Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a U.S.-educated mining magnate and former planning minister, is to take office Friday as president of Bolivia, South America's poorest country. Sanchez de Lozada, 63, finished first in popular elections June 6 with about one-third of the votes.
Under Bolivia's constitution, if no candidate wins an absolute majority at the polls, the Congress chooses the president from among the top three finishers. But second-placer Hugo Banzer, a retired general who was Bolivia's military president for seven years in the 1970s, withdrew, clinching Sanchez de Lozada's claim.
