7 December 2009 / AP, LA PAZ
President Evo Morales, a coca-grower at odds with Washington but popular at home for empowering Bolivia’s long-suppressed indigenous majority, was expected to coast to easy re-election later on Sunday.
Bolivians were also choosing a new Congress, with Morales’ stridently leftist Movement Toward Socialism hoping for a two-thirds majority so it can dictate terms of a law on indigenous territorial self-rule. A super-majority would also give the 50-year-old incumbent the votes needed to amend the constitution so he could run for a third straight presidential term, though he has been evasive on the issue. A victory by Morales, who led opinion polls with about 55 percent support, would extend the stability he has brought to a nation notorious for coups and that had five presidents in the five years preceding his December 2005 election. Last January, voters ratified a new constitution that remade Bolivia as a “plurinational” state, allowing self-rule for the poor South American country’s 36 native peoples. Twelve of Bolivia’s more than 330 municipalities are voting Sunday on indigenous autonomy.
