Luis Ayllón
The Bolivian government will appoint Nardy Suxo, former Minister of Transparency and Fight against Corruption and one of the closest collaborators of former Bolivian President Evo Morales, as ambassador to Spain.
Her appointment, to which the Spanish authorities, according to sources consulted by The Diplomat, have already given their placet, was approved on Wednesday by the Plenary of the Bolivian Chamber of Senators, after being submitted to the International Policy Commission.
With the appointment of Nardy Suxo, the diplomatic crisis unleashed at the end of December 2019 between Bolivia and Spain, during the provisional government of Jeanine Áñez, which caused that, for quite a few months, there were no ambassadors either in Madrid or in La Paz, will be formally closed. The crisis was opened by the expulsion of two Spanish diplomats stationed in the Bolivian capital, after an incident occurred at the residence of the Mexican Ambassador in La Paz, which was followed by the expulsion of three members of the Bolivian Embassy in Madrid.
Following the election of Luis Arce as President of Bolivia and the return to power of Evo Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Spain accelerated the normalization of bilateral relations and, in November, sent an unusual delegation to the inauguration of the new president. In addition to His Majesty the King, the second vice-president, Pablo Iglesias, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, attended.
To formalize the opening of a new one, Spain re-established its presence in the Andean country at the ambassadorial level, appointingJavier Gassó, who had already headed the Embassy since October as Chargé d’Affaires, as head of the Mission on December 15.
Now, to close the cycle, Arce is preparing to fill the vacancy in the Bolivian Embassy in Spain with Nardy Suxo, who will be the seventh person collaborating with Morales to be appointed ambassador, according to Bolivian media.
Nardy Suxo has been one of the closest collaborators of the former president, since, in 2006, she was appointed Deputy Minister of Transparency and Fight against Corruption, an office that later became a Ministry. She remained there for nine years, until 2015, when she was sent as ambassador permanent representative to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva.
After being nominated, in 2018, by the Bolivian Government for judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), in June 2019 she was appointed ambassador to Austrias, a position in which she only stayed five months, since in November she was dismissed by the Áñez Government.
