8 December 2009 / REUTERS, LA PAZ
Bolivian President Evo Morales claimed a landslide re-election victory on Sunday as voters backed his left-wing policies of Indian power, social spending and state control of industry.
Official results were not expected until late on Monday or today but quick counts showed Morales took at least 63 percent of the vote, more than 35 percentage points ahead of his closest challenger, rightist former governor Manfred Reyes Villa. Morales, an Aymara Indian, is Bolivia’s first indigenous president and is hugely popular among the Indian majority that also supported a constitutional reform earlier this year to allow him to run for a second consecutive term in South America’s poorest country. “Brothers and sisters, we now have an enormous responsibility ... Your vote won’t be in vain,” Morales said on Sunday night from the balcony of the presidential palace, addressing thousands of supporters who waved rainbow-colored indigenous flags and shouted “Evo Again! Evo Again!” Exit polls projected Morales would also win control of the lower house of Congress and a two-thirds majority in the Senate, where the opposition had tried to block some of his reforms in his first term.
