Tuto Quiroga – Not Quite a Concession, But About as Close as You Get

At 9pm local time Tuto Quiroga held a grim-faced news conference in La Paz in which he thanked his supporters, congratulated Evo Morales, and didn’t explicitly answer the question, would he seek to win the presidency through an anybody-but-Evo coalition in the Congress. He pledged to stay in Bolivia and said he would serve the Bolivian people “be it in the government or the opposition”.

In politics you call that leaving the door open but, if the current results hold, there really isn’t much of door to keep open. It is hard to imagine anyone, Quiroga included, wanting to be president, after being trounced by Morales. In reality, Quiroga’s speech makes a Morales presidency seem like a full-on certainty at this point.