Analysts believe 65-year-old Mesa, a historian and journalist who previously governed Bolivia between 2003 and 2005, is the only hope of uniting the whole opposition against Morales. With a robust economy and unprecedented political stability, Bolivia’s divided opposition is basing its strategy on the referendum controversy. “President Morales is no longer part of the present, and much less of the future: he is part of the past. A July poll put Morales and Mesa nearly neck-and-neck in the first round of voting, with 27 percent of the vote going to Morales and 25 percent to Mesa. It predicted Mesa would then beat Morales by 48 percent to 32 percent.

Source: The Guardian October 06, 2018 19:18 UTC