BOLIVIA’S coup-installed President Jeanine Anez approved a law decreeing new elections yesterday — but barring elected president Evo Morales from standing in them.

She passed the Bill into law after it had been approved by both houses of parliament, despite these being dominated by Mr Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). The Supreme Electoral Tribunal will set a date for the elections.

The measure follows Ms Anez’s decision to charge Mr Morales with sedition and terrorism over his alleged responsibility for mass protests by his supporters against the military coup that removed him from power despite an emphatic first-round win in elections held on October 20. The US-dominated Organisation of American States claimed there were irregularities in the election but did not provide evidence. The Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research’s audit found no irregularities.

New Interior Minister Arturo Murillo told Britain’s Guardian newspaper in an interview that the government would seek to jail Mr Morales for the rest of his life. The ousted president is currently in exile in Mexico, which intervened to save his life after white supremacist mobs attacked his home and began killing indigenous Bolivians following his forced resignation.

And Ms Anez refused to sign a law passed by the parliament that would protect Mr Morales from being tried for alleged crimes committed “during the exercise of his functions to date” — wording that refers to Mr Morales’s insistence that he remains the legitimate elected president. “I will not promulgate this law,” she announced.

MAS Senator Adriana Salvatierra said she had backed the elections law “to respond to the citizens’ expectation of pacification” and called on the coup regime to stop killing demonstrators. Over 30 have been killed since Mr Morales resigned following a “request” to do so from the head of the army, hoping to stem a wave of lethal violence by far-right gangs against MAS members and indigenous people.

Agreement between the MAS and Ms Anez on the elections law was brokered by the United Nations, the European Union and the Bolivian Episcopal Conference of Catholic prelates. The law commits the state to carry out “transparent, impartial and effective investigations” into violations of human rights.