Bolivian claims victory

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s Evo Morales declared himself the outright winner Thursday of an election in which he was seeking a fourth term as president, angering his opponents who alleged vote fraud and called for further protests to demand a second round of voting.

With more than 98% of the votes counted from Sunday’s election, Bolivia’s first indigenous president had 46.8% support against 36.7% for former president Carlos Mesa, just barely giving Morales the 10 percentage point lead over his nearest rival needed to avoid a runoff vote between the two. Seven other candidates were in the race.

“We won in the first round. There are 1.58% [of the votes] left to count but we won with the rural vote,” Morales, the region’s longest ruling leader, told a news conference.

But Morales later said if the count of the final ballots showed he didn’t get enough votes, he would be open to a second round. As of midday Thursday, electoral authorities hadn’t announced a final result.

Opposition leaders quickly united in rejecting Morales’ victory claim and the celebrations by his supporters, demanding a runoff vote with Meza. Analysts have said a united opposition might stand a chance of defeating Morales, a leftist former coca-growers union leader who has governed the Andean nation for 14 years.

Flanked by other opposition leaders, Meza read a statement calling for “citizens and social groups to remain peacefully mobilized until they obtain respect for the will of the people.”

Morales, in turn, urged his supporters to defend his win and denied electoral fraud, demanding his detractors show proof.

The Andean nation has been on a knife-edge since the disputed vote.

Opposition backers have staged protests since Monday and burned Supreme Electoral

Tribunal offices in three cities. The opposition bastion of Santa Cruz has seen two days of a partial strike “in defense of the vote and democracy.” On Thursday, Morales supporters announced marches in coca-growing region of Chapare that supports the president.

International vote monitors have expressed concern at an earlier unexplained daylong gap in reporting results before a sudden spurt in Morales’ vote percentage. The Organization of American States has asked that the vote go to a second round because of the concerns.

The Organization of American States observer mission released a statement expressing its “concern and surprise over the drastic change and difficult to justify tendency in the preliminary results.”

Morales has repeatedly said he won the vote outright and his opponents are conspiring to oust him.

Along with the Organization of American States, the European Union and the UN expressed concern about the electoral process and called for calm. The United States and Brazil, among others, also expressed concern.

Michael G. Kozak, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, warned Wednesday that Bolivian authorities will be held accountable if the process isn’t fair.

“I think you will see pretty strong response from the whole hemisphere, not just the U.S.,” Kozak said during a House hearing.

In Caracas, Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, voiced support for his ally Morales.

“It is a coup d’etat foretold, sung and, one can say, defeated,” he said.

Morales, 59, a native Aymara from Bolivia’s highlands, became the country’ first indigenous president in 2006 and easily won the next two elections amid more than a decade of a commodities-fed economic boom in South America’s poorest country.