Eduardo Rodríguez (politician)


Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé is a Bolivian judge. During the 2005 political crisis in Bolivia, he briefly served as President of Bolivia. Prior to that, he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Background

Born in Cochabamba in 1956, Rodríguez is a lawyer and holds a master's degree in public administration. He studied at Colegio San Agustín; later he studied law at the Universidad Mayor de San Simón in Cochabamba and obtained his Master of Public Administration at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Rodríguez is an ambassador to the International Court of Justice.

Events of 2005

In 2005, after weeks of civil unrest led by Evo Morales, former president Carlos Mesa offered his resignation to Congress. Senate President Hormando Vaca Diez and Chamber of Deputies leader Mario Cossío did not take the post, under pressure from opposition protestors. Rodríguez, as head of the judiciary and fourth in the line of succession, became the country's new president on June 10, 2005; he was inaugurated with the constitutional mandate to call elections within one year's time.
Rodríguez's time in office ended when Evo Morales won the December 2005 general election. He was inaugurated in January 2006 and served until November 2019.

Treason charges

Under the Morales administration, Rodriguez has been charged with treason following the decommissioning of missiles during his term in office. Bolivia bought about 30 HN-5 shoulder-launched missiles from China in 1993 or 1998. By 2005 they had become obsolete and Rodriguez made the decision to destroy them; he says he did not know the United States would be the ones to be given the missiles for destruction. Before taking office, Morales charged that the transfer amounted to putting the country "under foreign domination."
He was charged with treason in 2006, which carries a 30-year prison term. He has since been cleared of all charges.