Evo Morales Wins Presidential Elections in Bolivia

According to exit polls announced shortly before, his party "Movement Toward Socialism" was gaining more than 51% of the vote, reports NEWSru.com with reference to Reuters. Morales said that he has won at least eight of the nine departments of the country.

His closest competitor, the businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who heads the center-right Front National Unity, according to exit polls, receives less than 20% of the vote. Then goes Jorge Quiroga with the same result, representing the centrist Christian Democratic Party – in 2001-2002 he was President of Bolivia.

The other candidates – the leader of the opposition center-left "Movement Without Fear" Juan del Granado and representative of indigenous Indian people Fernando Vargas Mohs from the ecological "Green Party of Bolivia", according to exit polls, are gaining less than 2% each.

According to the local law, in order to win the presidential election in the first round, a candidate needs more than 40% of the vote if he is ahead of his closest competitor by at least 10%. Morales called his victory "a triumph of all anti-imperialists and anticolonialists". The head of the state dedicated it to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The lections held on Sunday, October 12 were attended by more than six million Bolivians. They have also chosen vice-president, 130 deputies and 36 senators.

Morales became the President of Bolivia in January 2006. Before him, the position was held by Eduardo Welz, who was accused of treason. In the elections that took place in 2005, about 54% of the voters voted for Morales, and four years later, he received 63% of votes. Before him in Bolivia, no one head of the state was elected for three consecutive terms. The next presidential elections will be held in five years.