Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz signed a new law late on Wednesday removing legal restrictions on the deployment of the country's armed forces in internal conflicts, as a weeks-long protest crisis over the economy and calls for his resignation shows no sign of abating. The measure, Law 1731, was passed by the Chamber of Deputies with a two-thirds majority following nearly five hours of debate, with both government allies and opposition lawmakers backing the change.

The new law repeals Law 1341, enacted in 2020 during the transitional presidency of Jeanine Áñez — a period that followed the contested ouster of long-serving leftist president Evo Morales, who governed from 2006 to 2019. That earlier legislation had been championed by a Congress then controlled by Morales's Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) in response to harsh government crackdowns on protesters at the time. It placed strict conditions on military deployments during states of emergency, including time limits and a requirement that the police first be overwhelmed before the army could intervene. With Law 1731 now in force, Paz can submit a request for a state of emergency to parliament, which must be authorised within 72 hours. Legislator Carlos Alarcón, of the right-wing Unidad bench allied with the government, argued the repeal was necessary to