The Mas of Evo Morales fell in the 4 governorates that were disputed in Bolivia

04/12/2021 8:37 PM

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 04/12/2021 8:37 PM

The ruling Movement to Socialism of Evo Morales, received a hard blow in the second state electoral rounds this Sunday.

He lost in all four districts at stake

, leaving a map in which he controlled only three of the nine governorates.

The departments of La Paz, Tarija, Pando and Chuquisaca went to the polls again, since no candidate

reached more than 50%

of the votes or more than 40% with ten points of difference over the second most voted candidate in the subnational elections last March 7.

With the elections this Sunday closed “the most complex electoral cycle” in the history of Bolivia, as described by the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Salvador Romero, the process with which the new political map of the country was defined.

Santos Quispe

, from the Jallalla alliance, led the count in La Paz with 59.33%, over the candidacy of Franklin Flores, from MAS, with 40.67%.

Óscar Montes, from the United for Tarija party, led the vote with 58.68% over Álvaro Ruiz, MAS candidate, with 41.32%.

Damián Condori Herrera

, from Chuquisaca Somos Todos, also led the count with 66.90%, over the MAS candidate, Juan Carlos León, with 33.16%.

And in Pando, Regis Richter, of the Third System Movement (MTS), led with 58.54% over Miguel Becerra, of the MAS ruler, with 41.46%.

For this election, the ruling party

expected to win in at least three governorships.

In the first round, the ruling party was left with the Governors of Cochabamba, Oruro and Potosí.

While in Santa Cruz the former presidential candidate Luis Fernando Camacho, from the opposition party Creemos, won;

and in Beni Alejandro Unzueta, of the opposition Third System Movement (MTS).

In three of those departments (La Paz, Pando and Tarija), the MAS had also won the first round without the numbers reaching it to avoid the ballot that led to defeat.

Low involvement

Election day was marked by low voter turnout, despite the fact that voting in Bolivia is mandatory, but according to the president of the TSE it

is “normal” for this to happen in the second round processes.

At the time of the general evaluations, the elected mayor of El Alto, Eva Copa, displaced by the MAS from her candidacy, warned that in the ruling party there is a leadership "

that does not let this grow

, does not give opportunities to the new leaderships" .

“Unfortunately, this leadership of the MAS believes itself to be all-powerful.

But that's not the way it is: citizens are showing them that nothing is eternal, that the charges are temporary and that according to that we have to start working and put our feet on the ground, "he said.

From within the MAS itself, the heads of the Senate and Deputies, Andrónico Rodríguez and Freddy Mamani, respectively, agreed to carry out

a “deep evaluation”

of the strength and adjustments in the party to correct mistakes.

“We must have had some errors and, therefore, an evaluation will be made at the weekend.

That is what we are seeing.

Between Friday and Saturday, an evaluation will be carried out at the national level and we will say what has happened and where we have gone wrong.

Based on that, adjustments will be made in the political instrument, ”Mamani pointed out.

Rodríguez judged that Sunday's results "merit an in-depth evaluation

to correct the errors

that we have surely had as Movement Toward Socialism," reported the site of the newspaper Página Siete.

The head of the Senate also said that in the coming weeks the MAS will organize extended regional and departmental meetings and a national plenary, and in those meetings

the need to change the party's regional leadership

will be seen

or not.

Complaints about the behavior of the MAS, whose main leader is former president Morales, date back to the former president's decision to ignore the result of a consultation and move forward, in 2019,

to attempt a fourth consecutive term.

Morales went to elections, which culminated in the midst of a national scandal over allegations of vote manipulation, which led to a growing protest and clashes with the police in which young people from the MAS base itself participated.

These events culminated in the resignation of Morales and his party abroad and the subsequent denunciation of a disputed coup.

Source: Télam, Europa Press and Clarín

PB

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