Elections in Bolivia: Evo Morales gets the vote …

From La Paz

Evo Morales got the votes he needed until yesterday afternoon to win the first round of elections. The calculations of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) gave him 46.86% against 36.73% of Carlos Mesa who ignored the result with almost 100% of the tables questioned. The low benefit is thirteen decimal places more than the 10% required for a candidate to win in elections if he does not get 50% plus one of the votes. This Kafkaan final, in constant metamorphosis and with percentages that have evoked a first round and have been modified with the 16% that had to be monitored for 20 hours, places the country on the threshold of an unpredictable escalation. In several important cities, there have been incidents among the supporters of the citizen community, the force that would have reached the ballot, with the police. Clashes also took place between militants of the MAS and the CC in this capital, at the doors of the electoral command on Arce Avenue.

Votes from rural and foreign areas finally began to arrive when Mesa-led opposition began to take to the streets. in a sort of active vigil and pressure on the TSE that had five working days to publish the official results. This situation became visible when CC militants turned to the former Radison Hotel, where the Plurinational Electoral Corps operates. At the cry of "fraud, fraud", they surrounded the place where the army and the police had been arrested. Inside, representatives of the opposing political forces were summoned before the members of the Court. At one point, a representative of the Potosino Civic Committee made a decisive breakthrough where the TSE was operating and needed to be removed from the area. Some symptoms of violence had already been felt on Sunday when a man assaulted the Minister of Economy when voting and so did Vice President Álvaro García Linera, booed at the school where he had appeared.

Violence against anyone who identifies with the MAS is breathed in every corner of La Paz. Road to the south of the city, where the most affluent social strata reside in the neighborhoods of San Miguel and San Alberto, this situation is seen in a dialogue with many passengers of the cable car, a masterpiece of transport builds The current government. This columnist directly observed this class hatred defined in terms such as "tyrant", "Indian", "ignorant", all the adjectives used by passengers to refer to President Evo Morales.

Last night, the mobilizations that Mesa encouraged began spreading in several cities across the country. In Sucre, the county electoral court (TED) was tried and the vote count was suspended. Police dispersed protesters with tear gas. In this city, CC supporters also wanted to introduce into the TSE, but security forces prevented it. It was evident that the call to ignore the election results launched by the leading opposition candidate had sparked protests against the government that had been replicated in almost all departmental capitals. A few days before the elections, Mesa had declared: "I do not recognize the illegal candidacy of Morales, but I participate in the elections because I will not give him the election as the Venezuelans gave him to Chavismo . " Then, he warned each time that it was presented to him that the party in power would make a fraud and last night, he redoubled the bet of Santa Cruz de la Sierra: "I do not recognize a fraudulent victory", a- he shouted in front of his followers.

The Minister of Communication, Manuel Canelas, had reacted in the morning to the escalation of the former president: "We call for the responsibility of all sectors because we all want to know the results. It is not correct to cause confusion, "he said. He also denied the Citizen Community's candidate on an alleged commitment to make public the complete result of Sunday's review: "It's not true that there was a commitment to 100 %", did he declare. At the press conference, Foreign Minister Diego Pary announced that the United States, Brazil and Argentina had requested access to the control of the vote. The OAS Electoral Observation Mission to Bolivia met with the TSE and stressed the need to keep the population informed of the missing steps for the dissemination of the remaining 16% to be controlled. The OAS sent 92 observers, the largest delegation of all who came to follow the elections. These pressures may have influenced the fact that a few hours later the votes that were still under control appeared.

Elections in Bolivia must be analyzed under two opposing premises. That of an inclusive development project, independent of the international financial institution that transformed Bolivia into an example to follow. What represents the current president and that could be synthesized in a sentence of his Minister of Economy, Luis Arce Catacora:When Evo Morales won his first election in 2005, 65% of the population had a low income, but now 62% of the population has an average income. "

The project of the other country is the one embodied by Mesa, the former vice president of the ultra-liberal Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada who fled to the United States, leaving behind a country on fire. The current CC candidate took over from power at a very high cost in human lives during the so-called gas war in October 2003. Based on a speech that challenges the democratic legitimacy of Morales because it does not exist. did not respect the result of the referendum of 2016., his candidacy expresses a jump in the past in economic terms. More openness to the market and less state capitalism, like the one that drove Bolivia to the situation it is in today.

The prolongation of uncertainty, added to the suspicions of fraud generating opposition in general and to the notorious crack that reigns in society – let us remember those expressions of "cursed race" directed against the cholos of the & # 039; 39, Altiplano coming from Santa Cruz -, cause a climate of antagonism whose end forecast is reserved.