LA PAZ: Opinion polls predicted that Bolivias first indigenous president Evo Morale’s would win another term and take control of congress after a tumultuous first term. Aymara and Quechua Indians queued from early last morning at polling stations to vote for the former llama herder and coca farmer, who has nationalised key sectors of the economy, boosted social spending and clashed with the US.

Bolivia’s transformation was irreversible and redressed a historic injustice, said Fidel Surco, an indigenous leader and senate candidate for Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism party.

“There is no way back, this is our time, the awakening of the indigenous people. We’ll keep fighting till the end. Evo Morales still has lots to do — one cannot think that four years are enough after 500 years of submission and oppression.”

As well as pensions and subsidies for slums and impoverished rural highlands, the government has championed indigenous languages and traditional community justice, in a constitutional overhaul earlier this year. “The decision is for change,” Morales said after voting in Chapare.