Elections in Bolivia: Evo Morales won but will go to …

From La Paz

With uncertainty and tension, the result of the elections in Bolivia This lasted until almost midnight on Sunday. The scrutiny was put in place 2 hours and 20 minutes after the closing of the vote with 83.76% of the votes counted. With this percentage Evo Morales must revalidate his victory in the first round in a second round. It did not reach the difference of 10% compared to Carlos Mesa, indispensable to win without 50% plus one of the votes.

The president met with his supporters at the Burned Palace, the former government palace, announcing his fourth consecutive election victory. Carlos Mesa, the candidate of the Citizen Community (CC) had already said: "We won, we are in the second round." The so-called quick account, as they call it here, assumed that the total and final results would be known relatively early. But that did not happen. Between 8:20 pm (Bolivia time) and the closing of this edition, the MAS, the government party, as well as CC, the second force, celebrated.

According to the media, various analysts and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal itself (TSE), 16% of the outstanding votes were due to the fact that they came from the field, where the MAS maintained historical hegemony. The rural vote will ultimately decide what will happen with the continuity of Morales within the government.

At the end of this edition, you could not even have TSE data. This question about the votes of the most remote districts of the big cities is installed in the streets of this capital, where masters and sympathizers of the former president Mesa claimed the victory. Some with realism and caution. It is that Evo actually collected 45.28% of the votes, but he lacked the points needed to avoid the second round; and others because, when 83.76 of the votes cast were known, they reached the second round with 38.16 for Mesa. The difference of 7.12% between the two candidates, not exceeding 50%, marks the certainty of a new ballot.

In the event of a ballot, it would be a very different choice of it. The MAS would go to the December 15 instance with its electoral base intact, but would compete with an opposition that would come together behind Mesa's candidacy. Oscar Ortiz, from Bolivia said NO, announced his support for the former president. It is foreseeable that the Korean-Bolivian Chi-Chung Chun will call to vote for Mesa. Among the votes cast at the polls of the third and fourth candidates, there is 13.18%, a percentage that can be decisive for fixing the result in the poll.

The President met with his supporters in the former government, accompanied by his partner, Alvaro García Linera: "We understand the preliminary information and, as we are still expecting to vote from the field", has -he declares. incursion as a presidential candidate, the votes were delayed by a snowfall. "We will wait for the last check of the national vote to continue our process of change," he added.

Mesa, for his part, did not wait for the end of the check and went to his activism to say that he was forcing the ballot in December: "This is an undeniable victory that allows us to say, with certainty absolute and frightening security, that we are in the second round. We owe this triumph to the clarity of thought of the Bolivian people. Thank you to all these people, millions of Bolivians who decided to vote for the community citizen "-

Bolivia has nine departments – the equivalent of our provinces – where Evo won in five of them: La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Potosí and Pando. Mesa triumphed in Santa Cruz, Beni, Chuquisaca and Tarija. The vote for the Congress attributed the victory to the MAS in both chambers, although, with the essential detail, in the Senate, the ruling party yielded its majority (for the loss of seven seats). The forces were like that: 18 senators from MAS, 17 from CC and one from Bolivia says no).

The partial election figures left the two main candidates aside, which clearly distinguishes them from the others. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which had started the day underlining that it had been voted on normally throughout the country, said at six o'clock in the afternoon the first results obtained from the TSE. foreign. The first known table was Argentine. From the 16th school of the Republic of Korea located in Murguiondo 76, in the district of Liniers. Evo made an overwhelming difference from his rival: 45 votes against 10. The votes of Bolivians from other countries account for 4.7% of the electorate. A not insignificant percentage for the forces that ran in the elections.

Behind Evo and Mesa in the generals, the big surprise of the vote appeared. Korean Chi Hyun Chung, an evangelical minister who attacks feminism and the education of women and men, jumped out of nowhere in third place. A similar phenomenon has already lived in Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro and the churches that support him. Felix Patzi, of the Third System, was the fourth and last of the nine candidates who obtained more than one percent of the votes. He and the others will disappear from the electoral stage because they do not reach 3% of the votes. The Bolivian electoral law provides that if the political forces do not obtain this threshold, they will lose their legal status.