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Bolivia’s Socialist President Evo Morales Resigns Amid Uprising

   DailyWire.com
Bolivia's President Evo Morales delivers a press conference in La Paz on October 31, 2019. - A technical mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) began on Thursday its audit of the disputed Bolivian presidential election that delivered Evo Morales a fourth term but sparked deadly riots. (Photo by JORGE BERNAL / AFP) (Photo by JORGE BERNAL/AFP via Getty Images)
Photo by JORGE BERNAL/AFP via Getty Images

Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales resigned over the weekend, ending his nearly 15-year iron grip on power in the South American country.

Protesters have been demanding Morales step down for weeks following a disputed election, where Morales claimed victory even though the outcome wasn’t clear, according to Fox News. Disputes over the election and subseqeuent violent demonstrations triggered an international inquiry into whether Morales fixed Bolivia’s vote to keep himself in power.

In a letter issued on Sunday, Morales claimed he was removing himself from his position, though he has yet to actually follow through with vacating the presidency.

“I am sending my resignation letter to the Legislative Assembly of Bolivia,” he said over the weekend.

Morales likely had no choice; as of last week, the country’s military and police force suddenly refused to put down anti-Morales protests, and sided with demonstrations calling on Morales to leave the presidential palace. Police officers guarding Morales also refused to take their posts, leaving the Bolivian leader unprotected, Fox News reported.

As in Venezuela, the socialist leader’s iron grip on power eventually stopped benefiting the people, who revolted — though as in Venezuela, the revolt seems to have ushered in just a slightly less-socialist government, in this case led by Bolivia’s former president, Carlos Mesa.

Mesa charged over the weekend that Morales had committed “monstrous fraud” in elections held last month, which Morales claims handed him a fourth term in office. Mesa cited an Organization of American States report that found a number of electoral problems, to put it mildly.

Morales, of course, called the situation a “coup.”

“Mindful of the heap of observed irregularities, it’s not possible to guarantee the integrity of the numbers and give certainty of the results,” OAS said in their report. They called out Morales and his allies specifically, questioning why Morales stopped counting votes after a 24-hour period even though he was only slightly ahead of his opponent.

As recently as October, just ahead of the Bolivian elections, global socialists — and even American mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post — were hailing Bolivia as a shining example of how socialism “worked” in the Central and South American countries which welcomed open socialist and communist leaders in a “pink tide” in 2006. Morales was, until Sunday, the last leftist leader left standing from that wave.

But Bolivia’s wealth was concentrated in the upper and middle classes, leaving the poorest Bolivians often without enough to meet their basic needs. Critics of Morales’ regime also point out that Morales rode a commodities boom that recently has come to an end, limiting the Bolivian economy’s ability to grow. The largesse, too, seems to have affected Morales in the same way it affected other socialist leaders; his government, like Venezuela’s, Cuba’s, and Argentina’s, stands accused of widespread corruption.

It’s not clear who will assume power in Bolivia now that Morales is technically out of office. All of the officials aligned with Moraels’ party resigned alongside their leader. The next person in line to take the reins, “the second vice president of Bolivia’s senate, Jeanine Añez,” according to CNN, has said she will gladly take power, but Bolivia’s people — and the Organization of American States — want a new election as soon as possible.

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