Historical defeat for the left in Bolivia: only 3 percent of the votes

In Bolivia, a jerk to the right in the first round of the elections for parliament and a president. The current left -wing government party Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) received almost no support and seems to be able to count on 3 percent of the votes. This puts an end to almost twenty years of continuous left-socialist administration.

In the preliminary results of the presidential election, the center -right senator Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party comes up with 32 percent of the votes as a provisional winner. The conservative Jorge ‘Tuto’ Quiroga of the center -right Alianza Libre, who was also president more than twenty years ago, follows 27 percent.

Former President Morales had called on his supporters in advance to cast an invalid vote in protest. 19 percent of the votes has indeed been declared invalid, but it is unclear whether these invalid voices come from his supporters.

None of the candidates achieved more than 40 percent of the votes. The two center -right candidates must compete against each other in the second round on October 19. The election authority has not yet confirmed whether there will be a second round.

‘Renovation’

The win for the 57-year-old Paz comes as a surprise for the country. In the polls he got no further than 8 percent. Quiroga was known to score well. The wealthy businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who could count on around 20 percent of the votes in the polls, was unexpectedly referred to third place. He announced that he would support Paz in the second round.

“Bolivia not only requires a government change, it also requires a change in the political system,” Paz said in a speech last night. “This marks the start of a big win, a large transformation,” he added, while his supporters “renewed”. The current President Luis Arce van Mas has recognized the results. “Democracy has triumphed,” he said. “The word is up to the Bolivian people.”

De Mas came to power in 2006 under the leadership of Evo Morales. The former president, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, served the country from 2006 to 2019 in three terms. In 2019 Morales stepped on after accusations of election fraud. In the unrest that followed, dozens of people died, the violence only ended when Morales fled abroad.

The former president later came back discredited because he was accused of having a child in 2016 with a 15-year-old girl, which he in