RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Evo Morales resigned this Sunday, November 10th, from his position as president of Bolivia, after an escalation of tensions in the country. The announcement was made on national television.
Immediately afterwards, he attacked his opponents, Carlos Mesa and Luis Camacho.
“Why did I make this decision? So that Mesa and Camacho won’t continue to persecute my fellow union leaders.”
Morales had said earlier this Sunday that he would call new elections in the wake of the Organization of American States (OAS)’s announcement that the October 20th elections had been rigged.
It is unclear how the new elections will take place and whether he will be a candidate. Earlier, when announcing the new elections, he said they would be important so that the Bolivian people could “democratically elect their new officials, incorporating new political players”.
Shortly before his resignation, the chiefs of the Armed Forces and the police, as well as the opposition, had urged Evo Morales to leave office to “pacify” the country.
Three ministers have also stepped down over the past few hours, as well as the Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, leaving doubts as to who will run the country until the next election.
The crisis in Bolivia escalated following the October 20th elections when Evo was re-elected in the first round.
At the time, the body in charge of counting the votes pointed to the following final result:
Evo Morales: 47.07 percent of votes
Carlos Mesa: 36.51 percent
As the difference between Morales and Mesa was over ten percentage points, the current president was re-elected for his fourth term.
The result was contested by the opposition, and on October 30th, Bolivia and the OAS agreed to conduct an audit.
Before these figures were published, there was a vagueness: initially, there was a faster and more preliminary method of counting, and a second definitive and slower method, in which votes are counted one by one.
The numbers for these two counts began to diverge, and the fastest count, which suggested that there would be a second round, was suspended.
The opposition has been taking to the streets in protests since Evo won. The police ceased to repress demonstrations, and there were riots in the country’s barracks.
On Friday, November 8th and Saturday, November 9th, Bolivian police officers rioted. The government reacted with a statement in which it denounced a coup plan.
Source: G1