Bolivia's Arce says he's open to relations with US

In contrast to his mentor Evo Morales, Luis Arce, Bolivia's potential president, announced that he will push for a policy "open to all" governments and intends to change the damaged relationship with the United States.

He still wears the jeans and shirt he used during the campaign. Arce hasn't stopped smiling since Sunday when independent surveys of selected polling places gave Arce the victory in the first round. Official counts of 72% of the votes counted have him as the winner of the first round with more than 50% of the votes.

While Bolivia appeared to be shifting sharply away from the conservative policies of the US-backed interim government that took power last year after leftist President Morales resigned, Arce,  the former Minister of the Economy, said he would not be subordinate to Morales.

He said his government would not be in the "shadow" of Morales, nor "do everything he whispers in our ear."

Arce further emphasized that complaints opened against Morales, who is self-exiled in Buenos Aires, would need to be resolved by the former president.

"That is in the mechanism of the judicial body, we do not resolve it," Arce said.

He assured that, while Morales is part of the MAS party, he is a very different person from the ex-President, but that he does have some similarities.

Arce said his government will make decisions and work differently.

Among those decisions is the redirection of diplomatic relations with all countries including the United States which still has no ambassador exchange since 2008 when Morales expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, accusing him fomenting civil unrest against his administration.

Arce said he has no problem with the United States or any other country and that his government will be "open" to all.

Arce also assured that he will maintain Morales' drug policy.

He also proposed to resume relations with Venezuela and Cuba whose governments did not recognize the government of Interim President Janine Añez and lamented the way international relations have been carried out in the last 12 months, saying that Bolivia has missed out on opportunities as a result.

"We have lost the opportunity to have access to medicines for coronavirus, Cuba aid, Cuban telemedicine," he said.

Arce, who oversaw a surge in growth and a sharp reduction in poverty as Morales' economy minister for more than a decade, will struggle to reignite that growth.

The boom in prices for Bolivia's mineral exports that helped feed that progress has faded, and the new coronavirus has hit impoverished, landlocked Bolivia harder than almost any other country on a per capita basis.

Nearly 8,400 of its 11.6 million people have died of COVID-19.