The Bolivian elections of 2020: Arce avenges Morales' misfortune

Six days ago, Bolivia held its general and presidential elections, the 2019 elections having been annulled within an ongoing political crisis that resulted in the ousting of Bolivia's popular socialist-inclined president, Evo Morales, linked to the fact there are substantial lithium deposits in Bolivia which corporations want access to for the electric vehicle market; Bolivia rightly wanted to control. These elections were originally scheduled for May 2020 but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed them by five months.

Progressive parties and voters in Bolivia thoroughly repudiated the US-backed coup d'etat that led Jeanine Anez to become interim President of Bolivia for almost a year; she did not run herself or endorse any other candidate, but called on parties outside the MAS (Movement for Socialism) to ally to stop MAS' presidential candidate, Luis Arce, taking office. This did not happen and in any event Senor Arce polled 55.1% of the vote, guaranteeing him the Presidency in the first round and ensuring that MAS controlled both chambers of Bolivia's Parliament (the Senate and Chamber of Deputies) with 73 seats and 21 seats in said chambers. His key opponents, Carlos Mesa (who had been President from 2003 to 2005) of the Civic Community alliance and Luis Fernando Camacho of the conservative We Believe alliance, polled 28.8% and 14% respectively, giving them 41 seats and 16 seats respectively in the Chamber of Deputies and 11 seats and 4 seats respectively in the Senate. Two other challengers for the Bolivian Presidency, Chi Hyun Chung and Feliciano Mamani, polled just 1.55% and 0.51% respectively, meaning they won no seats and made no significant impact on the campaign. Only three departments of Bolivia, all in the east, saw a plurality for parties other than MAS; Beni (the most sparsely populated Bolivian department) and Tarjas voted for the Civic Community alliance and Santa Cruz (the largest department in Bolivia geographically, and alone larger in size than the United Kingdom) voted We Believe.

Bolivians recognised the coup for what it was and decisively gave their support for Senor Morales' vision to continue, and with a more secure mandate for MAS, even if the path becomes somewhat diluted compared to before the political crisis. Although Senora Anez's policies of reducing tax rates for larger companies and increasing funding for the agro-export sector (which harms the indigenous population of Bolivia) were not going to affect her personally as she had no intention of standing for election, they did exacerbate divides between rural and urban residents of Bolivia, and revelations of racist Tweets Senora Anez had made back in 2013 encouraged more indigenous voters to back Senor Arce and reject candidates with policies similar to Senora Anez's; Evo Morales was the first President of Bolivia from an indigenous (Quechua) background. This desire to repudiate a corporatist coup also caused turnout to increase slightly from 88.31% to 88.42%, despite the effects of the coronavirus pandemic which undoubtedly would have caused a noticeable turnout drop in the Bolivian capital, La Paz.

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