Neighboring Bolivia's Presidential Election Today

Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president, is posed to be reelected today in a landslide. 

When Evo closed his campaign on Friday, polls reported that he had 55% of the vote, compared to 18% garnered by right candidate Reyes Villa and 15% by center candidate 10%. 

He wouldn't even be running for a second term, but in 2008, through referendum, Evo Morales created a new constitution that, among other reforms, allowed him to run for another five year term. 

The New York Times published an article about the elections yesterday, and explained a bit about the Evo controversy:

“Evo himself,” said Mr. Calla, the anthropologist, “could be considered the authoritarian left.” Contributing to this classification, he argued, was Mr. Morales’s resistance to cooperating with other parties, threats to jail opponents and the celebration of his administration in government-paid advertising. Mr. Calla called the government’s exuberance over Mr. Morales’s achievements “a cult of personality” in the making.

Cambio, a state-controlled daily newspaper à la Granma in Cuba, created by Mr. Morales this year, offers an example of this fanfare. Its lead article last Sunday described Puerto Evo Morales, a pioneer settlement in the north. A comic-book insert, “Evo: From the People for the People,” championed Mr. Morales’s rise from poverty.

There are concrete reasons for Mr. Morales’s popularity. The foremost may be the sustained growth of Bolivia’s landlocked economy, drawing plaudits from economists impressed with its accumulation of more than $7 billion in hard-currency reserves, even though the country is still plagued by persistent levels of extreme poverty.

Despite the financial crisis and a drop in natural gas export revenues, Bolivia’s economy is estimated to have grown as much as 4 percent this year, one of the highest rates in the region, helped by stimulus spending on welfare programs for children, pregnant women and the elderly.

“Even the I.M.F. is happy with Bolivia’s economy; imagine the irony of that,” said Gonzalo Chávez, a Harvard-educated economist here, referring to Mr. Morales’s often pointed criticism of Washington’s multilateral institutions, like the International Monetary Fund.

As for me, I won't be going to Bolivia anytime soon. He charges all Americans an entry fee of $130. Compared to entering Peru--where I supposedly should have been charged $20 upon entry but wasn't--that's a big sum of money. 

Plus, the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia was recently kicked out and Evo has accused the U.S. anti-drug forces of conspiring against him. Let's just say it's not the best time for me to take a Bolivian vacation.

One last note: If you're the video type, AFP put out a short 2-minute clip on the elections this week.