Morales wins Bolivia re-election

Evo Morales has easily won re-election in Bolivia's presidential vote, getting more than 60 per cent of the ballots, according to exit polls.

Morales had a 38 percentage point lead over his closest challenger, former governor Manfred Reyes Villa, according to the polls on Sunday.

Victory would cement Morales' dominance over Bolivian politics and a severely weakened and divided conservative opposition tied to the country's business elite.

If confirmed, Sunday's victory would allow Morales to expand leftist reforms which have made him popular with the country's poor but have also angered powerful business groups.

Bolivia's first indigenous president - a former llama herder who never attended high school - has a 60 per cent approval rating, much of it from the country's indigenous majority.

Reaching out

But he has recently reached out to the country's middle class in an effort to expand his popularity.

"I'm surprised so many sectors are supporting [me]," the Reuters news agency quoted Morales as telling reporters last Tuesday.

"What are the businessmen and the upper-middle classes saying? They are saying: it will be an Indian, but he has respected us.

"You have to support Evo Morales. Those are good messages and that makes me think that [we will win] more than 70 per cent [of the vote]."

Since he took office in 2006, Morales has instituted quotas to give indigenous posts in the military and created a special school for aspiring diplomats with native backgrounds. He has also started three indigenous universities.

A close ally of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, Morales also nationalised Bolivia's oil and gas sector in a move that helped lift the country's economy out of the red and build $8bn in reserves.

Criticism

But he has also angered other Bolivians who have seen their landholdings decreased as part of the president's reforms.

Opponents say he has failed to increase output in the oil and gas sector, stamp out corruption in the state-run energy company and develop the natural gas industry.

Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo, reporting from the administrative capital, La Paz, said the pattern of voting, according to exit polls, indicated how divided the country still is, with the richest provinces continuing to oppose Morales.

Morales received only about 40 per cent of the votes in Santa Cruz, a key province that has opposed his presidency and sought autonomy from his central government, whereas he garnered more than 70 per cent in La Paz.

But Sunday's unofficial results indicate the opposition, which repeatedly challenged Morales in the early years of his presidency, is weakened even though it retains strong support in eastern regions, home to many of the country's natural resources and leading businesses.

Our correspondent also reported that while there were some complaints about missing ballots and tampering of ballot papers, according to election council officials, the Organisation of American States and the EU monitors were satisfied with the conduct of the election.

Morales' likely re-election to a second term was made possible after he won a referendum that lifted the one-term limit for president.

The move mirrored similar moves by other Latin American leaders including Chavez and Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president.