Bolivians began voting on Sunday (October 19, 2025) in their country’s first presidential runoff that pits two conservative, capitalist candidates against each other, ushering in a new political era after two decades of one-party rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party.

Voters are choosing between former right-wing President Jorge ‘Tuto’ Quiroga and centrist Sen Rodrigo Paz as they look for a leader to lift them out of their country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Since 2023, the Andean nation has been crippled by a shortage of U.S. dollars that has locked Bolivians out of their own savings and hampered imports. The value of a boliviano on the black market is half the official exchange rate.

Year-on-year inflation soared to 23 per cent last month, the highest rate since 1991. Fuel shortages paralyse the country.

Both Mr. Quiroga and Mr. Paz have billed themselves as candidates of change, vowing to break with the budget-busting populism that dominated Bolivia under the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party founded by Evo Morales, a charismatic coca growers’ union leader who became Bolivia’s first Indigenous President in 2006.

Riven by internal divisions and battered by public anger over fuel lines, MAS suffered a historic defeat in the August 17 election.

The rivals in the dead-heat runoff vow to end Bolivia’s fixed exchange rate, restructure state-owned companies and attract foreign investment. Among the factors that most distinguish them is how far and fast they propose pushing their reforms.

Voting in the runoff is compulsory and around 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to cast ballot.

Differing approaches to change

Mr. Quiroga wants to get dollars flowing into Bolivia immediately with a big rescue package from the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral lenders.

That would demand savage cuts in state spending, such as slashing fuel subsidies, shrinking the public payroll and cutting the state out of Bolivia’s gas and mining businesses. His supporters say that’s the change their country needs.

“I think Quiroga is better prepared,” said Mirian Chávez, a 24-year-old architecture student. “The crisis needs to be resolved now.” Mr. Paz favours a more cautious approach. He says he’ll phase out fuel subsidies gradually and provide MAS-style social protections like cash handouts to the poor to cushion the blow.

“I don’t want a neo-liberal President who imposes shock measures,” said 27-year-old taxi driver Marcelino Choque.

Shunning the IMF — an organisation viewed with contempt in Bolivia during the nearly two decades of left-wing rule — Mr. Paz promises to scrape together dollars by legalising Bolivia’s black market and fighting corruption.

“One candidate thinks that the first thing to do is to call the IMF, and the other thinks that we first need to review the internal accounts to see how we are misusing the money,” said Veronica Rocha, a Bolivia political analyst.

Battle of optics

Although Mr. Paz, the son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993), has spent more than two decades in politics as a lawmaker and mayor, he appeared in this race as a political unknown. The senator rose unexpectedly from the bottom of the polls to a first-place finish in the August vote. He beat Mr. Quiroga, but didn’t secure enough votes to avoid a runoff.

His popularity, experts say, was further buoyed by the outsider status of his running mate, Edmand Lara.

“Captain Lara,” as he’s known, was fired from the police in 2023 for denouncing corruption in viral TikTok videos that drew a huge following from the working-class residents of the Bolivian highlands — former MAS supporters who appreciated the party’s egalitarian ethos but soured on its taxes and regulation.

The pair mounted a fast-paced underdog campaign, crisscrossing cities and rural communities to throw beer-soaked, no-frills events with the message of “capitalism for all.” They played up their contrast with the wealthy Mr. Quiroga and his large campaign war chest.

Mr. Quiroga briefly served as President from 2001-2002, after his predecessor Hugo Banzer fell ill and stepped down. He has unsuccessfully run for President three times since.

Vast task ahead

The next President faces a task that’s about as simple as running a marathon in Bolivia’s highlands — altitude: 4,150 m (13,600 feet).

In the heady early days of Mr. Morales’ long tenure (2006-2019), a boom in natural gas exports underwrote the state’s unbridled spending. Now, gas exploration and production have collapsed. But Bolivia continues to splurge to keep fuel practically free, paying $2 billion last year on the subsidies.

The candidates agree that the elimination of fuel subsidies is key to restoring fiscal order.

