The former interim caretaker was arrested in the middle of the night at her home in the Amazonian region of Beni under accusations of sedition, terrorism, and complicity in a “coup” that ousted former President Evo Morales. The courts said she was considered a “flight risk.”
In turn, she accused the government of political persecution, “It accuses me of having participated in a coup that never happened,” she tweeted.
Añez assumed the presidency as the constitutional next-in-line after Morales, his vice-president. The presidents of the upper and lower houses of Congress, and the president of the Senate resigned following a countrywide revolt that questioned his claim to have won the country’s 2019 elections. She was the second vice president of the senate.
Her charge was to run the country until new elections were held; she held office for one year and was the country’s second woman president, handing over power to Luis Arce of Morales’s political party after a landslide victory in elections held in October 2020.
By Milan Sime Martinic