As observers have warned in recent days, the activity in the run-up to the presidential elections in Bolivia scheduled for 17 August has shown deep tensions, and ruptures, in both left-wing and centre-right formations. Thus, all the newspapers in La Paz today have headlines about the definitive break between the small Frente Para la Victoria (Fpv) party and Evo Morales' formation called 'Evo Pueblo' regarding a participation of the former head of state as a presidential candidate within the Fpv. In no uncertain terms, El Deber today headlines 'The Frente Para la Victoria breaks the alliance with Evo Morales', reporting a statement by its president, Eliseo Rodríguez, for whom 'this agreement, this pact we had with him (Evo Morales), today is no longer valid and we are preparing to participate in the next elections, with an alliance or alone'. In a communiqué from his new party, Morales made it known, writes La Razón, that 'we have other options in view of the presidential elections'. On the other centre-right front, reports Opinión Bolivia, after the abandonment of the Unidad Nacional coalition by former president Carlos Mesa due to former head of state Jorge Tuto Quiroga's decision to run in the presidential elections anyway, it seemed that the experience had come to an end, but instead last night it was surprisingly made official that the opposition candidate will be the political leader, businessman and former minister, Samuel Doria Medina'.
With four days to go before the presidential run-off in Ecuador between the outgoing conservative head of state, Daniel Noboa, and the progressive candidate, Luisa Luisa González, the European Union (EU) has deployed a group of 42 so-called 'short term' observers, who have moved to the different Ecuadorian provinces as of today. This group, writes the regional news portal Infobae, has joined 36 other 'long-term' EU observers, who arrived in Ecuador on 23 March, and the ten expert analysts that Brussels sent to Quito last December in anticipation of the elections. The arrival of the new contingent of EU observers is also mentioned by the daily El Comercio, pointing out that a delegation of ten members of the European Parliament is also arriving, accompanied in their activities by several EU ambassadors resident in Ecuador. In total, it is finally said, the Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) deployed by Brussels will have more than 100 observers on election day, repeating what it did during the first round of the presidential elections on 9 February, when it confirmed the transparency of that electoral process'
Finally, in a previously unannounced trip, Argentine President Javier Milei travelled to Paraguay yesterday, together with his foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein, for talks with his counterpart, Santiago Peña, on the very day that the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was taking place in Tegucigalpa. 'Santiago Peña received Javier Milei in the government palace', the Unicanal TV portal headlined, reporting that the Paraguayan head of state said during a press conference that with Milei 'we deepened and reaffirmed our ties of political, commercial and cultural integration, fundamental for the Paraguayan population in Argentina, as well as for Argentines in Paraguay'. For its part, the Hoy newspaper relaunched the praise pronounced by the Argentinean head of state for his Paraguayan colleague, thanking 'the Paraguayan government, especially President Peña, with whom I share a love for the ideas of freedom'. For Milei, the newspaper concludes, 'in recent decades Paraguay has diligently applied the principles of economic freedom and, as a result, has overcome inflation, and for more than 20 years has continued to grow'.
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