• Tweeter

  • republish

The President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of Bolivia, Maria Eugenia Choque, on the day of the presidential election, La Paz, October 20, 2019. REUTERS / David Mercado

As the country prepares for a second round scheduled for Dec. 15 between Evo Morales, president since 2006, and Carlos Mesa, a centrist and former president, a change in the results from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) changes the game and announces Morales reelected in the first round.

Article updated regularly

On the evening of Sunday, October 20th, the President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Maria Eugenia Choque, gave the following partial results: 45.28% for Morales and 38.16% for Mesa, involving a second round, after 84% of the Bullins counted.

Then the announcement of partial results was suddenly suspended Sunday night on the TSE website, without explanation. Before resuming Monday night and conclude at a score of 46.87% for Morales against 36.73% for Mesa, after counting 95% of the ballots. A gap of 10.1 points which, according to the rule in force in this country, would reelect Morales in the first round.

Since then, the electoral authorities have explained that they are abandoning this computerized rapid count and proceeding with the manual tabulation of the minutes to obtain the final result, raising fears of fraud on the part of the opposition and the international community.

Observers from the Organization of American States (OAS), present in Bolivia for Sunday's presidential election, expressed Monday their " concern " and " surprise " at the unexplained reversal of the result. " The OAS mission expresses its deep concern and surprise at the dramatic and hard-to-justify change in the trend of preliminary results after the close of the polls . "

Carlos Mesa, challenger to the incumbent president, said: " We are not going to recognize these results, which are part of a shameful fraud that is placing the Bolivian society in a situation of unnecessary tension. "

Yesterday on RFI, Hugo José Suarez, a professor at the University of Mexico, saw like everyone else a second round : " It is difficult to imagine that the results are still changing. As we speak, it is 7:00 in Bolivia, and there are still no final results announced by the electoral institution. The count stopped at 22h last night, local time. For the moment, there is no official communication. But it is the scenario of the second round that dominates the political discussions this morning. "

(With AFP)