Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his resignation yesterday, caving in following three weeks of sometimes-violent protests over his disputed re-election after the Army and police withdrew their backing.
“I resign my post as president,” Morales said in a televised address, capping a day of fast-moving events in which several ministers and senior officials quit as support for Latin America’s longest-serving president crumbled.
The streets of La Paz immediately exploded in celebration, as jubilant Bolivians set off firecrackers and waved the country’s red, yellow and green flag.
Morales, 60 and in power since 2006, was declared the winner of presidential voting on October 20 by a narrow margin. It gave him a controversial fourth term.
But the opposition said there was fraud in the vote count, and three weeks of street protests ensued, during which three people died and hundreds were injured.
The Organization of American States carried out an audit of the election and on Sunday reported irregularities in just about every aspect that it examined: the technology used, the chain of custody of ballots, the integrity of the count, and statistical projections.
As chanting Bolivians kept up demonstrations in the street, Morales called new elections, but this was apparently not enough to calm the uproar, and the commanders of the armed forces and the police joined the calls for the president’s resignation.
President Evo Morales had called for new elections yesterday but the commander of the armed forces asked him to resign “for the good of our Bolivia” after an OAS audit found serious irregularities in elections last month that gave the leftist leader a fourth term.
Morales, Bolivia’s first president of indigenous descent, promised new elections under the direction of a revamped Supreme Electoral Tribunal in a televised address but did not say whether he would run again.
With no sign of violent protests abating, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Williams Kaliman, told reporters he was asking Morales “to resign his presidential mandate to allow for pacification and the maintaining of stability, for the good of our Bolivia.”
Kaliman said the armed forces had ordered “military operations in the air and on land to neutralize armed groups that are acting outside the law” by attacking opposition demonstrators.
The commander of the police, General Vladimir Yuri Calderon, also called on Morales to step down.
There were signs of disarray among Morales supporters, with the head of the lower house of parliament and the ministers of mines and of hydrocarbons announcing their resignations.
Two of those resigning cited risks to their families after mobs attacked their respective houses in the city of Potosi.
Protests have flared across Bolivia since Morales was declared the winner of the October 20 election, beating his nearest rival, centrist Carlos Mesa, by just enough to avoid a second round.
An audit of the election by the Organization of American States, however, found “irregularities that range from serious to indicative,” in virtually every area reviewed — in the technology used, the chain of custody of ballots, the integrity of the count, and statistical projections.
“This leads the technical auditing team to question the integrity of the election results,” the report on their preliminary findings said.
OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said the results giving the leftist leader a fourth term in office “must be annulled and the electoral process must begin again.”