But previous attempts didn’t go well: Mr. Morales’ bid to lift fuel subsidies in 2011 lasted less than a week as mass protests engulfed the country.

Public transportation unions have already threatened to ignite unrest, if fuel subsidies are lifted. Before the second round of the election, Mr. Quiroga and Mr. Paz have toned down their rhetoric about tough austerity, promising voters that they’ll move at a palatable pace. Some have their doubts.

“We had one type of candidate in the first round, and a different type in the second round,” Ms. Rocha said. “They’ve softened up and contradicted themselves so many times.”

Result would be felt across the region

Whoever wins, the end of MAS after around 20 years of hegemony will trigger a major economic and geopolitical realignment that could reverberate across the continent. The candidates say they’ll welcome foreign investment and encourage private enterprise in Bolivia, which has the world’s greatest lithium resources, but has long failed to get production going.

The election also means a shift away from Bolivia’s current allies, China and Russia, and toward the United States, after decades of anti-American hostility.

During frenzied campaigning last month, both Mr. Quiroga and Mr. Paz flew to Washington to meet with IMF and Trump administration officials.

“Both candidates running in the runoff election want strong and better relations with the United States, so that’s another transformative opportunity,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a news conference Tuesday as U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Argentine President Javier Milei, a close ally, to the White House.

“Like Bolivia, there are numerous other countries coming our way,” Mr. Trump said.

Polls opened in Bolivia for presidential and congressional elections that could spell the end of the Andean nation’s long-dominant leftist party and see a right-wing government elected for the first time in over two decades.

The election on Sunday (August 17, 2025) is one of the most consequential for Bolivia in recent times — and one of the most unpredictable.

Even at this late stage, a remarkable 30% or so of voters remain undecided. Polls show the two leading right-wing candidates, multimillionaire business owner Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge Fernando “Tuto” Quiroga, locked in a virtual dead heat.

Many undecided voters

But a right-wing victory isn’t assured. Many longtime voters for the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, now shattered by infighting, live in rural areas and tend to be undercounted in polling.

With the nation’s worst economic crisis in four decades leaving Bolivians waiting for hours in fuel lines, struggling to find subsidised bread and squeezed by double-digit inflation, the opposition candidates are billing the race as a chance to alter the country’s destiny.

“I have rarely, if ever, seen a situational tinderbox with as many sparks ready to ignite,” Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, founding partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, a New York-based advisory firm, writes in a memo. Breaking the MAS party’s monopoly on political power, he adds, pushes “the country into uncharted political waters amid rising polarisation, severe economic fragility and a widening rural–urban divide.”

Bolivia could follow a rightward trend.

The outcome will determine whether Bolivia — a nation of about 12 million people with the largest lithium reserves on Earth and crucial deposits of rare earth minerals — follows a growing trend in Latin America, where right-wing leaders like Argentina’s libertarian Javier Milei, Ecuador’s strongman Daniel Noboa and El Salvador’s conservative populist Nayib Bukele have surged in popularity.

A right-wing government in Bolivia could trigger a major geopolitical realignment for a country now allied with Venezuela’s socialist-inspired government and world powers such as China, Russia and Iran.

Conservative candidates vow to restore U.S. relations.

Mr. Doria Medina and Mr. Quiroga have praised the Trump administration and vowed to restore ties with the United States, ruptured in 2008 when charismatic, long-serving former President Evo Morales expelled the American ambassador.

The right-wing front-runners have also expressed interest in doing business with Israel, which has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia, and called for foreign private companies to invest in the country and develop its rich natural resources.

After storming to office in 2006 at the start of the commodities boom, Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, nationalised the nation’s oil and gas industry, using the lush profits to reduce poverty, expand infrastructure and improve the lives of the rural poor.

After three consecutive presidential terms, as well as a contentious bid for an unprecedented fourth in 2019 that set off popular unrest and led to his ouster, Morales has been barred from this race by Bolivia’s constitutional court.

His ally-turned-rival, President Luis Arce, withdrew his candidacy for the MAS on account of his plummeting popularity and nominated his Senior Minister, Eduardo del Castillo.

