Blocked from Bolivia's election, ex-leader Morales not sure how to respond to threats of arrest

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LAUCA Ñ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia's charismatic, long-serving ex-President Evo Morales told The Associated Press on Saturday that he didn't know what to do about threats by the right-wing presidential candidates to arrest him if they came to power.

From his stronghold in Bolivia's tropics of Chapare, where he has been holed up for months under the protection of die-hard supporters, he repeated his call for voters to deface their ballots in Sunday's high-stakes elections in defiance of the race from which he is barred due to a contentious constitutional court ruling.

“What are we going to do? Not even I know,” he said in response to questions about how he would respond if either of the right-wing front-runners, multimillionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina and former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, wins the presidential election and fulfills their threats to arrest him. “I am in the crosshairs of of the right-wing empire.”

Morales, 65, was charged last year with human trafficking and accused of impregnating a 15-year-old girl when he was president.

While he has not outright denied having sexual relations with the underage girl, he has described the charges as politically motivated. A judge issued the arrest order as he and his former finance minister, President Luis Arce, bickered over the control of their long-dominant Movement Toward Socialism Party.

As a result of their bitter power struggle, the party splintered. With the Bolivian economy undergoing its worst crisis in around four decades, the implosion of the MAS party has given the right-wing opposition its best shot at winning at the ballot box since Morales first came to power in 2006.

“Look, it’s an election without legality, without legitimacy .... without the Indigenous movement, without the popular movement,” Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, contended in his interview with the AP at his political organization's headquarters, where he broadcasts a weekly radio show.

The null-and-void vote, he said, “isn’t just a vote for our political movement.”

“It’s a protest vote, a vote of anger."

He insulted Doria Medina and Quiroga, who have both run for president three times before, losing at least twice to Morales, as “eternal losers.”

Citing widespread voter disillusionment with the options, he expressed confidence that the election outcome would reveal an unusually high proportion of invalid votes.

“No one is going to win. It will be the spoiled vote, which is Evo’s vote,” he said, speaking in third person.