LA PAZ: Bolivia sworn in leftist Evo Morales as its first indigenous president yester in a festive climate as the poor Indian majority celebrates the long-awaited rise to power of one of its own.

Morales took office after winning 54 per cent of the vote on December 18 in the biggest landslide since the country's return to democracy in 1982. Bolivians rich and poor hope the historic handover will bring stability to their nation, South America's poorest, where the two previous presidents were toppled by street protests.

In an unprecedented show of international support for the landlocked country, 12 heads of state were in the world's highest capital to watch the Aymara Indian and coca growers' leader don the presidential sash in Congress.

Many of those presidents are fellow Latin American leftists, a reflection of the region's shift leftward as voters reject free-market economic policies that did little to bring down high poverty rates.

"We, the poor, also have the right to govern and in Bolivia, the poor indigenous have the right to be presidents," Morales told his followers on Saturday as an indigenous ritual at the sacred pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku.

Morales, 46, was born in a hardscrabble highland village, herded llamas as a boy and saw four of his six siblings die as babies. A bachelor of modest means, he eschews the Western coat and tie in favour of a striped pullover and has cut his presidential salary in half to US$1,700 a month.

In closing his election campaign, he said his Movement to Socialism party was "a nightmare for the United States."

But Morales has tempered his speech in the last month in what many see as a sign of pragmatism and a desire to unite the indigenous majority and the European-descended elite.

He maintains his anti-eradication stance but now vows to fight the narcotics trade and has pledged to turn the page with Washington.

Late on Saturday, Morales met the top US official for Latin America, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon. They said they will work together and plan to set up a series of meetings, but made no mention of the war on drugs that divides them.

Source: China Daily