BOLIVIAN President Evo Morales said today that he would convene new elections as a bid to reduce tensions after riots by opposition forces seeking to stage “mutinies” in cities across the country.

In what his allies called an “attempted coup,” protesters forced police to retreat to their barracks in at least three cities, while some officers abandoned their posts and joined opposition crowds. In parts of the capital La Paz, pro- and anti-Morales marches clashed, with police reporting about 30 injuries.

Mr Morales called on officers to “preserve security” and invited the four opposition parties with the most votes to sit down together and arrive at “an open agenda to pacify Bolivia.”

Former president and opposition leader Carlos Mesa retorted that he had “nothing to negotiate” with the president, who was re-elected in the first round last month with 47.08 per cent of the vote, more than the required 10-point lead over Mr Mesa, his closest rival, who got 36.5 per cent.

While observers did not report any specific violations, the US-dominated Organisation of American States has demanded a new vote, questioning Mr Morales’s 10-point lead rather than his victory. It now says it is conducting an audit of the vote, though the opposition has said it will not accept the results whatever is found.

Opposition supporters say a sharp increase in Mr Morales’s lead toward the end of counting is suspicious, though the rural districts, which take longest to count the vote, have always disproportionately backed him as South America’s first indigenous national president.

Mr Morales’s government has lifted two million people out of poverty and is the only one worldwide to have conferred legal rights on nature with its Mother Earth law, which makes access to clean air and water a legal right and mandates environmentally sustainable development.

US Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Michael Kozak demanded “credible and transparent elections.” 

Audio recordings of discussions between opposition politicians and some US senators ahead of the elections have been leaked by the Radio Education Network, indicating that the opposition planned with US politicians, including Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, to engage in disruption if it lost.