Bolivian

Oct. 21 (UPI) — Bolivian President-elect Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s win heralds a time of change in the South American nation that was a leading socialist state, the leaders of nine nations said on Tuesday.

Paz, 58, prevailed over challenger and former President Jorge Quiroga on Sunday in Bolivia’s first runoff election to determine its next president, and the U.S. State Department released the joint statement.

“The undersigned countries congratulate President-electRodrigo Paz Pereira on his election as president of Bolivia,” the joint statement said.

“We also commend the Bolivian people for their unwavering commitment to democracy, as demonstrated through their active participation in this electoral process.”

The statement said the “Bolivian people made their voices heard in a decisive manner.”

The outcome “reflects the will of the Bolivian people to embrace change and chart a new course for their nation and our region, signaling departure from the economic mismanagement of the past two decades.”

Paz is a centrist, while Quiroga is more conservative, and both campaigned on the platform of ending the 20-year reign of socialist presidents and government and returning Bolivia to a market-based capitalist economy.

He secured 54.6% of the 6.5 million votes cast to Quiroga’s 45.4% in the first Bolivian presidential election that did not involve a socialist candidate for the first time in two decades, according to The Guardian.

Paz was the Christian Democratic Party’s candidate, while Quiroga, 67, ran on the Free Alliance ticket. Both ran on a pro-capitalism platform.

The Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism) Party candidate Eduardo del Castillo obtained 3% of the vote during an initial election and did not qualify for Sunday’s runoff election.

The MAS Party has controlled both houses of the Bolivian Legislature and the presidential office for the past 20 years.

Paz said he intends to end the nation’s gas shortages and wants to encourage international investment to boost growth of the Bolivia’s private sector, the BBC reported.

His win effectively ends the MAS Party’s rule in Bolivia.

“The undersigned countries stand ready to support the incoming administration’s efforts to stabilize Bolivia’s economy and open it to the world, reinforce its democratic institutions, boost international trade and investment, and deepen its engagement with regional and global partners on a wide range of issues,” the nine nations said in the joint statement.

“We are committed to working closely with President-elect Rodrigo Paz Pereira and his government to advance shared goals of regional and global security, economic prosperity and growth that benefit all of our nations,” they added.

“We encourage Bolivia’s renewed proactive participation in addressing regional and global challenges.”

In addition to the United States, the governments undersigning the statement are Argentina, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Paz is a Bolivian senator and the son of former Bolivian President Jaime Pax Zamora, who served in that role from 1989 to 1993.

A court in Bolivia has transferred a high-profile opposition leader, Luis Fernando Camacho, to house arrest amid outcry over the length of his pretrial detention.

On Wednesday, a court ruled that Camacho, the right-wing governor of the eastern department of Santa Cruz, could be returned to his home and released from preventative detention on bail, provided he submits to house arrest.

He is expected to travel on Friday back to Santa Cruz, home to Bolivia’s most populous city, also called Santa Cruz.

“The judicial authority has ordered the end of preventive detention against Governor Luis Fernando Camacho and has replaced it with precautionary measures, including house arrest,” his lawyer, Martin Camacho, confirmed on Wednesday.

The lawyer said Governor Camacho would be able to resume his political duties under the work-release terms of his bail.

A political shift in Bolivia

Camacho has been held in pretrial detention since December 2022, when he was arrested amid weeks of deadly protests led by right-wing forces frustrated with the left-wing political leadership in La Paz.

Normally, pretrial detention in Bolivia should not last longer than six months. Last week, the Supreme Court of Justice called for a review of Camacho’s incarceration, and on Tuesday, a judge considering one of the two cases against him approved his release.

After Wednesday’s hearing, a second judge echoed the first’s decision to place Camacho under house arrest instead.

“This is the first step towards freedom,” Camacho said after Tuesday’s decision. “The elected representatives of justice today begin to restore the rule of law.”

Camacho’s release comes as the political sphere in Bolivia braces for a dramatic shift. The left-wing Movement for Socialism (MAS) party has led the country for much of the last 20 years.

But in the August 17 general election, all the left-wing presidential candidates were knocked out of contention.

