translated from Spanish: Bolivia closes electoral count with broad Arce victory

Leftist Luis Arce of Evo Morales’ party won Sunday’s presidential election in Bolivia with 55% of the vote, according to the closure of the official count, election authorities reported on Friday. The Supreme Electoral Court announced that it will proclaim the winner in the afternoon. Former centrist President Carlos Mesa achieved 28.8% of the vote and right-wing businessman Luis Fernando Camacho added 14%, at the end of the count on Friday morning. Soon after, the High Representative of the European Union congratulated Arce and the Bolivian people “for demonstrating a strong commitment to democracy,” according to a statement. The U.S. government had already welcomed the winner before the end of the count. No poll anticipated Arce’s margin of victory. All polls gave the former minister first place but anticipated a second round of elections. Politicians from all sides and analysts agreed that the undecided, who were around 20%, gave Arce a slack victory, who was for 12 years the Minister of Economy of morales’ government (2006-2019). However, the opposition Santa Cruz Civic Committee, which last year led the protests against Morales, stated that it will not recognize the results until the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) investigates alleged “irregularities,” said its president Rómulo Calvo. Similarly, groups of opponents of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the morales and Arce party, took to the streets, but the protests were isolated. Mesa himself acknowledged his defeat a day after the election. Deputy Minister of Citizen Security Wilson Santamaría said the government will not allow unrest and will enforce the results. International observers such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union and the UN endorsed the elections and ruled out fraud. These elections came after the elections were overturned last year by alleged fraud, leading to a political and social upturn that left 36 people deceased and morales resigned, who went into exile to Argentina from where he played a decisive role leading the MAS campaign. Opponents have attributed defeat to the mismanagement of interim President Jeanine Añez, the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic of the new coronavirus and the lack of proposals to confront it, which paid arce for his successful economic management credentials. With these figures, the MAS would win 94 of the 166 seats of the Legislative Assembly, i.e. the majority in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, but not the two-thirds that allowed Morales to ignore the opposition during his rule (2006-2019). The government of Añez announced that it will coordinate the transition with the new authorities. Arce is scheduled to take office immediately in the first or second week of November as soon as the new Legislative Assembly assumes its duties.

Original source in Spanish