Bolivian president wins second term
US-educated millionaire Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada has been chosen as Bolivia’s president for his second, non-consecutive term.
Sanchez de Lozada, a centrist mining executive who was president from 1993 to 1997, won a congressional vote by a 84-43 margin over Evo Morales, the radical Indian leader of Bolivia’s coca growers.
The two men were the leading vote-getters in a national election in June. Neither won an outright majority, forcing a run-off in Congress.
Two congressman left their votes blank, while 26 votes were nullified. Two other legislators were apparently absent.
The legislature convened on Saturday and debated through the night for more than 24 hours. All 157 members gave a speech.
Sanchez de Lozada ensured his victory in the legislative vote more than a week ago by securing an alliance with his rival, leftist former President Jaime Paz Zamora.
He will govern South America’s poorest country, which is suffering an economic crisis, rising crime and social unrest.
Known by the nickname ‘‘Goni,’’ Sanchez de Lozada spent most of his youth in the United States and still speaks Spanish with an American accent that is often the brunt of jokes among Bolivians.
He grew up in Washington, where his father was a diplomat, and later studied philosophy and English literature at the University of Chicago.
Sanchez de Lozada will face an opposition galvanised by the blunt-talking Morales, whose Movement to Socialism party has given Bolivia’s downtrodden Indian majority an unprecedented political voice.
Morales’s party took 35 seats in the legislature and may ally itself with Indian leader Felipe Quispe’s bloc of six congressmen.
Sanchez de Lozada’s Nationalist Revolutionary Movement party won the most seats with 50, but did not get a majority in the 157-seat legislature.
Morales, the 42-year-old son of Aymara Indian shepherds, placed a surprise second in June, stunning observers and rattling Bolivia’s ruling elite that is comprised largely of European-descended and mixed-blood politicians and businessmen.
A fiery protest leader, Morales has organised sometimes violent demonstrations and highway blockades by his supporters that have paralysed parts of the country.
Morales fiercely opposes a US-backed programme that has wiped out most of Bolivia’s coca plantations while Sanchez de Lozada has vowed to continue the eradication effort.
Washington heralds the programme as a shining success in its war on cocaine, but eradication has been highly unpopular and led to deadly clashes between farmers and security forces.
Sanchez de Lozada will inherit a gaping budget deficit after his predecessor Jorge Quiroga spent heavily while trying to spark the sluggish economy back to life.
At least six of 10 Bolivians live in poverty and unemployment now tops 10 percent. Various groups of workers are demanding wage increases, feeding growing social unrest in a country of 8.2 million people.
Sanchez de Lozada has promised to create jobs urgently with public works projects and to provide up to 800,000 fellowships for poor students.
The main legacy of his first presidency was a ‘‘capitalisation’’ programme that partially privatised many of Bolivia’s state-owned industries. He is also credited with increasing public financing for the country’s long-neglected municipalities.
He will be inaugurated for a five-year term tomorrow.
In a possible sign of things to come for the new leader, a national teachers union has announced a strike for the same day.
