Violence on Monday broke out in several Bolivian cities after the main opposition candidate rejected presidential election results that seemed to give victory to long-time Bolivian President Evo Morales as international monitors voiced “deep concern.”
Rival supporters clashed in the capital, La Paz, while in the southern city of Sucre an angry mob set a local electoral authority’s headquarters on fire, TV footage showed.
Protesters clashed with police in the mining city of Potosi and attacked the local electoral authority, as well as local government offices.
Photo: Reuters
Riot-police dispersed a crowd who tried to storm the electoral offices in the Andean city of Oruro, south of La Paz. Clashes were also reported in Tarija in the south, Cochabamba in the center and Cobija in the north.
Former Bolivian president Carlos Mesa, who came a close second to Morales in Sunday’s polls — forcing a runoff, according to preliminary results — denounced revised results released by election authorities as a “fraud.”
“We are not going to recognize those results that are part of a shameful, consummated fraud that is putting Bolivian society in a situation of unnecessary tension,” Mesa said.
Mesa, who was president from 2001 to 2005, accused Morales of colluding with the Bolivian Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to tweak delayed results and avoid a runoff.
The US’ top diplomat for Latin America said that the tribunal was attempting “to subvert Bolivia’s democracy by delaying the vote count and taking actions that undermine the credibility of Bolivia’s elections.”
“We call on the TSE to immediately act to restore credibility in the vote counting process,” Michael Kozak said on Twitter.
Election monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS) voiced “deep concern” at sudden changes to the election count to show Morales closing in on an outright victory in the first round.
The OAS observer mission in Bolivia expressed “surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results revealed after the closing of the polls,” it said in a statement.
Preliminary results released late on Sunday showed neither Morales, 59, nor 66-year-old Mesa with a majority and “clearly indicated a second round,” the OAS mission said.
The partial results put Morales in the lead with 45 percent of the votes, with Mesa on 38 percent, meaning Morales would have to contest a runoff for the first time.
However, results released late on Monday, after a long delay, showed Morales edging toward an outright victory with 95 percent of the votes counted.
The OAS called on the tribunal to “firmly defend the will of the Bolivian people” and called for calm on the streets.
“It is extremely important that calm is maintained and any form of violence is avoided in this delicate situation,” it added.
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