Two right-wing candidates headed to Bolivia presidential run-off
Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise frontrunner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast.
Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise frontrunner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast.
LA PAZ (AFP) — A center-right senator and a right-wing ex-president will advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed.
Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise frontrunner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed.
He was followed by former right-wing president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast.
Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped to finish first, trailed in third with 19.86 percent, while the main leftist candidate, Senate president Andronico Rodriguez, limped to a fourth-place finish.
Doria Medina immediately threw his support behind Paz, as the leading opposition candidate.
A vote for change
Quiroga, who has vowed to overhaul Bolivia’s big-state economic model if elected, hailed the outcome as a victory for democracy and for “liberty.”
Paz, the son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora who has campaigned as a unifier, said the election was a vote for “change” and stressed that his program was “of all, for all.”
Gustavo Flores-Macias a political scientist at Cornell University in the United States, said Paz’s late surge showed people were “tired of the same candidates” repeatedly running for the top job.
Doria Medina and Quiroga had three previous failed bids to their names.
Flores-Macias also linked Paz’s success to a widespread disdain in Bolivia for candidates with links to big business.
The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an Indigenous coca farmer, was elected president on a radical anti-capitalist platform.
Bolivia enjoyed more than a decade of strong growth and Indigenous upliftment under Morales, who led the country from 2006 to 2019.
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