La Paz (AFP) - A former partner of Bolivian President Evo Morales said Saturday that she will pursue legal action to deny him paternity rights over a child she claims is theirs.
In a case that has plunged the 56-year-old leader into scandal, Morales had claimed he fathered a child with Gabriela Zapata who later died, before changing his story to say the child never existed.
Their relationship dates back to 2007. A court ordered the leftist president to undergo a test, and he has, but Zapata says its results can't be trusted.
In court, "I am going to seek relief that includes eliminating (the president's) paternity" rights and obligations "for all the violence the government apparatus has inflicted on a child," she told Red Uno, a private television station.
"I am going to file that suit to deny paternity... so a (new) DNA test will be done on the boy."
Morales took Zapata to court in March to make her prove the boy is alive.
Compounding the scandal, Zapata has also been implicated in an alleged corruption case.
She is currently in jail pending trial on charges of money laundering, embezzlement and influence-peddling.
A former manager at Chinese engineering group CAMC, Zapata is accused of using her ties to the president to land $560 million in government contracts for the company.
The case exploded just as Bolivia prepared to hold a referendum on whether to change the constitution to allow Morales to run for a fourth term.
Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, went on to lose the February 21 vote -- his first electoral defeat in a decade in power.
Gabriela Zapata Montano(R) former girl friend of Bolivian President Evo Morales and manager of a Chinese construction firm, is arrested under corruption charges in La Paz, Bolivia on February 26, 2016 (AFP Photo/Jorge Bernal)
