Bolivia will vote in the elections on 17^th August in a political situation unprecidented in the last 20 years: the once powerful Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) [Bolivia’s main left-wing party founded by Evo Morales] faces the electoral process divided into three factions and runs the risk of finishing in third or fourth place. For the first time since the end of the 1990s, the left would not be in the run-off, which according to the polls, will pit two candidates located on the right (more moderate and more radical): the liberal-developmentalist politician and businessman Samuel Doria Medina and former president Jorge «Tuto» Quiroga, linked to Latin America’s radical far-right networks in Miami.

The self-destruction of MAS

The internal struggles that began as soon as MAS returned to government in 2020, after its overthrow a year earlier, constituted a true process of self-destruction. MAS is today divided between Arcists –followers of President Luis Arce Catacora–, who kept the MAS acronym through manipulation of the justice system; Evists –adherents to Evo Morales, electorally disqualified and confined to the coca-growing area of Chapare [region where coca leaf is cultivated] to avoid being arrested–; and Androniquists –those who support the candidacy of the Senate President, Andrónico Rodríguez–.

Eduardo del Castillo, the «official» MAS candidate, fails to reach 2% of voting intentions. Foreign to the peasant world that is the «soul» of MAS, Del Castillo was one of the strongmen of Arce’s government, who finally gave up competing for an impossible re-election due to his poor management capacity and an economic crisis that the country had not known since the convulsed early 2000s. As Minister of Government [equivalent to Home Secretary in other countries], Del Castillo was the most visible face of the political and judicial persecution against Evo Morales, undisputed leader of MAS since its foundation.

Andrónico Rodríguez’s candidacy

The best-positioned candidate from the MAS space, who after his launch had possibilities of competing in the run-off, is Andrónico Rodríguez, Morales’s former protégé and whom he chose as successor in the leadership of the coca-growing peasant unions [social organisations of coca leaf producers]. At 36 years old, he represents new generations of peasants with university studies and fluid urban-rural links. But the young leader’s decision to run for the Presidency enraged Morales, who now calls for spoiling the vote as a «referendum» against the electoral process, which has contributed to Andrónico’s candidacy becoming blurred.

After pondering it for months –during which several presidents and former presidents such as Nicolás Maduro, Raúl Castro and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero tried to mediate in the MAS crisis–, Andrónico finally launched his candidacy. Before doing so, he distanced himself from his mentor by not participating in Evist conclaves [meetings of Evo Morales supporters] and embodying a self-critical and renewal discourse, which is why Morales now considers him a traitor. But Andrónico failed to take root in the peasant movement –which is MAS’s main social base– and some of his first support came from questioned figures perceived as opportunists.

The choice of his vice-presidential candidate didn’t help him either. In theory, the young minister Mariana Prado –considered at the time part of the Alvarist wing [followers of former vice-president Álvaro García Linera]– complemented the peasant candidate, with her profile as an urban and «white» technocrat. But her candidacy faced a police case that affected her indirectly but persistently. Her former partner committed a femicide and she was accused, especially by feminists like María Galindo [radical Bolivian feminist activist], of having benefited him in her judicial statement. «Look, Andrónico, you piece of shit, if you stand with Mariana Prado, I’m going to make your life hell Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, from Monday to Monday, because Mariana Prado is a wretch who has defended a femicide perpetrator», Galindo launched with her usual virulent style and, indeed, launched a merciless campaign against Prado.

Andrónico Rodríguez obtained a borrowed party label to stand outside the «Arcist» MAS, with good results in the polls; but facing the MAS government and Evo Morales, the campaign became uphill and threatens to deflate. Only to a certain extent could he be saved if part of the large number of undecided voters and potential null or blank voters finally opted for a useful left-wing vote to avoid the debacle. What could have been a renewal candidacy was dynamited above all by Morales, who expanded the list of «traitors» to include García Linera, his companion as vice-president and «co-pilot» for 14 years.

Samuel Doria Medina: the pragmatic businessman

In the midst of an economic crisis marked by the exhaustion of MAS’s nationalist left-wing model –reduction in gas production, high inflation, fuel shortages and lack of dollars, which also give a nineties air to the current situation–, Bolivian politics seems incapable of renewal. Doria Medina was a minister during Jaime Paz Zamora’s government, between 1991 and 1993, and a presidential candidate for his party, National Unity, on several occasions. Although he is vice-president of the Socialist International (SI) Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, this says more about the ideological «elasticity» of the SI than about Doria Medina’s «socialism», one of Bolivia’s major businessmen.

The economist amassed his fortune in the cement industry and has large real estate properties and hotels, and a «foot» in gastronomy: he owns the Burger King and Subway franchise in Bolivia. «I’m not from the hard right. In Bolivia, I’m considered centre, so I have the capacity to talk to everyone. I’m more pragmatic and I believe Bolivia needs pragmatism», he said in a 2024 interview.

To achieve the Presidency after so many frustrated attempts, marked by his lack of personal charisma, he has built a broad alliance that includes from former La Paz mayor Juan del Granado (centre-left) to the now imprisoned former Santa Cruz governor Luis Fernando Camacho [leader of the radical right from Santa Cruz], passing through several parliamentarians from former president Carlos Mesa’s party [centrist historian and politician]. He also has the support of Bolivia’s richest businessman, Marcelo Claure, who shares with Elon Musk the will for political influence and fascination with trolling on social media.

Doria Medina presents himself as the economist who can resolve the acute economic crisis after a decade and a half of stability and growth in what some called the «economic miracle» under the MAS government; a «miracle» that few consider as such today.

