editorial comment All paraphernalia can say is go Morales, go!

A strident left-wing critic of the United States is the favourite to become Bolivia's new president, a result that would send tremors through Washington and delight through an increasingly radical South America.

Evo Morales, who started life herding llamas before becoming a coca grower and then trade unionist, is five percentage points ahead of the competition for tomorrow's poll. If he wins, he would become Bolivia's first indigenous Indian president.


Evo Morales: For legalising the coca leaf industry

He has promised to nationalise the gas industry - the poor Andean nation sits on huge natural reserves - a move that has shocked international investors, including British Gas, a leading presence in the country.

He also wants to legalise and modernise the coca leaf industry, which at a stroke could undermine Washington's multi-billion dollar war on cocaine.

Decriminalisation would probably increase supply of the leaf, which is processed into cocaine, providing drug traffickers with more of the profitable illicit substance.

The charismatic and radical peasant leader, who heads the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism), closed his campaign on Thursday night, saying that his movement was "a nightmare for the United States".

The rally ended a long campaign in which Mr Morales has travelled to mountain hamlets and big cities, hoping to galvanise the poor Indian majority. His anti-American rhetoric has a great deal in common with that of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez. Mr Morales has made no secret of his admiration for both Mr Chavez and President Fidel Castro, of Cuba, whom he describes as two "comandantes of Latin America". Defiance of America has won Mr Chavez every election he has contested and looks likely to work for Mr Morales too.

Unlike Britain, the US does not have quite so much to lose from nationalisation. It is the drugs issue that sends shocks waves through the White House and the threat of yet another rabidly anti-American voice joining the increasingly hostile chorus coming from South America.

Washington has spent billions fighting the cocaine trade in the past five years. Only last month John Walters, the leader of the American war on drugs, said that the policy was working and that the supply of cocaine was being squeezed, with prices rising and purity falling. At the coca market in the capital La Paz, the sellers are keen users of their produce, stuffing coca leaves into their cheeks, allowing the mild stimulant to keep them going during the long day at high altitude. It has been that way for centuries.

However cocaine is a western invention, something at which the Bolivians literally turn up their noses.

"This is a part of our culture," said Luis Tapia, gesturing at the bags of coca leaves for sale. "This has nothing to do with the US obsession with drugs and yet the Americans are telling us we must cut the coca from our lives. Washington is asking us to cut out the heart of our culture."

Mr Morales's features hardened as the inevitable drug question was put to him at his campaign headquarters. "Listen to me, there is no war on drugs, just as there were no weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"The latter was used to invade Iraq and drugs are being used by the US as a pretext to interfere in Latin America.

"Washington has a vested interest in these drugs, which their people consume, as almost all of the money from drugs ends up in the US."

Mr Morales insists that the coca grown legally (on 2,963 acres) is not enough to meet growing legitimate demand for the leaf. America says that already far too much coca is being grown, legally and illegally and that the surplus is being sold to drugs traffickers.

Col Luis Caballero of the police's Special Force in the Fight against Drugs Trafficking, said Bolivia this year produced about 90 tons of cocaine. He is concerned not only by the prospect of increasing supply of coca, but the arrival of foreign drug cartels.

"We are seeing the Mexican cartels moving in, setting themselves up here and creating networks to buy cocaine," he said.

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