Sunday’s vote is a resumption of last year’s elections and a restoration of Bolivian democracy.
“Bolivia’s new legislative leaders will face formidable demanding situations in a country that is polarized, devastated by COVID-19 and hampered by endemicly weak institutions,” said WOLA, a Washington-based human rights organization.
UN Secretary-General Guterres suggested Bolivians respect the electoral process and, in particular, the end result.
Ballot papers, ballot boxes and other documents were handed over to polling stations on Saturday through incidents by police and army, authorities said. Police and infantry took to the streets hours later in an attempt to repair the calm.
The country’s Supreme Electoral Court announced on Saturday night that it had unanimously taken the decision not to release the totals of the initial votes when the ballots are counted, and said it sought to avoid the uncertainty that led to a long interruption in the publication of the initial effects in last year’s elections. .
Council President Salvador Romero said he had promised transparent official scrutiny, which could take only five days.
To win in the first round, a candidate wants more than 50% of the vote, or 40% with an advantage of at least 10 percentage points over the current position candidate. A vote for the time being, if necessary, would take a position on 28 November.
The entire 136-member Bolivian Legislative Assembly will be voted on.
The election was postponed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic and, in line with the capita, few countries have been more affected than the impoverished landlocked Bolivia: nearly 8,400 of its 11. 6 million inhabitants have died from COVID-19.
The election will take place with the required physical distancing among the masked electorate, at least officially, if at all in practice.
The main contenders are former Economics Minister Luis Arce, who led a protracted boom with Morales, and former President Carlos Mesa, a centrist historian and journalist who was Morales’ moment in controversial reports published after last year’s vote. , a conservative businessman who helped lead last year’s uprising, as well as a Korean-born evangelist, is lagging behind
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. through the electoral government after its overthrow.
He chose Arce as a replacement for the Movement to Socialism party, and a victory for the party would be a victory for the Latin American left.
Morales, a young flame breeder who has become the leader of a coca growers’ union, had been incredibly popular while overseeing an export-driven economic increase that reduced poverty for the most part of his tenure, but was eroding due to his reluctance to leave power, developing authoritarian impulses and a series of corruption scandals.
He shrunk in a public vote that set deadlines for mandates and featured the October 2019 presidential vote, which he claimed to have won by a narrow margin, but a long pause in reporting on the effects has fuelled suspicions of fraud and national protests have epped.
When the police and army chiefs left, Morales resigned and fled the country.
Conservative Senator Jeanne Ez has proclaimed he hem president and has been accepted by the courts. His government, despite the absence of a majority in Congress, began seeking to prosecute Morales and his most sensible advisers as he canceled his policies, thus contributing to more unrest and polarization.
She resigned from her position as a candidate in Sunday’s presidential election while she was wrong in the polls.
Most surveys have shown Arce an advantage, probably not enough to avoid the run-around.
There is a clever possibility that the next president will face a divided Congress and, worse, an opposition who refuses to acknowledge defeat.
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