The former president is gaining ground to Evo Morales, who is losing electoral support

Between 2003 and 2005, Carlos Mesa governed Bolivia. Now, he wants to do it again if he is elected in the presidential elections to be held in January 2019. If he succeeds, Mesa would end the era of Evo Morales, who has been in power for 12 years. The official announcement of his candidacy – which put an end to months of uncertainty about who would face Morales in elections – was announced through his YouTube channel.

Leer en español: Bolivia: Carlos Mesa podría acabar con el gobierno de Evo Morales

"I have reflected. I have done it in depth and I have made a very clear decision: to be a candidate for the presidency of the State. I do it because this is a time of historical inflection because we are at the beginning of the threshold of a new time. That new time has to have a new leadership," says Mesa in his video.

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"There is an old time that is running out, that has completed its cycle. President Evo Morales is no longer part of the present, let alone the future, it is part of the past. It is the past. And it is because he has decided that power is more important than the project because he considers that he can remain indefinitely in power," Mesa adds in the video, making clear what his speech will be to defeat Evo Morales.

When he says "Evo Morales has decided that power is more important than the project," he refers to the judicial strategy promoted by Morales's political party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), which seeks to give the Bolivian president the opportunity to present himself for the fourth time to the presidency, still with a constitutional prohibition that already tried to change in the failed referendum of 2016, as reported by El País de España .

A ruling that benefits Carlos Mesa

Evo Morales was in charge of promoting, perhaps as a campaign event in the face of the 2019 elections, the maritime demand against Chile, thinking that he would win the Hague ruling. But it did not go as he wanted. The ruling dismissed Chile's maritime claim and left Evo unhappy with the intention of forcing Chile to negotiate the maritime dispute.

Carlos Mesa could take advantage of the situation, since what happened took away Evo Morales credibility and weakened him electorally by 2019, becoming an argument to use as a campaign speech against Evo before the elections.

Could read: Bolivia still without sea: What is left after the failure of The Hague?

The electorate that loses Evo Morales

Other factors that would take Morales electoral power, as mentioned by La Tercera, are his confrontations with cocalero leaders, a sector that in 2005 supported him and managed to place him in the presidency, confrontations with the opposition and acts of corruption "as in the Fund Indigenous and the Quiborax case ".

In addition, 40% of voters would not vote in 2019 for Evo Morales, according to a survey conducted by the newspaper Siete in July 2018.

The political map for Carlos Mesa is encouraging, because if he manages to take advantage of the erosion of the Morales government that Bolivians feel, the arrival with his leftist Revolutionary Front party -which does not have the support of opposition parties- to the presidency would be completely insured For now, the electorate must be won with collective proposals and that their country really needs, avoiding falling IGNORE INTO false promises.  

LatinAmerican Post I Edwin Guerrero Nova

Translated from: 'Bolivia: Carlos Mesa podría acabar con el gobierno de Evo Morales'

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