Who is Juan Jose Zuniga?

His dispute with Morales and the omen of a self-coup

Last Tuesday night, rumors spread about the possible dismissal of Zúñiga, the general commander of the Bolivian Army since November 2022. He was reportedly in the headlines for an interview with a local channel in which he said that If former President Evo Morales (2006-2019) tried to run as a presidential candidate I would “arrest” him. In their opinion, he is not fit to become President of Bolivia again.

“According to Article 246 of the Constitution, members of the armed forces must not discuss politics. And Zuniga was accused of discussing politics in that interview,” political scientist Lily Peñaranda tells RTVE.es.

As a result, Morales’ response was immediate. Via social networks He assured that democracy was “in danger” and predicted a “self-coup”,

“The threats made by Army Commander General Juan José Zúñiga have never happened in a democracy. If the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the Minister of Defense, the President and the Captain General of the Armed Forces do not reject them, it will be proven that what they are really organizing is a self-coup,” Evo Morales wrote.

The friendship between Arce and Zuniga

For Peñaranda, Wednesday’s coup attempt is “curious” to say the least, especially if one takes into account the friendship that has united Bolivian President Luis Arce and Commander Juan José Zúñiga for years.

,They are very friends. The Constitutional Court made a move four years ago And they reopened the list of potential candidates for the high military command to be chosen by the president. And they chose, of course, Zuniga, who graduated 48th, that is, with very poor grades,” says the political scientist.

Arce and Morales were also very close, or at least until 2023 The problems between the two and their struggle for power caused the Movement Towards Socialism to suffer its worst internal crisis in many years. In that dispute, Morales even warned that he would be his party’s presidential candidate for the 2025 presidential elections “at any cost”.

A “dramatic” coup

If we add to all of the above the difficult economic situation in Bolivia, political scientist Peñaranda believes that this Wednesday’s coup is “very strange” and even describes it as “Dramatization”,

“Bolivia is a country that has suffered many shocks in the past decades. But the procedure was always to cut off the media, which was not done this time. And government ministers approached a tank without delay, without protection, without fear. it was so quiet Among the assembly members…”, he says.

According to Peñaranda, the purpose of what he calls the “coup show” was to “To be able to achieve greater harmony among the population” To quell the protests of recent weeks, which have escalated in several sectors due to a shortage of currency for commerce and the bankruptcy of many companies.

He believes that “this could give the army more freedom to repress any kind of movement.” However, he assures, if it were a self-coup it would not have achieved what he wanted, especially after Zúñiga’s statements when he was arrested, when he blamed Arce for the mobilization of the army to “boost” his popularity.

In any case, Peñaranda believes that the consequences of this episode will not be catastrophic: “What would be expected in this case is that if it were a coincidence between friends they would be let go after a while, which is what often happens in Bolivian justice”.

“It is very easy for this regime to put up a smoke screen and forget about the matter”

he concluded.