Bolivia is in crisis (throwback to what we said last month)

Excerpt from the GEAB 138 / 15 Oct. 2019:

“The left-wing president, Evo Morales, is running for a fourth term despite the constitutional limit and a referendum against circumventing the law in 2016. His very good economic record and popularity give him a significant chance of winning the first round. But, used to being elected in the first round with 60% of the votes, Morales could experience a less comfortable campaign this time, gaining only 40% of the votes. Some even believe that he won’t necessarily win the second round against his main opponent, former President Carlos Mesa, who held power for less than two years (October 2003 – June 2005) in the context of a severe gas crisis. We anticipate that Morales will nevertheless be re-elected, but that “affairs” may catch up with him and he will have more difficulty governing because he is almost certain to lose his parliamentary majority. A strange character, Chi Hyun Chung, a naturalised Bolivian Korean, founder of 70 Protestant churches in Bolivia and president of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in America, is rising in the polls and will pass his votes to Mesa, himself a member of the Washington-based think-tank Inter-American Dialogue. Given this political landscape, we anticipate that Bolivia is approaching new times of crisis. We shouldn’t forget that this country, like Venezuela with its oil, became a major regional gas power in the early 2000s when its reserves proved to be 6 times higher than first estimated. So, the vultures must be prowling around….”
(in reference to Morales’ resignation after his re-election and the demonstrations that followed)