LA PAZ, BOLIVIA — Voters appeared to have handed Bolivian President Evo Morales a resounding victory Sunday, with exit polls showing they had approved a new constitution that will advance indigenous rights, strengthen state control over natural resources and permit him to seek another term.
Morales addressed a cheering crowd in the plaza before the presidential palace here Sunday night to claim victory and declare that "Bolivia has been re-founded" and that "neoliberalism has been defeated."
According to exit polls by two television stations and a political consulting firm, at least 56% of voters approved the 411-article constitution.
The final count of votes is not expected for several days.
Approval of the constitution, which caps a two-year campaign by Morales, will give expanded discretionary powers to the president, such as the ability to dissolve Congress. He will also be eligible to run for a second five-year term late next year. The earlier constitution did not allow consecutive terms.
Observers expect him to dissolve Congress and call for new elections ahead of scheduled December 2009 balloting.
As expected, voters in the western highland states such as La Paz with large indigenous populations overwhelmingly approved the new charter, according to the preliminary results, while voters in the four eastern states that passed autonomy measures last year were resoundingly opposed.
For many voters interviewed Sunday in the city of La Paz, the nation's capital, the most salient features of the new charter are the strengthened rights for Bolivia's three dozen ethnic groups, which make up about a third of Bolivia's 9.2 million population. The word "indigenous" appears 130 times in the new constitution.
According to clauses in the new document, those groups will now be able to eschew the traditional court system and resort to their own "community justice," claim some nationalized lands as their own and receive a greater share of royalties on minerals and energy developed on or beneath those lands.
Interviews with residents of El Alto, a sprawling, mostly indigenous and mixed-race suburb of the capital, reflected high hopes that native communities will now have the stake in national life that many believe has long been denied them. Preliminary counts showed 82% of residents there approved the measure.
