La Paz, Bolivia (AP) voters in Bolivia practically threw the long-term party from the congress, a final count released on Tuesday, after presidential and parliamentary elections announced a tectonic shift in this Andes country this month.
In a devastating defeat, the Movement to SocialismeTy – which ruled a large part of the last two decades and has held a super ma'ality in both houses of parliament – his 21 senate seats and except for two except for two except for the Lower House of Conggress. Centrist and right -wing parties took the most votes.
“These elections really spelled the end of the MAS,” said Diego von Vacano, an expert in Bolivian politics at Texas A & M University, with the help of the Spanish acronym for the ruling party. “As a party, as a movement, it was destroyed. This is a new period in Bolivian history.”
The general elections of 17 August delivered a shocking 32% of the votes to central senator Rodrigo Paz after a campaign dominated by worries about the terrible fuel shortages from Bolivia, a scarcity of American dollars and inflation to hit 30% this year.
On October 19, Paz will be opposed to Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, a right -wing former president who led his coalition to almost 27% of the votes, the Supreme Electoral Tribune announced on Tuesday.
Based on the official figures, neither Paz's Christian Democratic party nor the Libre party of Quiroga has enough legislators to penetrate their proposals alone, taking 70 out of 166 total conference seats and took Libre 53.
Crucial, for the first time since Bolivia's parliamentary elections from 2002, will, which candidate candidate of the opposition will have no problems obtaining leverage in both the 36-seats Senate and the less powerful, 130 seats of representatives to set their plans to solve the worst economic crisis of the country in 40 years.
Businessman Samuel Doria Medina is ready to play Kingmaker, with his right -wing Unity Bloc who records a total of comfortable 35 seats. Despite the leading opinion polls for weeks, Doria Medina achieved fourth place in the presidential race, the final results revealed.
In third place? Spoiled ballot papers. Evo Morales, a charismatic former president who was forced from the MAS party that he founded in the nineties and had excluded from a decision by the court on deadlines, had appealed to supporters to throw zero-and-Lege ballot papers to protest against his exclusion.
The only good news for the MAS on Tuesday was that it dies out of extinction. A power struggle between Morales, which ruled from 2006-2019, and former Protégé, President Luis Arce, crushed the party in rival factions and ruined its reputation.
“As soon as Evo left the party, he took the basis out what the MAS was, and you are behind those who supported Arce to save their job in the government,” said Von Vacano.
The official candidate of the MAS party, Minister Eduardo del Castillo, won 3.17% of the total vote, only a hair above the 3% legal threshold that was needed to continue to exist as a political party in Bolivia and to participate in future elections.
“We have succeeded in storing the MAS -ACRONTIMEM,” said del Castillo.
The results made Senate President Andrónico Rodríguez, who ran for the People's Alliance, the only left -wing political power that remained in the congress, with eight seats.
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Debre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.