Bolivia goes to the ballot in four regions to elect governors with uncertain result

The departments bolivians of La Paz, Chuquisaca (southeast), Tarija (south) and Pando (north) will go on Sunday to vote to elect their governors, under biosecurity measures and amid warnings from health services due to an outbreak of the pandemic of the coronavirus.

The elections are “The closing of an electoral cycle that has spanned from 2020 to 2021 and that has implied the renewal of all political power in Bolivia”, said on Sunday the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Salvador Romero.

The authority, quoted by the newspaper Correo del Sur on the Internet, made mention of the presidential elections of last September, won in the first round by the current president Luis Arce, dolphin of the ex-president Evo Morales, and those of governors and mayors on March 7.

“In the course of these months, Bolivians have defined all the new political authorities at the national level, as well as at the departmental, regional and municipal levels,” he explained.

La Paz, Chuquisaca, Tarija and Pando could not elect their governors in the first round last March, when none of the candidates could exceed 50% of the votes, or at least 40% with 10 points behind the second.

The electoral panorama for this Sunday is uncertain and the final and official results will be known until next weekend.

Only the departments of Cochabamba (center), Oruro (west), Potosí (south), Santa Cruz (east) and Beni (northeast) have their elected authorities and all will take office on May 3 for a period of five years.

Of those five governorships, the MAS won three, while two, including the wealthy Santa Cruz, remained in the hands of opponents from the right and center.

Romero stressed that sanitary measures have been adopted for Sunday, in the face of the pandemic, such as the distribution of biosafety equipment for notaries and electoral juries, citizens in charge of administering the vote.

“Bolivia is the first country in the world that has brought two electoral processes to national coverage (presidential and mayors together with governors) at the time of the pandemic”, he stressed.

However, the departmental health services have registered an increase in covid-19 cases in recent days.

“The trend is to go up, because there is a relaxation in the behavior of the population in terms of biosecurity measures.” Said the director of Epidemiology of the Chuquisaca region, Jhonny Camacho.

Until last week the daily cases did not exceed a thousand, but in the last week this figure was passed.

Bolivia, with 11.5 million inhabitants, accumulates more than 280.64 infections and more than 12,420 deaths.