Bolivia: the left eliminated in the first round, the era of the “change process” is coming to an end

The movement towards socialism (Mas) came out of the game. The new political era which opens in Bolivia, at the end of the first round of the presidential election of August 17, closes the cycle of the “Change process”started in 2006 with the accession of Evo Morales to power.

Two candidates for the various right-wing shades will compete: Senator Rodrigo Paz (32.1 %), son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993), who are presented at the center, and the former head of state, from 2001 to 2002, Jorge « Tutorial »Quiroga (26.8 %). The two finalists, however, came from the same mold: Quiroga has repeatedly admitted that the father of his rival had set foot in the stirrup. Favorite party, the millionaire Samuel Doria Medina wins third place (19.8 %) and is thus in the Kings maker position for the second round of October 19.

Debacle of the left

The left, plagued by her intestine wars, undergoes a debacle which she will find it difficult to recover. The president of the Senate, the socialist Andronico Rodriguez, former close to Evo Morales, obtained 8.2 % of the votes. As he went to the polls, Andronico Rodriguez was hué and the subject of stone jets.

As for the Mas candidate, the former Minister of the Government Eduardo del Castillo, he only arrived sixth (3.1 %), after the outgoing president, Luis Arce, has given up on representing himself. Evo Morales, who broke up with the head of state, was dismissed from the electoral game by the Constitutional Court while constituting a partisan apparatus parallel to the MAS, which he had created. In the final stretch, the latter called for a zero vote as an act of “Democratic rebellion”.

The masure of internal quarrels

The training, which had managed for two decades to build a majority narrative woven with social demands and a multinational vision, no longer mobilizes in a country undermined by the energy and economic crisis. According to the Perseu Brazilian Foundation Abramo, created by the workers’ party of President Lula, this “Result is a deep warning for all the progressive forces on the continent. The challenge: the MAS, which released millions of people from poverty and strengthened Bolivian sovereignty, was the victim of its own exhaustion and its internal quarrels ”.

The deconfitation of the MAS could therefore serve as a school case. On the right, some hope that the results in Bolivia constitute the beginnings of a broader movement on the continent when the previous decade was marked by attempts at military or institutional coups for lack of prevailing in the ballot boxes.

The Andean country had not escaped it: at the end of 2019, the army, the police and the right had forced Evo Morales to resign, to temporarily replace it with the second vice-president of the Senate, Jeanine Añez. In the aftermath of the first round, comparisons with the fall of the Eastern Bloc in Europe also went well. In its desire for revenge, the right intends to apply radical economic reforms, resume language with the United States and move the center of political gravity of the Aboriginal and union worlds to the urban elites.