It is a final consecration, and one that no one expected. After six hours of tense waiting, two exit polls attributed the victory in the first round of the presidential election, Sunday, October 18, to the candidate of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), Luis Arce.
According to these still partial results from the Ciesmori Institute and the Jubileo Foundation, Mr. Arce would have obtained between 52% and 53% of the votes, far ahead of his right-wing rival, Carlos Mesa, who is credited with only 31% votes. The third in the running, the regionalist leader of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho (far right), would obtain only 14%.
Interim President Jeanine Añez acknowledged the victory of Luis Arce and his running mate David Choquehuanca: “I congratulate the winners and I ask them to govern with Bolivia and democracy in mind”, she tweeted barely half an hour after the polls were published.
“We have recovered democracy and, above all, we have recovered hope, Luis Arce, the runner-up to former President Evo Morales, said from his campaign headquarters in La Paz. We are going to govern for all Bolivians, we are going to build a government of national unity. “
“Rebuilding ties with the armed forces”
At 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 a.m. in Paris), only 8.8% of the ballots had been counted by the higher electoral court. The official results are therefore not expected before, at least, Monday afternoon. “The difference of more than twenty points between Arce and Mesa is so huge that the results are unlikely to be very different from that of the exit poll,” underlines historian and journalist Pablo Stefanoni, specialist in Bolivia. According to the same poll, the MAS would obtain an absolute majority in the Senate, with 19 seats out of 36.
The challenges that await Luis Arce are formidable. First of all at the political level. “He does not have the social basis of Evo Morales, he will have to find his place and build a leadership of his own within the MAS, considers Pablo Stefanoni. But with such a victory, it will be easier for him to reconnect with the armed forces or the Santa Cruz business sector. “ At the economic level, then. Luis Arce inherits a catastrophic situation after the eleven months of administration of the interim government of Jeanine Añez, and in particular its management of the pandemic. The country, which is the third in the world – behind Peru and Belgium – in the number of deaths per million inhabitants due to Covid-19, is plunged into a deep social, political, health and economic crisis.
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