Bolivian President Evo Morales claimed victory in elections yesterday following a pledge to extend his socialist “revolution” and boost payouts to the poor and elderly in the natural gas-rich nation.
Morales, a former farmer and union leader who heads the Movement Toward Socialism party, had 63 percent support, according to exit polls broadcast by television station Red Uno. Former Governor Manfred Reyes Villa had 27 percent. Official results weren’t yet available.
“The people, with their participation, showed once again that it’s possible to change Bolivia,” Morales, 50, told supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace in La Paz last night. “We have the responsibility to deepen and accelerate this process of change.”
As Bolivia’s first leader to win consecutive re-election since 1964, Morales said he will use his five-year term to expand state control over the country’s natural resources and distribute revenue from state-controlled businesses to the poor. He plans to rewrite about 100 laws, including mining and energy codes, as his party appeared headed for its first-ever majority in both houses of Congress.
About 5.2 million voters were eligible to take part in the vote, the national electoral court said.
‘Best Moment Ever’
“Brother Evo Morales is working for the poorest people, for the people that are fighting for their survival,” street vendor Julio Fernandez, 47, said after casting his vote in the city of El Alto, just outside La Paz.
The vote took place almost 11 months after Morales won approval in a nationwide referendum for a new constitution abolishing a ban on consecutive re-election. He said he won’t run again in 2015.
Morales said last night that his party, known as MAS, won a two-thirds majority in Congress. That will allow him to make key appointments without consulting the opposition, said Erasto Almeida, a Latin America analyst at the Eurasia Group in New York.
“This will give Morales more freedom to mold Bolivia’s legal apparatus and institutions according to his nationalist and state-centric views, given that the new Congress will vote on a number of bills necessary to implement Bolivia’s new constitution,” Almeida wrote in a Dec. 4 report.
Gas Reserves
Reyes Villa, 54, said during the campaign that the Morales government didn’t seek out new markets for exports like natural gas and metals, costing the country $2 billion annually in lost revenue. Bolivia has the second-largest natural gas reserves on the continent, after Venezuela.
“It’s been a hard battle against lies, against political persecution,” Reyes Villa said, speaking from the eastern Santa Cruz province. “We’re going to keep fighting for democracy, for the country and for everyone counting on us.”
The number of Bolivians living in poverty rose 0.5 percentage point to 60.1 percent in 2007 from 2005, the year before Morales took office, according to the National Statistics Institute. The government agency hasn’t published data for the past two years.
Bolivia’s projected economic growth of 2.8 percent this year is the most of 32 Western hemisphere nations tracked by the International Monetary Fund in its October World Economic Outlook. The Washington-based lender forecasts contractions of 0.7 percent in Brazil and 7.3 percent in Mexico, Latin America’s two biggest economies.
Morales said he plans to use revenue from new state businesses to increase one of his largest stipend programs, which targets low-income Bolivians over the age of 60. He said he may increase the stipends to 7,764 bolivianos ($1,098) per year from 1,800 bolivianos.
Morales also promised his supporters new petrochemical plants and a plan to process the country’s lithium reserves, which he said would start with the construction of a lithium carbonate factory and end with the production of electric cars.
Bolivia’s salt flats contain about half the world’s known 11 million metric tons of lithium reserves, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report
