Last Sunday, October 19, the second electoral round (ballot election) ended in Bolivia through which Rodrigo Paz Pereira of the center-right Christian Democratic Party was elected President of the Republic. Left behind was Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, losing by an overwhelming 9.32 percent. It is initially striking that the result is the product of a peaceful process, with numbers that sufficiently support the legitimacy of the one who succeeds Luis Arce Catacora, an economist by profession, who had been in power since November 2020. He supported the leader Evo Morales at the time, but they finally had a breakup.
The electoral authority knew how to act in accordance with the law, and with undeniable seriousness delivers valid results accepted by a majority, although there are still mobilizations by certain actors who have not admitted this outcome. The loser, “Tuto” Quiroga, accepted the verdict of the polls and the voting candidate in turn recognized this gesture, as should be the case in a free, competitive and practically notable election, if we count what has happened in that country for nearly thirty years.
A cycle has ended. An implosion occurred, and the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), which was once owned by Evo Morales, was not able, due to its internal divisions and brawls, to even go to the second round. At the time, the MAS banned the candidacy of Morales, who played on his own, and that explains why he invited the annulment of the vote, although only in the first round.
The MAS, as a political acronym, remained in the hands of Luis Arce Catacora, once divorced from Evo Morales. It was left behind and that is a significant fact for the readings attempted on the perennial Bolivian dispute, loaded with electoral conflicts and military coups d’état.
Bolivia has just put in place the institutional framework that, if it continues, can encourage democratic normality so that the many conflicts that the country has had and that have not ceased to exist are peacefully resolved, they will be there.
Evo Morales sailed with the flag of electoral annulment in the first round and it can be stated that he has an approximate weight of 15 percent of the voters.
The future president Rodrigo Paz Pereira is a member of a family with a lineage in the exercise of power and is related (grandnephew) to the legendary Víctor Paz Estenssoro and is the son of the former president of Bolivia, Jaime Paz Zamora. The Presidency in the house, in the family.
The new President arrives after 20 years of left-wing governments and in the midst of an economic crisis that will not be remedied with neoliberal recipes. The new leader talks about “capitalism for all” and everyone wants to know what that is.
The triumph of Paz Pereira should not be taken, however, only as an electoral struggle of the right represented by him and the losing candidate, “Tuto” Quiroga, much less represent an endorsement to ignore the strength of the social sectors of Bolivia, permanently mobilized.
Nor should it be considered that this victory has to dismantle the need to maintain an agenda that accompanies policies that favor the fight against discrimination against peasant groups, rural indigenous peoples, native peoples, and systemic exclusion in that country.
As a result of the first round, it appears that Rodrigo Paz will nevertheless take power in November with a Congress where his party does not have the majority, and that will force him to generate conditions for governability.
In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum regretted the division of the MAS in Bolivia and, until the time of writing this column, there was no news that she had come out to publicly recognize the triumph of Rodrigo Paz.
For now, the undeniable is imposed: power does not last forever.
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