Two right-wing politicians have instead progressed to the run-off race: centrist Senator Rodrigo Paz and former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, who has promised more radical change.

Camacho, meanwhile, has gained fame as a leader in Bolivia’s far-right Christian coalition, Creemos, which translates to “We Believe”. The Argentinian newspaper La Nacion even nicknamed him the “Bolivian Bolsonaro”, a reference to Jair Bolsonaro, a former Brazilian president currently on trial for allegedly conspiring to overturn an election.

For his part, Camacho has been held in La Paz’s Chonchocoro prison while facing “terrorism”-related charges.

Wednesday’s release to house arrest does not mean those charges have gone away.

The case against Camacho

Camacho still faces legal jeopardy, including the two high-profile cases that landed him behind bars.

The first concerns his actions during the 2019 political crisis that saw then-President Evo Morales flee the country.

Morales is considered to be the first president of Indigenous heritage in Bolivia’s modern history, but he had controversially sought a fourth term as president in the 2018 general election.

In the months afterwards, Camacho emerged as a prominent opposition figure, calling Morales’s victory a “fraud”.

He and other conservative leaders pressured the then-president to resign, in a campaign Morales compared to a “coup”.

Upon Morales’s departure from the country, Camacho delivered a symbolic resignation letter to the presidential palace, carrying a Bible in hand. For his role in the political crisis, Camacho faces charges of sedition and “terrorism”.

The second major case against Camacho concerns his actions during the 2022 unrest in Santa Cruz. He has been charged with criminal association and illegal use of public property.

By 2022, Morales’s former finance minister, Luis Arce, had been elected president of Bolivia, continuing the streak of MAS-led governments in La Paz.

Santa Cruz, considered Bolivia’s most prosperous economic hub and the largest by land area, had expected to see gains in the upcoming census, which would potentially translate into greater representation in the country’s legislature.

But because of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Arce government announced the census would be delayed.

Anger over the decision spilled into Santa Cruz’s streets. The Pro Santa Cruz Civic Committee, a powerful right-wing group that Camacho had once led, carried out a strike that stretched on for nearly 36 days.

Protesters blocked roads, set fires and clashed with law enforcement. Dozens of cases of human rights abuses were reported to the government ombudsman, including sexual assault and murder. Prosecutors have accused Camacho of complicity in the turmoil.

Split opinions over Camacho’s release

But the Supreme Court of Justice has called for a review of the cases concerning Camacho and other prominent opposition leaders, including former President Jeanine Anez and Marco Antonio Pumari.

As Quiroga campaigns for the presidency ahead of the October 17 run-off, he has championed efforts to release the imprisoned opposition figures.

On his Facebook page on Tuesday, Quiroga celebrated the news of Camacho’s impending release.

“Justice cannot be an instrument of revenge. It must be the pillar of a free and democratic Bolivia,” Quiroga wrote.

“I salute the release of Luis Fernando Camacho and Marco Pumari, so they can pursue their defence in freedom. Let’s move forward, and remember that when there’s justice, there’s hope for all.”

Supporters in Santa Cruz also gathered in the street to celebrate Camacho’s anticipated return.

But outside the court in La Paz, some protesters called for his continued incarceration. They blamed Camacho for stirring the unrest that caused at least 37 people to be killed in the 2019 political crisis.

“Without justice,” they chanted, “there is no democracy.”

LA PAZ, Bolivia — The campaign billboards adorning the streets of Bolivia for Sunday’s presidential election make grand promises: A solution to the dire economic crisis within 100 days, an end to fuel shortages and bread lines, unity for a divided nation. One vice presidential candidate pledges to “Make Bolivia Sexy Again.”

In their efforts to draw votes, all eight candidates — two right-wing front-runners, a conservative centrist and splintered factions of Bolivia’s long-dominant left-wing — are vowing drastic change, launching searing attacks on the status quo and selling a message of hope.

But for many Bolivians, hope has already hardened into cynicism.

Slogans fail to break through

Promises of quick fixes — like right-wing candidate Samuel Doria Medina’s pledge to stabilize the upside-down economy within “100 days, dammit!” — fall flat. Vandals add extra zeroes to his campaign posters, suggesting a million days might be a more realistic goal.