As the party splintered, Andronico Rodriguez, the 36-year-old president of the senate who hails from the same union of coca farmers as Morales, launched his bid.

Ex-president Morales urges supporters to deface ballots

Rather than back the candidate widely considered his heir, Mr. Morales, holed up in his tropical stronghold and evading an arrest warrant on charges related to his relationship with a 15-year-old girl, has urged his supporters to deface their ballots or leave them blank.

Voting is mandatory in Bolivia, where some 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote.

Mr. Doria Medina and Mr. Quiroga, familiar faces in Bolivian politics who both served in past neoliberal governments and have run for president three times before, have struggled to stir up interest as voter angst runs high.

“There’s enthusiasm for change but no enthusiasm for the candidates,” said Eddy Abasto, 44, a Tupperware vendor in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz torn between voting for Doria Medina and Quiroga. “It’s always the same, those in power live happily spending the country’s money, and we suffer.”

Conservative candidates say austerity is needed.

Mr. Doria Medina and Mr. Quiroga have warned of the need for a painful fiscal adjustment, including the elimination of Bolivia’s generous food and fuel subsidies, to save the nation from insolvency. Some analysts caution that this risks sparking social unrest.

“A victory for either right-wing candidate could have grave repercussions for Bolivia’s Indigenous and impoverished communities,” said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. “Both candidates could bolster security forces and right-wing para-state groups, paving the way for violent crackdowns on protests expected to erupt over the foreign exploitation of lithium and drastic austerity measures.”

All 130 seats in Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, are up for grabs, along with 36 in the Senate, the upper house.

If, as is widely expected, no one receives more than 50% of the vote, or 40% of the vote with a lead of 10% points, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff on October 19 for the first time since Bolivia’s 1982 return to democracy.

Published – August 17, 2025 07:09 pm IST

Former Air Force Commander Marcelo Zegarra is escorted by police in handcuffs in La Paz, Bolivia, on June 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Bolivian officials announced on June 28 that they had arrested four more military officers in connection with Wednesday’s thwarted coup against the government of President Luis Arce, raising to 21 the number of detainees allegedly linked to a rogue general’s mutiny attempt.

In a press conference, senior Cabinet member Eduardo del Castillo said those arrested include the driver of a tank that repeatedly rammed into the doors of the government headquarters and a former infantry captain accused of giving orders to soldiers who took over the capital’s central Plaza Murillo.

“These people commanded the destruction of Bolivian heritage,” Mr. del Castillo said.

A ‘self-coup’?

The coup attempt was led by Juan José Zuñiga, who until his public sacking and arrest on Wednesday was the commanding general of the army. Mr. Zuñiga has alleged, without providing evidence, that Mr. Arce ordered him to carry out the rebellion in a ruse to boost his flagging popularity as he struggles to manage a spiralling economy and bubbling public discontent.

Mr. Arce vigorously denied accusations that he had carried out a “self-coup” to garner political support.

The embattled president is vying for control of his ruling socialist party with powerful ex-President Evo Morales ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The political feud has left Bolivians disillusioned and bewildered as to what happened during those three chaotic hours on Wednesday when tanks rolled into downtown Mr. La Paz and Mr. Arce confronted the putschists face-to-face and ordered Zuñiga to stand down.

Authorities say the 21 detainees include a man suspected of conducting intelligence work outside the presidential palace as the coup was underway and an army sergeant who allegedly coordinated the coup using FaceTime and other social media apps.

Crowds gathered outside the cells of a La Paz jail, with one group waiting to meet their family members detained inside and another rallying in support of the government, setting off fireworks and calling for Mr. Zúñiga to be punished.

Maria Tarifa, one of the lawyers of the jailed generals, declined to share details of the case. “They’re waiting to obtain justice that is concrete and as objective as possible,” she said of the detainee’s family.

Mr. Zúñiga on Friday morning was marched through the jail handcuffed and surrounded by police. His wife sat with eyes downcast, holding a small bag of snacks as she waited for the general to emerge.