LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) – For Bolivia, the pandemic has been part of the unrest over the past 12 months.
Elections contested, fatal riots. The overthrow of Bolivia’s first indigenous president in what its supporters saw as a coup d’etion, the rise to the force of a hard-to-understand senator, and her inability to consolidate her presidency.
Now, a presidential election on Sunday gives Bolivians at least a political reset as they struggle with the dramatic prices of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the capita basis, few countries have been affected by the impoverished and unastemblyded nation: nearly 8,400 of its 11. 6 million inhabitants have died from COVID-19.
The election will take place with a required physical distance between the masked electorate, at least officially, if in practice.
The main contenders are former Economics Minister Luis Arce, who led a prolonged boom under the overthrown President Evo Morales, and former President Carlos Mesa, a centrist historian and journalist who gave the impression that Morales ended the moment in last year’s annulled vote.
Luis Fernando Camacho, a conservative businessman who helped lead last year’s uprising, as a Korean-born evangelist, lags behind in all polls.
The absence of Morales, who led Bolivia from 2006 to 2019 and a key figure in the left-wing leader bloc strongly in much of South America, overshadows the vote.
Morales, now exiled in Argentina, was prevented from running for president or even for the Senate through the electoral government after his overthrow, and chose Arce as his replacement for the motion toward socialism.
A rancher lama in his formative years who has become the leader of a coca farmers’ union, Morales had been immensely popular as he oversaw an export-driven economic surge that reduced poverty during the peak of his tenure. power, his developing authoritarian impulses, a series of corruption scandals and conservative inflammation for his promotion of indigenous culture and the devout practices of the “homeland. “
He shrugged in a public vote in favour of term limits and claimed that he had won at least one narrow-margin victory in the first circular in the October 2019 presidential vote, but a long pause in the updated statements has fuelled suspicions of fraud and protests have epped. At least 36 died in those or other subsequent protests.
When police and army chiefs advised him to leave, Morales resigned – along with the maximum of other members of the chain of succession – and fled the country. Conservative Senator Jeanne Oez, fifth on the list, has declared he hesited president and has been accepted by the courts.
His administration, despite the absence of a majority in Congress, began trying to prosecute Morales and his most sensitive advisers while canceling their policies, thus contributing to further unrest and polarization.
She defected from an attempt to win this year’s election, while she had a poor position in the polls. The government postponed voting twice, first scheduled for May 3 and then September 6.
Most polls showed Arce an advantage, probably not enough to avoid a run-off in November, which will take place if none of the seven candidates get at least 40% of the vote plus a 10 percentage point lead over the nearest opponent.
The next president is likely to face a divided Congress and, worse, an opposition who refuses to acknowledge defeat.
“No matter who wins, Bolivia will be incredibly difficult to govern,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.
Mesa, 67, vice president in 2003 when national protests led in component through Morales forced the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. The riots that followed led the Bureau itself to resign in 2005 and hold the elections that put Morales in power.
“These 14 years have been the worst legacy in our history,” He said Wednesday at the close of his campaign.
Mesa, co-author of a wonderful history of Bolivia, has a tendency to present himself as a somewhat boring and un charismatic intellectual, in his crusader season, rarely exchanged a suit coat for jeans and blouse sleeves and even danced with cumbia music.
“He is a centrist committed to democratic values, who understands reconciliation as a condition for advancement,” Shifter said.
Arce, 57, is a mid-class economist with studies in England who took credit for the rising costs of raw materials to exploit Morales’ socialist management of Bolivia’s economy, a move he also attributes to reducing inequality and public investment.
His is largely based on the elegance and rural electorate that stand firm for Morales.
“We will restore democracy, rebuild the economy and repair stability in Bolivia,” he promised.