Opponents and international observers cried foul as incumbent Evo Morales appeared to be carving out a narrow first-round victory in Bolivia’s presidential race, after early election returns had suggested a runoff was likely.
Morales, the last man standing among the “pink tide” that swept leftists including Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa to power in Latin America over the past two decades, had been held up as a global socialist icon, and the most effective of those leaders.
Morales’s government has invested heavily in social programs, infrastructure and anti-poverty initiatives. It also has been at pains to distance democratic and economically successful Bolivia from the leftists in Venezuela, who have been accused of resorting to fraud and violence to cling to power.
At issue now is the vote counting from Sunday’s elections. Preliminary returns that evening suggested the race was headed for a runoff that analysts said he had a strong chance of losing. Then the count was halted. When it resumed, the tally appeared to swing in Morales’ favor.
No official winner has been announced, but state TV has suggested an outright victory for the incumbent. Critics warned that the election was in danger of losing legitimacy, violent protests erupted in several Bolivian cities, and the country was at risk of being seen as exactly what it has insisted it is not: Another Venezuela.
Monday evening, election authorities announced that with 95 percent of the ballots counted, Morales was winning with 47 percent of the votes — just fractionally enough to avoid the December runoff against former president Carlos Mesa.
Protesters set fire to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal building in Potosi, leading two people on the second floor to jump to safety, and to election offices in Chuquisaca, Sucre and Tarija.
Thousands took to the streets across the nation, chanting slogans such as “No, and no, I don’t want to live in a dictatorship like the one in Venezuela.”
In Riberalta, northeast of La Paz, the seat of Bolivia’s government, protesters tore down a statue of Chavez.
An Organization of American States observer mission made up of representatives from across the region expressed “worry and surprise about the drastic and hard to justify change in the tendency of the preliminary results.”
The United States denounced the election results in Bolivia and suggested manipulation.
“The U.S. rejects the Electoral Tribunal’s attempts to subvert #Bolivia’s democracy by delaying the vote count & taking actions that undermine the credibility of Bolivia’s elections,” tweeted Michael G. Kozak, acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. “We call on the TSE to immediately act to restore credibility in the vote counting process.”
Morales’s opposition decried the vote count as fraudulent.
