Provisional control in Bolivia: ruling party falls in ballot in four regions

Bolivian President Luis Arce’s party is at a disadvantage in the official vote count in four governorates, compared to a conglomerate of opposition forces, according to preliminary results of the vote count.

In the 6.30am update on Monday (local time, 10.30am GMT), in the region of The peace, the most valuable electoral place of the time, by population and by political weight, the candidate of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Franklin Flores, reached 39.1% of the vote, against 60.0%, the indigenous opposition Santos Quispe, to 32% of the data disclosed by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE).

At Tarija, a gas region in the south of the country, the official Álvaro Ruiz has accumulated 40% (with an increasing trend) compared to the center-right opponent Oscar Montes with 59%, to 45.53% of the official tally.

At Chuquisaca (south-east), Juan Carlos León, of the MAS, was with 28.7% against the Quechua leader Damián Condori with 71.3%, after having passed the count of 31%.

And in Pando (North), the official Miguel Becerra adds 40.6% of the vote, against the opposition Regis Richter with 59.3%, after having counted 64%.

But the final exam may take several days. The TSE, which validates the data processed by the departmental electoral courts, said it intended to deliver the final results until next weekend. In the ballot, you win by a simple majority.

Voters from all four departments returned to the polls after the first round on March 7, when 86 percent of the nation’s 7.1 million people vote to elect 336 mayors and nine governors. The mayors were elected by a simple majority, and the governors, with more than 50% of the vote or 40% with 10 points of difference on the second place.

Yes indeed, the departments of Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Potosí and Beni already have governors: three government officials and two from the opposition.

The Movement for Socialism highlighted the support of the rural and suburban sectors to consolidate its leadership, having won the governorates of Cochabamba, Oruro and Potosí in the first round.

In the March 7 elections, the MAS failed to win in areas where it had a strong presence, even some party members felt it was time for self-criticism and reorganization within the movement.

In these elections, the ruling party won only two of the ten most important town halls in the country and lost ground in several municipalities.

This Sunday, some 2.7 million voters from La Paz, seat of the executive and legislative powers, and the other three departments were called to vote, which is mandatory in Bolivia. But TSE President Salvador Romero acknowledged a “slight drop” in turnout, “According to” preliminary data. “

Election day went “normally,” Romero said, although candidates from Tarija and Pando regions denounced the irregular transfer of voters from other regions to alter the number of votes.

Arce went to vote earlier and marked a “very important date” not only for the regional elections in his country but also for the presidential elections in Peru and Ecuador during the day.

(With information from AFP)

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