The MAS, the Movement towards Socialism and its presidential candidate, Luis Arce, won in the first round. A blow to Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, instigators of last year's coup.
More than seven million Bolivians were called to the polls on Sunday to elect Bolivia’s president and vice-president as well as the 130 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 36 members of the Senate.
The government and interim president Jeanine Añez had postponed the elections three times. Popular pressure forced them to hold this election.
Voters have decided, but the climate of tension that has been prevailing in the country for a year is not expected to disappear. On his return from Washington, Murillo said, "The police are armed" and "democracy will be respected, whatever the cost", supported by the Archbishop of Sucre and President of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Ricardo Centellas, who on September 28 called on the population "to not disperse its vote" to ensure "the consolidation of democracy".
For the record: following the October 2019 elections, outgoing President Evo Morales was re-elected. The right and the far right pushed him to resign because of so-called "fraud" and launched a wave of violence intended to terrorize his ministers and lawmakers, his relatives, his activists and voters…
This led to a takeover in November by opposition Senator Jeanine Añez, whose conservative party Democratic Unity (UD) had just won... 4.24% of the vote. She nevertheless became "president" thanks to the support of the Armed Forces, the police, right-wing parties and far-right factions, the Catholic and evangelical churches.
Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, the European Union and Macron supported this putsch and dubbed it the "transitional government". Foreign independent experts have established the fallacious nature of this report’s findings on "fraud". They confirmed Evo Moralés’s victory.
This new election puts an end to the interim government of the conservative Jeanine Anez.
Its policy was, for more than a year, a real catastrophe for the Bolivian people, installing a situation of great violence, repression and violations of human rights, led by the Bolivian Minister of the Interior, the extremist Arturo Murillo Prijic. Thirty-four demonstrators were killed and 115 injured, during the uprisings in the Senkata sector (in El Alto, outskirts of La Paz) and in the rural commune of Sacaba (Cochabamba department) for example. Several hundred other leaders of MAS and social organizations are being prosecuted.
Determined to silence independent voices, the executive used censorship by interrupting the broadcasting of 53 community radio stations, a strategy to silence them with an outburst of violence and financial asphyxiation.
In a few months, the putschist government imported $ 5 million in arms.
The Minister of Economy and Finance, José Luis Parada, decreed the liberalization of agro-industrial product exports that had been regulated under Morales to guarantee food sovereignty and supply the internal market at controlled prices.
The very poorly managed health crisis accentuates, over the months, the economic and social disaster.
Corruption scandals, purchase of overcharged and unusable respirators for hospitals, overcharged purchase of tear gas…
In the economic projects of the right-wing candidate Luis Fernando Camacho, the privatization of the hydrocarbon sector nationalized by Evo Morales. Bolivia has substantial reserves of gas, lithium, iron and copper which whet the appetites of multinationals.
The new President, Luis Arce, has headed the Bolivian central bank. Minister of Economy and Public Finances between 2006 and 2017, as well as briefly in 2019, this 57-year-old economist has multiplied by 4 the country's GDP, halved poverty, had the poverty rate plummet from 60, 6% to 34.6% and provided access to electricity to 92% of the population.
The MAS brings together social and associative forces, trade unions and peasant movements, neighborhood organizations, middle-class sectors-- a rainbow of trends ranging from Indianism to nationalism, from class struggle to social democracy.
This victory, a result of popular mobilization for weeks across the country, is a real victory for the Bolivian people but also for all the oppressed peoples of South America and the anti-imperialist camp.
On behalf of our Party, Antonio Sanchez National Secretary, said:“We salute this victory of the Bolivarian people, the impact of which goes far beyond the country's borders. Macron, usually so quick to react to international elections had to swallow the pill; this is perhaps the reason for his silence, a silence observed moreover by the whole band of imperialist states all lined up behind the great "democrat", Trump, who after Venezuela and Bolivia, finds himself in check on his imperialist aims. The people have this strength, which is to choose the path to take, provided that they fight and unite to build a political perspective that meets their expectations ".
The Revolutionary Party COMMUNISTES sends its warmest congratulations to the workers and peoples of this country, plenty of hope and concrete progress for the workers and the people of Bolivia!