The politician and businessman emphasised, in an Infobae interview, that his government plan aims to stabilise the country in the first 100 days of management. For this, the focus will be on resolving the fiscal deficit, which he attributes mainly to three factors:

– fuel subsidies
– spending on inefficient public companies
– waste in political expenses

His slogan is «One hundred days, damn it». He trusts that, if he wins, investments will arrive and Bolivians will take their dollars out of the «mattress bank» [reference to money kept at home due to distrust in the financial system].

He says he didn’t copy Javier Milei [far-right Argentine president], whose motto is «Long live freedom, damn it!». The businessman suffered a serious plane accident in 2005 and always considered his survival a kind of message. The phrase he supposedly uttered, «Damn it, I can’t die!», after seeing he was still alive, would mark, with or without irony, his political career. He also survived cancer and a kidnapping by Peru’s Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) [Peruvian guerrilla organisation from the 80s and 90s]: he was freed after 45 days, following payment of more than a million dollars [approximately €920,000].

Jorge «Tuto» Quiroga: the hard right

His closest rival is «Tuto» Quiroga, who served as president, by constitutional succession, between 2001 and 2002, after the death in 2002 of Hugo Banzer, the former dictator of the 70s who returned to the Presidency through democratic means in 1997.

In 2005 Quiroga lost the election to Evo Morales, who after obtaining 54% of the votes began his long political reign. A militant of the hard right, he played a central role in Evo’s overthrow in 2019, as one of the designers of the strategy that brought Jeanine Áñez [interim president after Morales’s departure], now imprisoned, to power.

He has indicated that, if he wins, he will break ties with Venezuela, Cuba and Iran («I’m not going to have relations with the three troglodyte totalitarian tyrannies, I’m not going to have relations with the three Caribbean pirates»), but admitted he would analyse Bolivia’s permanence in the BRICS group [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa], due to commercial links with India and China. His defence of democracy, he clarified, is limited to Latin America. «Azerbaijan, Qatar and so forth... China, Vietnam... I respect their systems, I don’t share them. I don’t like the single-party system, but I respect it».

He questioned the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) [South American trade bloc] –«in the commercial part I’m not interested in participating because it’s entering a commercial prison»– and announced he would bet on a «South American triangle» for lithium exploitation [key mineral for electric vehicle batteries], together with Argentina and Chile. With nineties airs, he said he would maintain an «aggressive position» to seek free trade agreements with several countries, including the United States. He differentiated himself, however, from Donald Trump’s [US president] protectionism. «Countries that raise tariffs don’t appeal to me. I’m going to reduce tariffs and I understand perfectly that my response speaks of a United States that is no longer open to free trade. And it’s not just a problem of the current administration. That’s why, like Chile and Peru, I’m going to sign my own trade agreements with Europe, with Asian countries and the region», he responded in a CNN interview.

Following Milei’s trail in Argentina, and even trying to surpass it rhetorically, he said he would use «chainsaw, machete, scissors and everything I can find» to reduce public spending.

The polls and uncertain future

Doria Medina measures around 21% in the polls and Quiroga has approached him with 20%. Third appear Rodrigo Paz, son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, and Cochabamba mayor [important city in central Bolivia] and former presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa. Andrónico Rodríguez appears fourth or fifth, with around 7%. But around 30% declare they will vote blank, null or have not yet decided their vote, which could alter the results, and there are doubts about how the countryside will vote.

The number of null and blank votes will also mark the legitimacy of the new government, which will face adjustment in a country marked by social rebellions –as Quiroga knows, who as vice-president lived through the Water War in Cochabamba in 2000 [massive protest against water privatisation]–. Morales has challenged the electoral process and will seek not to be arrested on a charge of «aggravated human trafficking», for having maintained a relationship, according to the accusation, with a person who was a minor at the time of initiating the relationship. That case, initiated under Áñez’s «interim» presidency, was reactivated by Arce’s government to neutralise Morales amid the internal war.

Return to the 90s?

In this way, Bolivia lends itself to returning to a scenario similar to the 90s, in which successive economic crises combined with a fragmented political system that required constant parliamentary agreements and which became discredited by transforming into a market for exchanging positions. Morales’s own triumph in 2005 was presented as the end of the so-called «pacted democracy» [system of coalitions between traditional parties]. Now, with a Parliament that is presumed will be dominated by the right, possibly that fragmented democracy will be re-enacted. But the world is no longer in the 90s, and neither is Bolivia.

When I interviewed him in 2005, Doria Medina told me that «it’s not a matter of putting [in the Presidency] a person in poncho or pollera [traditional indigenous garments], the solution is carrying out changes in the economy». He could repeat the same today, 20 years later. But those indigenous and popular sectors have today a different relationship with power, although the discourse about national regeneration from indigenous peoples has worn thin.

A question mark opens about the political stability of the future government. And about MAS’s future: will this peasant-popular based space, which in these years was politically hegemonic, be able to overcome its state of decomposition, discouragement and bewilderment, or will it also return to the 90s scenario, when various peasant and left-wing factions spent much of their energies competing amongst themselves?

Today, in a Bolivia that celebrated a lacklustre Bicentenary [celebration of 200 years of independence in 2025], the candidates who until yesterday were «the past» say that, if they win on 17^th August, whoever will be «the past» will be MAS, and that its crisis is «terminal». That it will be the end of a long political cycle.

Pablo Stefanoni