Bolivia’s Morales leads vote, but seems headed for runoff
LA PAZ (AP) — President Evo Morales led in early returns from the first round of Sunday’s presidential election, but he appeared headed to a runoff in the tightest political race of his life.
The Andean country’s top electoral authority said Sunday night that with 83 percent of the vote counted, Morales was on top with 45.3 percent, followed by 38.2 percent for his closest rival, former President Carlos Mesa. If the results hold, they will face off in December where Morales could be vulnerable to a united opposition.
“We’re in a runoff,” Mesa told supporters shortly after the first results were announced. He said his coalition had scored “an unquestionable triumph,” and called on others parties to join him for a “definitive triumph” in the second round.
Morales came to prominence leading social protests and rose to power as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2006. The 59-year-old leftist is South America’s longest-serving leader.
Mesa is a 66-year-old historian who as vice president rose to Bolivia’s top office when his predecessor resigned the presidency in 2003 amid widespread protests. Mesa then stepped aside himself in 2005 amid renewed demonstrations led by Morales, who was then leader of the coca growers union.
Voting, which was mandatory, was mostly calm, though police said they arrested more than 100 people for violating the country’s rigid election-day rules against drinking, large gatherings or casual driving. To avoid a runoff and win outright in Bolivia, Morales would have needed to get 50 percent of the votes plus one or have 40 percent and finish 10 percentage points ahead of the nearest challenger.
Morales voted early in the coca-growing region of El Chapare, where residents threw flower petals at him and he said he remained confident of his chances.
In his years in office, he allied himself with a leftist bloc of Latin American leaders and used revenues from the Andean country’s natural gas and minerals to redistribute wealth among the masses and lift millions out of poverty in the region’s poorest country. The economy has grown by an annual average of about 4.5 percent, well above the regional average.
Morales, the son of Aymara Indian shepherds, has also been credited for battling racial inequalities.