Bolivia: Left-wing MAS won 240 out of 336 mayoralties, 13 more than in 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After the subnationals, the municipal map of Bolivia was painted blue. The Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) won 240 of the 336 mayoralties for which mayors were elected, 13 more than in 2015. In 19 the ruling party’s victory was consolidated with 100% of the valid vote.

“Taking into account that Bolivia is in the process of urbanization, 70% of the population is in the cities. The biggest strategic failure of the opposition is not being able to leave the urban area, to take a proposal to the rural population to generate political plurality. This not only gives MAS a base of more than 200 municipal governments, but in general elections it guarantees a hard base of between 25% and 30%”, said Andrés Uzín, specialist in management and public policies.

Carlos Cordero, analyst and professor of Political Sciences, indicated that in the main axis there is a very clear ideological component, about an anti-MAS and anti-Evo sentiment. This explains why it has been lost in the big municipalities (La Paz with Iván Arias, El Alto with Eva Copa, Cochabamba with Manfred Reyes Villa and Santa Cruz with Jhony Fernández), but not in the rest.

Read: Bolivia repeats subnational voting in more than 100 polling stations in five regions

“There is a clear division in the behavior of the cities that tend to favor non-MAS leaderships and in the rural and intermediate zones where its presence is very important,” he said.

“MAS covers 70% of the municipalities. A territorial map would be flooded by a predominant blue and we are talking about a complete decade without chromatic variations”, points out journalist Rafael Archondo in his article “Urgente ecografía electoral”.

For Uzín, although the party in government has power over many municipal governments, when speaking in terms of population the “story is different”. “Both in relation to the 2020 elections and the 2015 municipal elections, MAS has seen its vote reduced. In addition, the main opposition parties have also suffered hard blows and the main caudillos and parties in La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, El Alto and others have been replaced by new leaderships”, he added.

He warned that in Bolivia, where we have a great polarization, “unfortunately two perverse effects have been seen”. “First, the subnational governments that are aligned with the Government tend to have a weak management due to lack of oversight and because their candidates respond more to the demands of the central Government than to their constituents. Second, subnational governments with other leaderships respond more to local demands, lose a lot of energy and are distracted by excessive oversight.”

In the nine departments

MAS is the only party that has a wide presence in the nine regions of the country, according to the results published by the official counting portal of the Plurinational Electoral Organ (Órgano Electoral Plurinacional). Santa Cruz is the department in which it won the least number of municipalities, but still painted blue 28 of its 54 municipalities.

In La Paz -the department with the most municipalities in the country- MAS won in 63 out of 87, in Cochabamba in 41 out of 47, in Potosí in 35 out of 41, in Oruro in 28 out of 33, in Chuquisaca in 21 out of 29, in Pando in eight out of 15, in Beni in eight out of 11 and in Tarija in eight out of 11.

In sum, it won in 240 municipalities out of the 336 in which burgomasters were elected. It only needs to conquer 96 municipal governments to have authorities in the whole country.

Read: Eva Copa – the woman who broke with Evo Morales to become Bolivia’s greatest electoral phenomenon

“It has a strong rural base. In spite of having lost in eight of the ten capital cities and El Alto, it has increased its dominance in rural areas”, added Uzín.

The almost one hundred municipalities that remained in the hands of its opponents are distributed among 43 local and regional fronts. Among the most outstanding are: Movimiento Tercer Sistema (MTS) which won in ten municipalities in Beni, Chuquisaca, La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro and Pando; Unidos with eight mayoralties in Beni, Chuquisaca, La Paz and Santa Cruz; Venceremos with seven in La Paz; Creemos with seven in Santa Cruz and Demócratas which won five in the same department. In La Paz, Jallalla won four mayoralties.

“It is not that there is only one opposition, but that there are several systems that generate a common denominator. Evidently the MAS is the only party with national presence, even we see it in the departments that will go to the second round; in all of them one of the opponents is the MAS, but in all of them it has an opposition”, he emphasized.

He added that it is not that the opposition is divided, but that there is a political system at national level and there are nine departmental systems which in turn are subdivided in as many municipalities each one has. “In 39 years of democracy in Bolivia we have built a very complex democratic system, but it works”, explained Cordero.

He emphasized that there is a renewal around new regional leaderships such as that of Eva Copa, which is also a sign of the strong presence of women.

For Archondo, in conclusion, in Bolivia the basic electoral contradiction is between the countryside and the city. He affirms that MAS has petrified itself as the political arm of the Bolivian peasantry, be it indigenous or not, from the highlands, the valleys or the Amazon. “That’s what it is and that’s where it stays,” he maintains.

“In the same way, the urban segments, creators of Podemos (Tuto 2005), Plan Progreso para Bolivia (Manfred 2009), Unidad Demócrata (Doria 2014) or Comunidad Ciudadana (Mesa 2019) also seem condemned to misunderstand the needs of the peasant world. They are that and there they stay,” he explains.

“Bolivia has matured a lot in terms of electoral organization. Elections were held in 336 municipalities and their respective councils, nine departments and their assemblies. These are things to mention because they are part of the balance”, added Cordero.

19 victories were obtained with 100% of votes

According to the official count, in 19 municipalities MAS won the mayoralties with 100% of the valid votes. Ten are in Cochabamba, one in La Paz, five in Oruro and three in Potosí. In 2015, the mayoralties in which it won with this resounding were 30, 11 more than now.

“The candidates opposing MAS in these municipalities would have been disqualified or resigned at the last minute, so their votes were invalidated and that is why MAS has 100% of the valid votes. It is worrying… why were the rival parties disqualified in these municipalities and MAS in none?”, said engineer and activist Édgar Villegas.

In 2015 the mayoralties won in this way were distributed as follows: ten in Oruro, eight in Cochabamba, four in Potosí, four in La Paz, three in Beni and one in Tarija.

In 2021 the municipalities are: Vacas, Arque, Cocapata, Morochata, Bolívar, Sicaya, Pocona, Pojo, Villa Tunari, Alalay, Nazacara de Pacajes, Huachacalla, Yunguyo Litoral, Carangas, La Rivera, Todos Santos, San Pedro de Macha, San Agustín and Urmiri (see infographic).

Only one of the municipalities registered 0% of invalid votes. Blank votes are between 1.3% and 17.99%. In seven, the count does not register the presence of other fronts and in 12 the opponents have zero null votes.

Although these are entire municipalities and not just precincts, the number of people eligible to vote is very variable. With one precinct and only one acta for 153 voters, Yunguyo Litoral in Oruro was the municipality with the smallest number of voters. Even so, the turnout was only 67%. There were no invalid votes, but there were 6.3% blank votes.

Villa Tunari, in the Cochabamba tropic, is the largest territory where the blue party won with 100%. There, 44,927 out of 50,310 citizens voted. The participation was 89.3%.

The municipality with the lowest participation was Huachacalla in Oruro, while the highest was Carangas, in the same department.