Bolivia on the brink: How a presidential election heralds a political shift

Santa Cruz, Bolivia – Bolivia stands at a turning point in its history.

After almost 20 years, the South American nation is about to be governed by a conservative leader.

On October 19, two right-wing politicians will face each other in a run-off election for the presidency: Senator Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party and former President Jorge Quiroga, representing the Libre Alliance.

Whoever prevails, the outcome will break the grip the left-wing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) has had on the presidency for every year but one since 2006.

“There is definitely a very clear shift to the right in Bolivia, stemming from an internal context due to the failure of the socialist model," international affairs analyst Andres Guzman Escobari told Al Jazeera.

The race reflects a broader rightward trend sweeping South America.

Guzman believes the region is entering a new political and economic cycle similar to the early 2000s, when left-wing movements rose to power across Latin America — only to see the pendulum swing in the opposite direction.

“There is another wave, but it won’t be as cohesive or clearly driven by leaders like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez were at the time,” said Guzman.

Already, Argentina has elected its first libertarian president in Javier Milei, and just this year, Ecuador voted right-wing leader Daniel Noboa to his first full term as president.

But Guzman argues Bolivia's presidential race in particular is worth watching. The country's rightward shift, he explained, "is not merely the result of a regional trend or the influence of other countries".

"Rather, it reflects an internal change," he said, citing the public's "exhaustion" with previous left-wing governments.

Guzman also noted that Bolivia is rich with natural resources, including lithium and rare earth minerals that are critical in the technology sector. Major powers will therefore be eyeing the outcome of the vote.

“That gives us an important role in the global power struggle,” said Guzman.

Who are the candidates?

Sunday's vote will be the first time a Bolivian presidential race has progressed to a run-off.

The ballot will present voters with a choice between two brands of conservatism: the more centrist leanings of Paz or the "radical change" promised by Quiroga.

According to sociologist and political analyst Luciana Jauregui, Quiroga speaks more to the country’s business elites, while Paz appeals to the self-employed and informal workers who make up 80 percent of Bolivia's labour force.

“Both seek to deepen capitalism," Jauregui said. "The major differences are that Quiroga proposes a capitalism guided by traditional elites and aimed at benefitting the formal economy and the traditional sectors of the economy."

By contrast, Paz, she said, pursues a more “bottom-up capitalism".

"The popular capitalism that Paz proposes is based on community structures, acknowledges the informal economy, and allows for the recognition and persistence of the identity of [Indigenous] subjects.”

The candidates have played up their contrasting images on the campaign trail.

Paz is known to don traditional costumes to dance in local folk festivals, while Quiroga has cultivated a more international profile: He is a member of the group Libertad y Democracia, a coalition of right-wing leaders from across Latin America and Spain.

Both men, however, have deep roots in Bolivia's political sphere, each with their own personal ties to the presidential office.

Quiroga, for example, was once the running mate on a winning presidential ticket in 1997 with Hugo Banzer, who ruled as a military dictator in the 1970s.

But the ageing Banzer learned he had terminal cancer in the final years of his term, and he resigned in 2001, leaving the executive office to Quiroga.

At just 41 years old, Quiroga became one of the youngest presidents in Bolivia’s history. After completing the year remaining in Banzer's term, he tried to win the presidency himself — only to lose three elections and withdraw from a fourth.

Paz, meanwhile, is the son of a former president, Jaime Paz Zamora. He followed his father into politics, becoming a city councillor and mayor of the southern city of Tarija, as well as representing the area in Bolivia's legislature.

A senator for the last five years, Paz was a dark-horse candidate in the August 17 general election. He was not among the frontrunners in the pre-election polls.

But in a surprise twist, he won the first round with 32 percent of the vote, while Quiroga came in second place with 26 percent.

The importance of the left

In the lead-up to Sunday's vote, Paz is once again trailing. A voter intention survey from the research firm Ipsos Ciesmori, conducted a week before the run-off, showed Quiroga leading with 44.9 percent support.

Paz, meanwhile, garnered the backing of just more than 36.5 percent of respondents. The remaining 20 percent were undecided.

Polls indicate that Quiroga is buoyed by the support of younger, urban and more educated voters — demographics that traditionally lean to the right.

Paz, by contrast, draws his strongest backing from poorer, rural and working-class sectors that had previously supported MAS, the formerly dominant left-wing political party.

The supporters of former left-wing President Evo Morales, however, represent a potential wild card in the upcoming run-off. Many of their votes remain up for grabs: Nearly 1.3 million voters invalidated their ballots during the first round of the election, as an act of protest.

Morales, who led the country from 2006 to 2019, had called for the protest after he was barred from running for a fourth term.

His appeal largely succeeded. Nearly 19 percent of the electorate nullified their ballots, far more than the typical 4 percent "null" rate in past elections.

These voters, concentrated mainly in the central, coca-growing region of Cochabamba, are now pivotal in determining the outcome of the run-off.

