An ally of Hugo Chavez and the Castros has apparently lost a referendum that would have made him eligible to run for office again, past the current constitutional limit.
BBC News reported late Sunday night that exit polls suggest that Bolivian voters rejected Evo Morales’s effort to run for a fourth term as president.
Two early exit polls had a majority of Bolivians voting against the proposed constitutional amendment, but in neither case was the survey overwhelming. One had the “no” vote at 52.3 percent, the other at 51 percent. Public opinion polls in the days leading up to Sunday’s vote had similar findings.
Mr. Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism had pushed Bolivia into alliances with anti-American regimes in the past decade. But apparently voters at home turned against Mr. Morales over scandals at home, suggest his path to socialism involved influence-peddling and cronyism.
In the last week, it was revealed that a Chinese company had named a former Morales lover as a sales manager and then won nearly $500 million in state contracts, most of them no-bid deals.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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