Bolivia’s president Evo Morales has declared himself the winner of the country’s election, despite accusations of voting fraud.

Mr Morales is heading for a fourth term in office, with 98% of votes counted.

He has 46.8% support against the 36.7% for former president Carlos Mesa, just above the 10 percentage points he needs to avoid a second round of voting.

Seven other candidates were in the race.

Concerns were raised about a day-long gap in reporting results from the poll on Sunday, just before a spike in votes for Mr Morales.

The election result has not been officially confirmed and, due to the fraud claims, the Organization of American States (OAS) observers have called for the vote to go to a second round.

They expressed “concern and surprise over the drastic change and difficult to justify tendency in the preliminary results”.

Mr Mesa described the election as “a monumental fraud” and the European Union, the US, Brazil and the United Nations also said they were concerned about the process.

There have been protests and marches by supporters of both sides in several major centres.

Electoral offices in three cities were burned by protesters and the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz was hit by a two-day partial strike.

Mr Morales said on Thursday that observers had slandered him and were part of a “coup d’etat [being orchestrated] internally and externally”.

He also blamed his right-wing rivals and the international community.

He was not specific about which countries he was accusing but he has previously criticised US actions in Latin America.

Mr Morales, 59, has already governed for 14 years, becoming Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2006.

He had some success at the head of South America’s poorest nation during a decade of economic growth helped by commodities prices.

He was able to bring down inflation, send the country’s first satellite to space and complete infrastructure projects such as road paving.

But in 2016 he refused to accept the results of a referendum to keep limits on the length of presidential terms, fuelling dissatisfaction.

Source: Read Full Article