Elections in Bolivia: MAS still failing to win mayoralties of largest cities

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The governmental majority party Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) continues to be unable to win over voters in Santa Cruz, La Paz and Cochabamba, the largest Bolivian cities. Evo Morales’ party failed to elect mayors there on Sunday, March 7th, in addition to losing again in El Alto, considered one of its strongholds.

The three cities of the so-called central axis besides El Alto -the second most populous in the country- have mostly resisted the ruling party in recent years and these municipal elections were no exception, according to exit polls results released by local media.

Over the last two decades, La Paz has been administered by two attorneys, Juan del Granado and Luis Revilla. In these elections, MAS bet on the ex-manager of Mi Teleférico state-owned company, César Dockweiler, to try to seduce the La Paz electorate, which resisted him despite his intense campaign, accompanied at times by President Luis Arce.

In the heat of the campaign, Arce assured that the “only” candidacy capable of guaranteeing a work “hand in hand with the Government” was Dockweiler’s, something that apparently did not go down well in La Paz, which finally opted for former minister Iván Arias.

On the other hand, the central region of Cochabamba is considered one of the ruling party’s strongholds because the coca-growing area of Chapare, the trade union and political headquarters of ex-president Evo Morales, is located there.

However, this hegemony is not as strong in the capital – Cochabamba – where there is a very marked polarization between those who follow the MAS and its opponents, “differences” recognized by Morales, after the release of the unofficial results which give the victory to the opposition Manfred Reyes Villa.

The surprise in this electoral process has been the ex-president of the Senate Eva Copa, expelled from the ruling party for running with another party for the mayoralty of El Alto. Exit polls give Copa a wide victory over the ruling party’s Zacarías Maquera, with which MAS lost -for the second time in a row- the municipality of El Alto.

In the other regional capitals, the ruling party appears in the polls with victories in Sucre, Bolivia’s constitutional capital, and the Amazonian city of Cobija, and an unclear result in Oruro, while in Tarija, Trinidad and Potosí other parties won.

For Evo Morales, the regional and municipal results show that “the MAS is consolidated as the first political force in the history of Bolivia.”

Morales said that its militants “should feel proud” of being part of this organization, and thanked the “Bolivian people” for their “commitment” to the “homeland”, “economic policies” and “social programs”. The ex-president assured that the MAS won 7 out of the 9 governorships of the country, and predicted that it could even win 8.