Bolivia election: Evo Morales’ MAS socialists seek return; Luis Arce leads Carlos Mesa, Luis Camacho in polls


Bolivia election: Evo Morales' MAS socialists seek return; Luis Arce leads Carlos Mesa, Luis Camacho in polls

Morales, banned from running this time, is watching from Argentina as his former finance minister, front-runner Luis Arce, 57, faces two main competitors, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, 67, and right-wing nationalist Luis Camacho, 41. Fears have run high of a repeat of the violence last year that included mobs burning ballot boxes and clashes in the streets. But voting Sunday appeared largely calm.

However, socialist backers and other observers grew increasingly nervous as the night wore on and Bolivian media outlets and poll takers withheld the scheduled release of exit polls, even as the official count was coming in painstakingly slowly. Morales and others appeared to suggest that the information was being purposely withheld because it potentially showed a much bigger night for the socialists than the right-wing interim government wanted to immediately reveal.

“What is the delay?” Morales tweeted late Sunday. “What are they hiding?”

As of 10 p.m., less than 1 percent of the official votes were being tallied, suggesting the same kind of counting delays that plagued last year’s ill-fated vote. In a surprise decision Saturday, Bolivia’s electoral tribunal announced that it would not release the traditional quick-count projection of the outcome as initially expected on Sunday. The tribunal said it instead would wait to release results until all ballots were counted or tallies showed an indisputable trend.

The decision, made out of what it described as an abundance of caution in a highly polarized race, came as both sides went into the vote claiming that the other was going to cheat.

The exit polls were set to offer insight into an election viewed as a gauge of the strength of democracy in Latin America. But the electoral tribunal’s decision meant Bolivians might wait a day or two, and potentially up to a week, for official results. José Luis Galvez, director of one of the polling firms, CiesMori, told reporters late Sunday that the company had not been able to collect enough samples to meet its standards for exit polls. Meanwhile, the official count — typically used as a backup to calculate exit poll percentages — was coming in too slowly for the firm to use it to finish its models.

“We ask the people for patience,” Salvador Romero, head of the electoral tribunal, told reporters in La Paz. “We need to be certain about the results.”

Dozens of police officers gathered in front of the campaign headquarters of the Movement Toward Socialism late Sunday in La Paz, apparently to guard the facility. Images on Bolivia TV showed police cordoning off a section of the street.

Arce condemned the decision to withhold partial results. He said his party, the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, was conducting its own count and would give “priority” to that result.

“This is a step back in the process of transparency,” he told reporters after casting his vote Sunday.

But Mesa called the decision understandable, given that the release of partial votes had sparked violence last year.

“It’s not the ideal, but we understand,” he said. “We are going to be patient, and we ask people to be patient.”

Analysts warned that a lengthy delay could ratchet up tensions.

“It adds to the uncertainty and the anxiety,” said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network in Cochabamba. “You now have up a period of up to a week where anything could happen.”

Going into Sunday, opinion polls showed Arce close to the threshold needed for a first-round victory. To avoid a runoff, a candidate must win more than 50 percent of the vote, or at least 40 percent with a 10-point margin of victory.

Analysts say Mesa, running second in the polls, would become the favorite in a second round of voting next month, assuming the opposition to the socialists coalesces around him. Camacho has trailed both men in the polls by significant margins.

Carla Nina Martínez, a 30-year-old nurse voting in a rural area just south of La Paz, described herself as a longtime supporter of the left. But she said she was changing her vote this year to support Mesa.

“I value some things that President Evo Morales did. Everything was going very well,” she said. “But in the end, as always, politics end up being corrupt.”

A survivor of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, she said she blamed the Áñez government for a poorly executed coronavirus plan.

“During the high points of the pandemic, we were never provided with personal protective equipment, and health personnel ended up being infected,” she said.

Santos Vallejo, 52, said the country’s bad economy in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic led him to vote for the socialists.

Under socialist governments, “we had jobs,” he said outside a polling station in El Alto, a socialist stronghold near La Paz. “I believe MAS will win because we, the poor, are with them.”

More than 10,000 troops were called out to keep the peace. In a message clearly aimed at the socialists, Áñez’s influential interior minister, Arturo Murillo, led a show of force on Saturday with soldiers and armored vehicles on the streets of La Paz. Murillo said the effort was meant to prevent “the return of dictators” — a clear reference to Morales, who was democratically elected three times before his controversial bid for a fourth term last year.

Arce has sought to distance himself from Morales. In an interview last week with The Washington Post, Arce said Morales would need to face the justice system to defend himself against “numerous” charges if he returned.

“We think that our comrade Evo has every right, if he so wishes, to return to the country and defend himself,” Arce said.

Faiola reported from Miami. Ana Vanessa Herrero in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.


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