A leftist landslide in the Andes

摘要

He was expected to win, but not this big. According to a partial count confirmed by exit polls, in an election on December 18th Evo Morales won some 48% of the vote, well ahead of Jorge Quiroga, a conservative, with 35%. That would give Mr Morales, a socialist and cocaworkers' leader of Aymaran Indian descent, the clearest mandate of any president since democracy was restored to this country of 9m in the early 1980s. So Bolivia will now lurch to the left-and perhaps towards confrontation with the United States.