Almost a year after ex-president Evo Morales was forced to resign, accused of electoral fraud, today Bolivians are going to the polls again. Opinion polls give socialist Luis Arce the lead, but if he does not win in the first round, opponents can agree and defeat him in the second.
Luis Arce will win, but to avoid a second round, he needs to get at least 40 percent of the vote and have a lead of at least 10 percentage points to the runner-up, says economist and author Alfredo Serrano, who heads the left-wing Institute for Latin American Studies Celag .
The decisive factor is how big the gap will be between Arces and the runner-up, he says.
Seven million Bolivians with the right to vote today determine the future of the divided country.
Second in the opinion polls is the moderate right-wing candidate Carlos Mesa. Third is the more radical leader Fernando Camacho, with great support in bourgeois-minded eastern Bolivia.
It’s the split on the right, with two presidential candidates, who can give the Socialist Luis Arce the victory in the first round.
Arce belongs to MAS, the Movement on the Road to Socialism, the party that ruled Bolivia for almost 14 years and around which all politics in the country revolve. In Bolivia, people are either masista or anti-masista, for or against MAS.
MAS leader is Evo Morales, who was the country’s president between 2006 and 2019, and who today lives in exile in Argentina. Morales is not allowed to run, so it is Luis Arce, his former finance minister, who is on the ballot.
During its reign, MAS succeeded in reducing poverty and giving the country’s indigenous peoples, who are in the majority, positions of power in society.
But despite good finances growth, increased dissatisfaction with Evo Morales, as he ran for president again, for the fourth time, despite the constitution not allowing it.
After a confused counting of votes in last year’s election, an uprising broke out, in which Morales was accused of electoral fraud.
Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly from the middle class, rose up and when the uprising was supported by both police and military, Evo Morales was forced to leave power and go into exile.
Since then, the country has been ruled by an interim government led by conservative Janine Añez, who, like Evo Morales, has been accused of corruption and violence against protesters.
Economist Alfredo Serrano says that the right’s chance lies in the moderate Carlos Mesa succeeding in making the more radicals understand that a vote for him will have a real effect, that is, to stop the MAS from coming back to power.