The Bolivians go to the polls during an election which could mark a change to the right – and the end of almost 20 years of rule by leftist socialism (Mas).
The party, which came to power with the first election of Evo Morales in 2005, risks losing its legal status if it does not reach 3% – a threshold which it has not reached in the polls.
Two opposition candidates are practically linked: the centered business magnate and former Minister of Planning Samuel Doria Medina followed closely by former right-wing president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.
Deeply unpopular in the worst economic crisis of the country in four decades, President Luis Arce, 61, decided not to arise.
Former Minister of Moral Finance for 14 years, Arce has gradually taken control of Mas in recent years. He appointed his 36 -year -old Minister of the Government, Eduardo del Castillo, who surveyed around 2%, to come to the presidency.
Morals, 65, is the target of an arrest warrant for having pretended to have a child with a 15 -year -old child who led him to find himself in a Coca region in the center of Bolivia since October to try to introduce himself again.
After registering with another party, but was prohibited by the decisions of the Constitutional and Electoral Court, the first indigenous president of Bolivia called demonstrations which transformed into fatal clashes with the police.
He urges supporters to vote on Sunday, saying that if they are more numerous than the account of the leader, this would mean that he had won.
“Before the call of morals, zero votes were around 10%; now they are 12%. Even if it increases, I doubt that it will go much higher – and votes have many causes, not only him,” said political analyst Carlos Toranzo.
As the polls were historically not reliable in Bolivia and that many voters remain undecided, Toranzo thinks that there is still a “little chance” that a third name can go to a potential runoff against Doria Medina or Quiroga: the 36 -year -old senator Andrónico Rodríguez.
The most behind the left figure of the left, placing itself between third and fifth, Rodríguez was once considered as the natural heir of Morales because of its native roots and its leaders in the Union of Coca producers, but was called a traitor for having launched its own application.
A long -standing member of the MAS, the senator has chosen to leave the party and run with the left -wing coalition Alianza Popular – yet another sign of the fragmentation of the left vote.
Enrique Mamani, head of the native organization Aymara Ponchos Rojos, said that he would support the senator, calling the real traitor.
“Those who call for zero votes are a handful of traitors to the struggle of our grandparents, who shed their blood and have given their lives so that one day we can have this right to vote,” he said.
About 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote, with preliminary results due to 9 pm local time.
The central question of the campaign is the economic crisis, which analysts consider the worst since 1985 hyperinflation, with shortages of dollars and fuel, long queues and arrow inflation.
If no candidate obtains more than 50% of the vote, or at least 40% with an advance of 10 points during the finalist, an unprecedented second round will take place on October 19.
For analyst Toranzo, one thing is certain: Mas will leave power, although it is “difficult for them to put it back, because they have held it for 20 years with an almost absolute control of Parliament, judicial power and electoral authority”.
Arce told the Guardian that he would respect the result if the law won.
Although recognizing that his government was unpopular, he put a large part of the blame for the crisis and the decline of Mas on his old mentor, morals, whose parliamentary allies, he said: “Saboted and boycotted all our laws”.
“As Fidel Castro wrote it in his book, ‘History will absolute “because in the long term, people will understand everything we should endure,” said Arce, adding: “I am sure that we will miss the population.”
