MADRID, 18 (EUROPA PRESS)
The Alianza Libre presidential candidate for Bolivia, Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, has obtained more than 40 percent of the votes among Bolivians who cast their ballots in Spain, according to provisional results from the electoral commission.
More than 82,200 Bolivians were eligible to participate in Spain's elections on Sunday, in which the South American country was to elect its president for the next five years. In the end, only about 21,500 did so.
Four out of ten valid votes went to Quiroga, according to statistics from the Plurinational Electoral Body based on 60 percent of the votes already counted. These results would have been enough for the conservative leader to return to power without the need for a runoff.
Meanwhile, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) candidate, Rodrigo Paz, who unexpectedly won the first round of the general election, is hovering around 18 percent in Spain, slightly ahead of Manfred Reyes and Samuel Doria Medina.
Official data also show an increase in spoiled votes, which former President Evo Morales had used as a gesture of criticism of a process he considered illegitimate. Nearly 12 percent of votes in Spain fall into this category, which makes no distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts.
In any case, Bolivia will have to wait until October to find out who will succeed leftist Luis Arce as president, as Paz and Quiroga will face off in a final contest on the 19th of that month in an unprecedented runoff.
