party between the current president Louis Arce and the former president
00:14Abel Morales in a big conflict.
00:16Both would like to run in next year's election and some already some sort of violent protests
00:22happening on the streets.
00:25An attempted coup happened early in the year.
00:28Some crazy stuff there.
00:29And then this incident.
00:30So Abel Morales was driving to his radio interview when this alleged attack happened and he put
00:38the video out in a very strong statement saying it was a group of gunmen in black.
00:44They saw them go into a military headquarters.
00:48Could there be police or military or some kind of paramilitary group hired by the state?
00:53But he's blaming the government.
00:55He calls the government fascist in his statement.
00:58And he's blaming them, the government, saying, OK, we will investigate this.
01:02But the vice president of public security already raising the possibility this could
01:06be a faked assassination attempt and saying whether it's real or not, we're going to investigate
01:13this.
01:14Now, it is strange for a few reasons.
01:16I mean, one, it seems a very ineffective assassination attempt.
01:20You know, there's a lot of assassins in Latin America and here in Mexico.
01:24You get assassinations all the time happening, particularly by cartel squads.
01:28You know, normally they go in there with AK-47s, AR-15s and destroy the target.
01:34In this case, you know, there was 14 shots fired.
01:38You know, they didn't hit the president and the driver was only lightly injured.
01:45Then there are a few questions.
01:47Why did he not have more security?
01:48Is he not in any kind of bulletproof vehicle?
01:52And so it's definitely some questions there about exactly what happened, but raising already
01:57a very, very tense political situation.
01:59It is interesting.
02:00I was talking to Luis, our Cuban producer.
02:02He used the word chapucero, the idea of this bungled attack.
02:05And you raised some very interesting thoughts there about the possibilities.
02:09Very old car as well.
02:10He was driving it for a ex-president.
02:13And this is a weekly show he was doing, Cochabamba.
02:16Is that right?
02:17You could argue that his route was fairly regular.
02:21Yeah, I mean, if there was an assassination attempt, they could easily see this is a weekly
02:25thing he's doing.
02:26But again, assassination attempts are normally a lot more effective.
02:30They're normally going to hit with AK-47s, AR-15s.
02:35Could it be some some people having a shot trying to scare him?
02:38I mean, you know, possibly.
02:40But then, yeah, there are questions there.
02:42And some people have, you know, there's supposed ballistic experts saying, you look at this,
02:47the injuries aren't really of the driver, aren't really in line and where you see the
02:52shots coming in from and these sort of things.
02:55There's some inconsistencies in the Facebook video he put out.
03:00It's interesting that Evo Morales was a very impressive president of Bolivia from 2006
03:07to 2019.
03:08Bolivia is a country famous for some quite extreme political instability.
03:15And you had many, many coups, one of the countries in the world with the highest amount
03:19of coups ever.
03:21And Evo Morales did see a very long time of stability, a very impressive president.
03:26The first indigenous president transformed the country, but it seemed to really struggle
03:30to let go to power.
03:32Then you had this political crisis in 2019 when he was forced out.
03:36He says that was a coup then.
03:38When he was forced out, he flew to Mexico for a while, was here, then went back to Bolivia.
03:43His party retook power.
03:45But then you've got this struggle against his protege and you've seen some sort of quite
03:50violent things kicking off in the streets already with his supporters.
03:54He's also being charged with statutory rape and human trafficking, and they're trying
04:00to arrest him for those things.
04:01He says it's a political thing.
04:03There was an alleged relationship with a 15 year old staffer while he was president some
04:10few years ago now, and him taking on trips was kind of human trafficking.
04:15He says it's a political conspiracy and is refusing to answer that, so kind of raising
04:19the stakes as well on that issue.
04:21Very interesting.
04:22And very briefly in the 30 seconds or so we have, just worth reminding as well, you talk
04:26about Morales in the past.
04:29So he'd served two terms.
04:30Is that right?
04:31He'd argued his case that his human rights was against him to stop him running a third
04:35term.
04:36So that wider politics plays in ahead of next year's elections, doesn't it?
04:40Yeah, absolutely.
04:41So, you know, in Latin America, there's a sensitivity to repeated terms.
04:45You have a long history of dictators.
04:47So a system as you have presidents with only being one or two terms and being so popular,
04:52he tried to go against this or still continues to try to go against this.
04:55And that's one of the real controversial things happening right now.
04:59But also just to just add a very last point, there's also a lot of genuine economic crisis
05:03happening in Bolivia right now.
05:05And people, there are many people who are still sympathetic to him and would like to
05:08see him return to be governor.