Cocalero Wins Bolivian Presidential Election

Evo Morales, the leader of Bolivia's coca growers, as expected delivered a facial to U.S. foreign policymakers by winning Sunday's Presidential election. Exit polling showed Morales with 45 percent of the vote, with second-place finisher Jorge Quiroga (Washington's boy) getting 34 percent.

The United States doubtlessly wishes we could have gotten Bolivia to use trusty Diebold machines.

Morales appeared at an election night press conference alongside a Bolivian flag covered with piles of coca leaves. Beautiful.

As mentioned in an earlier article here, with no candidate having finished with more than 50 percent of the vote, the final selection of the President will fall to the Bolivian Congress. My earlier fears of a theft of the Presidency in the Congress may be blunted by the fact that Morales' opponent Quiroga conceded defeat last night.

However, Quiroga's concession speech included his hope that the congressional decision would not lead to widespread unrest in the streets as has been seen in the past. These words sound like a gracious losing candidate's wish for a peaceful transition to MAS (Morales' party) rule. Unless you interpret this as a warning aimed at the supporters of Evo Morales.

That would indicate that Quiroga may know something that the rest of us will find out soon.


Update:

Late Wednesday evening, Dec 21, official returns were in from 93% of the polling places and showed Morales winning by a much larger percentage than had been expected. Morales received 54.3 percent of the vote, thus avoiding the election being sent to the Bolivian Congress for a final decision. Also, voter turnout was more than 85 percent, the highest in recent history.