Bolivian president halts hunger strike

Bolivia’s president Evo Morales ended his five-day hunger strike after the country’s Congress approved an electoral proposal.

At a public ceremony in La Paz, Morales signed into law the bill which allows him to run for reelection on December 6, grants 14 congressional seats for indigenous candidates and permits Bolivians abroad to vote. Legislators reached the compromise in the pre-dawn hours after days of negotiating.

After signing the proposal, Morales thanked domestic supporters as well as foreign followers that held their own hunger strikes in solidarity with him:

Morales, a husky Aymara Indian, looked exhausted and a few pounds thinner as he formally enacted the law before a crowd that chanted "Evo, the people are with you!"

Morales, 49, had spent the weekend reclining on a mattress in the presidential palace, drinking chamomile tea and chewing coca leaves, a mild stimulant that helps suppress the appetite.

"The people should not forget that you need to fight for change. We alone can't guarantee this revolutionary process, but with people power it's possible," the leftist leader said before dawn, flanked by 13 union activists who joined him in the fast.

Last week Morales claimed that he was going through his eighteenth hunger strike and that he once went eighteen days without eating when he was a union leader protesting the eradication of coca.

Image- BBC News
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg