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President Morales Falls to 61% in Bolivia
- Evo Morales continues to lose public support in Bolivia, according to a poll by Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado. 61 per cent of respondents approve of their president's performance, down seven points since July.
Morales—an indigenous leader—won the December 2005 presidential election as the candidate for the Movement to Socialism (MAS), with 53.72 per cent of the vote. He officially took over as Bolivia's head of state in January.
On Aug. 6, the National Constituent Assembly, tasked with re-writing Bolivia's constitution, held its first session. The assembly can sit for one year, and its proposed body of law must be approved by two-thirds of the 255 lawmakers, and then ratified in a nationwide referendum.
On Sept. 1, Morales alleged that the opposition We Can (Podemos) party was attempting to sabotage the proceedings of the National Constituent Assembly. MAS members have called for doing away with the two-thirds consensus and opting for a simple majority in order to pass motions. The governing party controls 135 of the 255 assembly seats
Polling Data
Do you approve or disapprove of Evo Morales' performance as president?
Aug. 2006 | Jul. 2006 | Jun. 2006 | |
Approve | 61% | 68% | 75% |
Disapprove | 33% | 24% | 20% |
No opinion | 9% | 8% | 5% |
Source: Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado
Methodology: Interviews with 1,032 Bolivian adults in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, conducted from Aug. 14 to Aug. 21, 2006.
Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.