Exit polls suggest Evo Morales’s leftwing party has pulled off a stunning political comeback in Bolivia’s presidential election, although an official result has yet to emerge.
Two private surveys projected that Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), secured more than 50% of the vote in the ballot on Sunday, with his closest rival, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, receiving about 30%.
Arce, a former finance minister under Morales, claimed victory in a late-night broadcast from La Paz. “We have reclaimed democracy and above all we have reclaimed hope,” said the 57-year-old UK-educated economist, widely known as Lucho.
Arce vowed to end the uncertainty that has plagued his bitterly divided nation since October 2019, when hotly disputed claims of vote rigging against his party resulted in mass street protests, the presidential election being scrapped and Morales being forced from the country by security forces in what his supporters…
