Independent Media | Campaigning Journalism
Socialists claim major victory in Bolivia, one year after US-backed coup
Evo Morales’ party has claimed victory in Bolivia’s presidential election. Exit polls give the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) party over 50% of the vote.
To win in the first round, a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote, or 40% with a lead of at least 10 percentage points over the second-placed candidate.
The election was marked by tension after Morales was deposed in a US-backed coup in November 2019. Electoral monitors reported threats and harassment from Bolivian security forces.
With a private quick count of sampled polling stations favouring MAS candidate Luis Arce by a wide margin, even unelected interim president Jeanine Áñez recognised that the socialist movement looked set to return to power.
“I congratulate the winners and I ask them to govern thinking in Bolivia and in our democracy,” Áñez said on Twitter.
“We’ve recovered our democracy,” Morales said in brief remarks from exile in Argentina. “Lucho [Arce] will be our president.”
“I think the Bolivian people want to retake the path we were on,” Arce declared around midnight, surrounded by a small group of supporters.
As Morales’ economy minister, Arce oversaw a surge in growth and reduction in poverty for more than a decade. But he would face an uphill battle to jumpstart growth this time. Though unelected, the Áñez regime accepted a $327mn loan from the IMF, to which austerity conditions will certainly be attached.
Nonetheless, it would seem that Bolivia’s democracy has, for now, been restored.
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The new President of Bolivia should declare the IMF loan illegal and forfeit, as it was taken out by an unelected government.
Let the IMF collect the money from Anez and the USA , after all, they started the COUP against Evo.
Bravo to the great voters of Bolivia that showed strength under the numerous threats from the traitor Anez , who was bought off by the YANKEES and became their latest American WHORE destroying her own country for the TERRORIST USA regime. The people have defeated the USA COUP! Bravo!