• Latin America: Bolivia today votes a very close first round and with the party of Evo Morales caressing the presidency

Bolivia has returned to the polls today one year after the electoral fraud promoted by the indigenous revolution to keep Evo Morales in power.

And she did so willing to turn the page after 12 months marked by the pandemic and by the controversial management of the interim government, amid allegations of corruption and internal fights.

Peacefully, "with good civic spirit," according to the Organization of American States (OAS), and with few isolated incidents during the first hours of such a historic day.

Elections delayed three times and the first in South America under biosecurity protocols in a country injured by the coronavirus, which killed 8,400 people and infected 140,000.

The pandemic has also wiped out Bolivia's growing economy

, causing the biggest collapse in several decades: experts' calculations suggest that the new president will receive a country hit by a 6% drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Each vote counts, as the polls predicted, which placed Luis Arce, candidate of Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS), close to his goal: to overcome the 40% barrier with a difference of 10 points over Carlos Mesa to avoid the second electoral round and ratify the return to power of the indigenous project.

A very strong vote in the mountains, the countryside and among the indigenous people, with bastions such as El Alto de La Paz and the Tropic of Cochabamba.

On the contrary, the projection of these results encouraged in the last hours the useful vote from the radical Luis Fernando Camacho towards Mesa, according to the polls.

The urban vote and in Media Luna, the eastern region headed by Santa Cruz, the economic engine of the Andean country, support what was the opposition during Morales' term.

To avoid a repeat of a scenario similar to that of 2019, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) surprisingly decided to eliminate the Dissemination of Preliminary Data (Direpre), thus prioritizing the official calculation.

This same system, which emits preliminary results, was silenced last year when it predicted that the victory of Evo Morales was not enough to avoid the second round.

"Our responsibility is to give priority to the certainty of the data and results. That implies a slower, but reliable and secure computation,"

said Salvador Romero, president of the TSE.

The measure had the immediate backing of the OAS, the European Union (EU) and the Catholic Church, all of them fundamental during the process that began in October 2019. It was the OAS that discovered the electoral traps of the MAS and the EU and the Church who achieved with their mediation a truce so that the violent clashes and the siege of the cities after Morales' exile did not end in a civil conflict.

The MAS takes advantage of the news to insist on its "deep mistrust" in the TSE, which is part of the revolutionary strategy, cheered on by its allies from abroad: if it does not win at the polls, it will be electoral fraud.

On the other side, Mesa reluctantly complied with the measure, "because eliminating the Direpre may be negative, but we will have the count minute by minute," said the Citizen Commitment candidate.

"We are going to be patient and we ask the population to be so

,

"

the centrist candidate added.

Evo Morales, the great absentee after participating in the elections for almost two decades, assured from his exile in Argentina that his priority is the recovery of democracy, the same one that he manipulated at his convenience to stay in power: first ignoring the result of the referendum that prevented him from running in 2019 and later twisting the Constitution in his favor to perpetuate himself in a power that he held for 14 years.

"Jallalla (mixture of hope and party in Quechua-Aymara) democracy!" Evo claimed in his networks.

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