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Anti-US leftist clinches Bolivia election
(Kevin Gray, Reuters, December 18, 2005)
Evo Morales, a leftist former coca leaf farmer vowing to be a "nightmare for the U.S.," was poised to become Bolivia's first indigenous president [COMMENT by Lorenzo: BRAVO MORALES!!!] on Sunday after likely clinching one of the biggest electoral victories in the country's history. . . . Morales appeared certain to take office in January when his rivals conceded defeat and results tabulated by local media showed him garnering slightly more than 50 percent of the vote, much higher than predicted. . . . "Beginning tomorrow Bolivia's new history really begins, a history where we will seek equality, justice, equity, peace and social justice," Morales told hundreds of supporters amid chants of "Evo President! Evo President!" at his campaign headquarters in the central city of Cochabamba. . . . A high-school dropout who herded llamas as a boy, Morales has vowed to nationalize Bolivia's natural gas industry and roll back a U.S.-backed eradication program of coca, a key ingredient used to make cocaine but also prized by Indians for traditional medicinal uses. . . . Washington considers Morales an enemy in its anti-drug fight in Bolivia, the third biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru. His critics fear a Morales government could jeopardize the country's flow of multi-million dollar economic aid from Washington. . . . Morales often invoked racial imagery on his campaign, feeding hopes among the impoverished Indian majority that one of its own could help reverse what most saw as more than 500 years of discrimination under leaders of European descent, which began with slavery in Spanish colonial silver mines.

posted by LoZo 9:23 AM