'A second round is inevitable' - Bolivian candidate Mesa on presidential vote

Record ID: 1437957

  • Title: 'A second round is inevitable' - Bolivian candidate Mesa on presidential vote
  • Date: 21st October 2019
  • Summary: LA PAZ, BOLIVIA (OCTOBER 20, 2019) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) BOLIVIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, CARLOS MESA, SAYING: "This is a crucial moment. After 14 long years the Bolivian people have taken a fundamental decision, which is the construction and defense of a democracy that has to consolidate itself in time and requires renovation and transformation and has to do not only with the will of those who have voted for us, for 'Citizen Community,' which is a fundamental force for this construction, but also the will of the whole country to establish something that had been forgotten on February 21, 2016: the affirmation that voting is sacred and you must respect the vote."
  • Embargoed: 4th November 2019 02:33
  • Keywords: Bolivia elections voting vote results Bolivian President Evo Morales candidate Carlos Mesa
  • Location: LA PAZ, BOLIVIA
  • City: LA PAZ, BOLIVIA
  • Country: Bolivia
  • Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA004B21HY6F
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Bolivian presidential candidate Carlos Mesa - the chief rival to President Evo Morales - said a runoff vote was "a fact" after Sunday's (October 20) presidential vote and a preliminary count of nearly 84% of official results by the electoral board.
    Morales, 59, South America's longest-serving leftist leader, won 45% of votes, compared with 38% for the more conservative Mesa, a former Bolivian president, according to the partial count, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) said late on Sunday.
    Morales needed at least 40% of votes with a 10-point lead over the runner-up to win outright. The final winner in the election will govern Bolivia, a landlocked country of 11 million people, from 2020 to 2025.
    The results indicated that Morales would head to a second-round vote for the first time since sweeping to power in 2006, giving him his weakest mandate and a likely minority of seats in Congress for his party if he manages to defeat Mesa in December.
    Mesa, who said earlier he did not trust the TSE, celebrated the results amid cheering supporters.
    Whoever wins will likely have to govern without a majority in Congress and with a gloomier economic outlook, as the commodities-fueled boom that drove rapid economic growth in Bolivia in recent years has ended and the country's important natural gas reserves have dwindled.
    (Production: Monica Machicao, Sergio Limachi)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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