Bolivia's pro-cocaine Presidential candidate rides high in polls

By Jan McGirk
Latin America Correspondent- Independent UK

July 5, 2002

The level of popular support in Bolivia for a presidential candidate who opposes American efforts to eradicate the coca crop from which cocaine is produced has started political analysts and angered Washington.

Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian activist, had been dismissed as an outsider, but he is is in third place, just behind Manfred Reyes Villa, a former mayor, and Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a former president and owner of the country's biggest mine, who leads with nearly 25 per cent of the vote. Congress will have to pick the new President, to be inaugurated next month, if none of the 11 candidates wins more than 50 per cent of the ballots cast last Sunday.

Campaigning has concentrated on cocaine, corruption, and anti-globalisation, playing on widespread discontent with the market reforms in the Andean region during the past two decades. Mr Morales entered politics by leading the coca farmers' battle against the US-backed eradication programme.

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