“What will be decisive is the null vote of the evismo [the Morales followers] in Cochabamba,” says Jose Luis Exeni, a social researcher and former president of the National Electoral Court.

"The winner there could take the election, but the segment remains undecided."

Many analysts believe that Paz stands the best chance of winning over former Morales supporters, given his outreach to rural and Indigenous voters.

In fact, his largest vote share in the first round came from El Alto, a city historically considered a stronghold of the MAS, Morales's former party, in national elections.

Still, Exeni warns that Morales's diehards could continue their protest into the second round. “They may resist voting for right-wing candidates and lean toward a blank or ‘anti’ vote."

Economy a top issue

The economy, however, is seen as the deciding issue across segments of Bolivian society.

The Ipsos Ciesmori survey found that voters identified Bolivia's economic crisis as their top concern going into the run-off. Other key concerns included the rise in consumer prices and the ongoing fuel shortage.

In recent years, Bolivia has experienced a sharp fall in its natural gas production, the country's main source of export revenue.

With reserves of its primary export nearly depleted, the country has limited ability to earn outside revenue. That has contributed to an acute shortage of United States dollars, which in turn has made it more difficult to import products.

Prices have risen as a result, and an unofficial, parallel market has cropped up to swap the boliviano currency for dollars — albeit at a higher exchange rate than the official standard.

According to Jauregui, the country’s rightward shift is a response to the economic hardships that many attribute to the current government of outgoing President Luis Arce.

But it's also due to the inevitable decline of a left-wing political project that has lost its sense of direction.

“From the outset, the historical MAS project achieved its goals and has run its course; it no longer offers new proposals for a changing society," Jauregui said.

“The economic crisis has exacerbated all of this, driving a search for something different."

To address the economic decline, the two right-wing candidates in this Sunday's run-off have taken distinct approaches.

Quiroga has called for increased international investment and the implementation of austerity measures that would "end wasteful spending" — though critics warn that could come at the expense of social programmes.

"I am here to change everything, dramatically and radically," Quiroga told The Associated Press in August.

Paz, on the other hand, has proposed more gradual reforms under the slogan, "Capitalism for all". Among his proposals are tax cuts, tariff reductions and the decentralisation of the national government.

"Eighty-five percent of the budget is today managed by the central government," Paz told the online newspaper Infobae. "That must change in favour of the regions."

Like Quiroga, Paz has pledged to crack down on government corruption, arguing that, "when money isn't stolen, there is enough for everyone". But unlike Quiroga, Paz believes it would be unwise to seek international loans before the Bolivian economy has stabilised.

Both candidates have also expressed their intention of restoring diplomatic relations with the US, which were severed in 2008 amid tensions over Washington's "war on drugs".

But Paz and Quiroga diverge on a major hot-button economic issue: the continuation of fuel subsidies.

Since the late 1990s, the Bolivian government has sold fuel at a fixed price, something critics say is unsustainable. The subsidies cost the state billions of dollars each year.

Quiroga advocates eliminating the subsidy for all sectors except public transport, while Paz’s campaign team has oscillated between maintaining the subsidy and restricting it to “vulnerable sectors" of the population.

Running mates stir controversy

But while the economy continues to be a central focus for both candidates, their running mates have also shaped public sentiment in the final weeks before the election.

Both Quiroga and Paz chose political outsiders as their vice presidential candidates.

Paz’s running mate, Edmand Lara, is a 40-year-old former police officer who gained fame on TikTok, where he shares an anti-establishment and anticorruption message.

“The person speaking to you is not a traditional politician,” Lara declared during a televised debate two weeks before the election. “I’m one of you — someone who knows the needs and realities of our people, and who understands how Bolivia should be governed.”

Quiroga’s running mate, meanwhile, is Juan Pablo Velasco, a 38-year-old tech entrepreneur who founded startups for food delivery and ride-hailing.

Velasco said his role would be to “digitalise” government services and even asserted that public service should be "sexy".

The comment quickly became a campaign slogan: "Make Bolivia Sexy Again." It was emblazoned on baseball caps in a style reminiscent of US President Donald Trump.

But Velasco has since faced accusations that he published racist posts on social media 15 years ago, denouncing Indigenous people in western Bolivia. Velasco has vehemently denied the accusations.

Lara, too, has faced accusations of using a homophobic slur in his attacks on Quiroga.

This election cycle's controversies are evidence of "dirty" campaign tactics, according to Exeni, the social researcher and former president of the National Electoral Court.

Exeni believes both sides are engaged in mutual defamation, calling it a "deplorable" trend that puts "undermining the opponent" above "debating policies".

He added that this trend could prove dangerous for future governance because the candidates "are destroying bridges” between different political blocs.

Those "bridges" may prove essential later on, he pointed out. No single political force secured a majority in the Legislative Assembly during the last general election.

Whoever wins the presidency will therefore need to forge new alliances to govern. That means reaching out to unions, business leaders and other political parties, Jauregui said.

But she predicts trouble ahead. “I see a fragile administration with unstable loyalties."