Weekly Report - 09 July 2020 (WR-20-27)

At a press conference on 1 July, the presidential candidate of the left-wing opposition Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Luis Arce, accused the interim government of seeking to exclude him from the upcoming election, after the justice minister, Álvaro Coimbra, called for a corruption investigation involving Arce to be reopened. Before the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic interrupted the electoral process, the MAS had repeatedly accused the interim government of using judicial persecution as a weapon against its electoral opponents [WR-20-06]; with interim president Jeanine Áñez’s efforts to further delay the vote having proven unsuccessful [WR-20-25], a return to such a strategy could be on the cards.