{"id":351002,"date":"2025-08-17T06:17:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T06:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351002\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T06:17:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T06:17:17","slug":"bolivians-go-to-polls-in-election-that-could-end-20-years-of-socialism-bolivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351002\/","title":{"rendered":"Bolivians go to polls in election that could end 20 years of socialism | Bolivia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bolivians are going to the polls in an election that could mark a shift to the right \u2013 and the end of nearly 20 years of rule<\/a> by the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).<\/p>\n

The party, which came to power with the first election<\/a> of Evo Morales<\/a> in 2005, risks losing its legal status if it fails to reach 3% \u2013 a threshold it has not hit in polls.<\/p>\n

Two opposition candidates are virtually tied: centre-right business tycoon and former planning minister Samuel Doria Medina followed closely by rightwing former president Jorge \u201cTuto\u201d Quiroga.<\/p>\n

Deeply unpopular amid the country\u2019s worst economic crisis in four decades, president Luis Arce, 61, decided not to run.<\/p>\n

A former finance minister under Morales for 14 years, Arce took control of Mas gradually in recent years. He has nominated his 36-year-old minister of government, Eduardo del Castillo, who has been polling about 2%, to run for president.<\/p>\n

Morales, 65, is the target of an arrest warrant<\/a> for allegedly fathering a child with a 15-year-old that has led him to become entrenched in a coca-growing region<\/a> of central Bolivia since October in an attempt to run for office again.<\/p>\n

After registering with another party but being barred by constitutional and electoral court rulings, Bolivia\u2019s first Indigenous president called protests that escalated into deadly clashes with police<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He is urging supporters to cast null votes on Sunday, claiming that if these outnumber the leading candidate\u2019s tally, it would mean he had won<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore Morales\u2019s call, null votes were about 10%; now they\u2019re 12%. Even if it rises, I doubt it will go much higher \u2013 and null votes have many causes, not just him,\u201d said political analyst Carlos Toranzo.<\/p>\n

As polls have historically been unreliable in Bolivia<\/a>, and many voters remain undecided, Toranzo believes there is still \u201ca small chance\u201d that a third name could make it to a potential runoff against Doria Medina or Quiroga: 36-year-old senator Andr\u00f3nico Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n

The highest-polling figure on the left, placing between third and fifth, Rodr\u00edguez was once seen as Morales\u2019s natural heir due to his Indigenous roots and leadership in the coca growers\u2019 union, but was called a traitor for launching his own candidacy.<\/p>\n

A longtime Mas member, the senator chose to leave the party and run with the leftwing coalition Alianza Popular \u2013 yet another sign of how fragmented the left\u2019s vote has become.<\/p>\n

Enrique Mamani, leader of the Aymara Indigenous organisation Ponchos Rojos, said he would back the senator, calling Morales the real traitor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose calling for null votes are a handful of traitors to the struggle of our grandparents, who shed their blood and gave their lives so that one day we could have this right to vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

About 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote, with preliminary results due at 9pm local time.<\/p>\n

The central issue of the campaign is the economic crisis, which analysts consider the worst since the 1985 hyperinflation, with shortages of dollars and fuel, long queues<\/a> and soaring inflation.<\/p>\n

If no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote, or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the runner-up, an unprecedented second round will take place on 19 October.<\/p>\n

For analyst Toranzo, one thing is certain: Mas will leave power, although it will be \u201cdifficult for them to hand it over, because they have held it for 20 years with near-absolute control of parliament, the judiciary and the electoral authority\u201d.<\/p>\n

Arce told the Guardian<\/a> that he would respect the result if the right won.<\/p>\n

Although acknowledging that his government was unpopular, he placed much of the blame for both the crisis and Mas\u2019s decline on his former mentor, Morales, whose parliamentary allies, he said, \u201csabotaged and boycotted all our laws\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Fidel Castro wrote in his book, \u2018history will absolve us\u2019 because in the long run the people will understand everything we had to endure,\u201d said Arce, adding: \u201cI\u2019m sure the population will miss us afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bolivians are going to the polls in an election that could mark a shift to the right \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-351002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115042650950918528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}