Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator who had never been a nationally prominent figure until now, won Bolivia’s presidential election on Sunday, preliminary results showed — galvanising voters outraged by the country’s economic crisis and frustrated after 20 years of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party.
“The trend is irreversible,” said Óscar Hassenteufel, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which released early results showing that Paz, 58, secured more than 54 per cent of the vote. His rival, former right-wing president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, took just over 45 per cent.
Paz and his popular running mate, former police captain Edman Lara, gained traction among working-class and rural voters disillusioned with the unrestrained spending of the long-ruling MAS party but wary of a radical turn away from its social protections.
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Although Paz plans to end Bolivia’s fixed exchange rate, phase out generous fuel subsidies and cut back public investment, he has pledged a gradual approach to free-market reforms in hopes of avoiding a sharp recession or a spike in inflation that could further anger the public.
Quiroga, by contrast, advocated turning to the International Monetary Fund for a shock-therapy package of the kind Bolivians came to know and fear in the 1990s.
Paz’s victory sets this nation of 12 million on a sharply uncertain path as he seeks to enact major change for the first time since the 2005 election of Evo Morales — the founder of MAS and Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.
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Since 2023, the Andean nation has been crippled by a shortage of US dollars that has locked Bolivians out of their own savings and hampered imports. Year-on-year inflation soared to 23 per cent last month — the highest rate since 1991 — while fuel shortages have paralysed the country, with motorists often waiting days in line to fill their tanks.
Both Quiroga and Paz vowed to break with the budget-busting populism that has dominated Bolivia under the MAS party.
“We are closing one cycle and opening another,” Paz told supporters as he cast his ballot in his hometown of Tarija alongside his father, former president Jaime Paz Zamora, earlier Sunday.
Some voters said they felt energised by the promise of change as they lined up to vote.
“Since 2005 we haven’t had any real options, so this is exciting for me,” said Carlos Flores, 41, a secondary school teacher waiting to vote for Paz.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
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