Tuto, the nickname of Jorge Quiroga, the other right-wing favorite, turns up on city walls with its first letter swapped to form a Spanish insult.

Some signs for left-wing candidate Andrónico Rodríguez, pledging “unity above all” have been defaced to read “unity in the face of lines.”

And few know what to do with the acronym of the governing party candidate, Eduardo del Castillo: “We Are a National Option with Authentic Ideas.” (No, it’s not any catchier in Spanish).

Yet for all their disenchantment with politicians, Bolivians are counting down the days until elections, united in their relief that, no matter what happens, leftist President Luis Arce will leave office after five difficult years.

Inflation is soaring. The central bank has burned through its dollar reserves. Imported goods have vanished from shelves.

“I have no faith in any candidate. There’s no one new in this race,” Alex Poma Quispe, 25, told the Associated Press from his family’s fruit truck, where he slept curled into a ball in the front seat Wednesday for a second straight night, stranded with 50 other trucks in a fuel line en route from farms in the Yungas region to markets in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz.

“The only thing we’re enthusiastic about is Arce leaving.”

New campaigns, old faces

A bitter power struggle between Arce and former President Evo Morales has shattered their hegemonic Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, giving the right-wing opposition its best shot at victory in two decades.

“I’ve seen that socialism has brought nothing good to this country,” said Victor Ticona, 24, a music student, as he left Quiroga’s campaign rally Wednesday. “We have to become more competitive in the world.”

Doria Medina, a 66-year-old multimillionaire businessman, and Quiroga, a 65-year-old former vice president who briefly assumed the presidency in 2001 after then-President Hugo Banzer resigned with cancer, are familiar faces in Bolivian politics. Both have run for president three times before.

While their calls for economic freedom and foreign investment appeal to voters desperate for change, they have struggled to stir up excitement. Nearly 30% of voters are undecided, according to polls.

Doria Medina, a former minister of planning, acknowledged in a recent social media video that “people say I have no charisma, that I’m too serious.”

Quiroga’s association with Banzer, a former military dictator who brutally quashed dissent over seven corruption-plagued years before being democratically elected, has turned some voters off.

“It was a bloody era,” recalled 52-year-old taxi driver Juan Carlos Mamani. “For me, Tuto is the definition of the old guard.”

At the pumps, not the polls

Poma Quispe and his 24-year-old brother Weimar have no idea who’d they vote for — or if they’ll vote at all.

Voting is compulsory in Bolivia, and about 7.9 million people in the country of 12 million are eligible to cast ballots in Sunday’s election. Non-voters face various financial penalties.

Over the last year, fuel shortages have brought much of Bolivia to a standstill. Truckers waste days at a time queuing at empty gas stations around Bolivia, just to keep their vehicles moving.

The diesel arrives on no set schedule, and the rhythm of life is forced to adapt. If the diesel arrives before Sunday, the Poma Quispe brothers will vote.

If not, “there’s no way we’re giving up our spot in line for those candidates,” Weimar Poma Quispe said.

Personal drama over political debate

This year’s election coincides with the 200th anniversary of Bolivia’s independence.

But instead of celebrating, many Bolivians are questioning the validity of their democracy and state-directed economic model. Crowds booed at President Arce during his bicentennial speech earlier this month. His government invited left-wing presidents from across Latin America to attend the event; only the president of Honduras showed.

The lack of enthusiasm among ordinary Bolivians and beleaguered officials seems matched by that of the candidates.

Authorities allowed televised presidential debates — banned under Morales — for the first time in 20 years. The front-runners turned up to just one of them.

Personal attacks overshadowed policy discussions. Doria Medina accused Del Castillo of ties to drug traffickers, while Del Castillo mocked the businessman’s record of failed presidential bids. Rodríguez and Quiroga traded barbs over alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings.

Chasing the youth vote

The median age in Bolivia is 26. For comparison, it is 39 in China and the United States.

Having grown up under the government of Morales and his MAS party, many young Bolivians are restive, disillusioned by current prospects as they become more digitally connected than any generation before them.

Quiroga in particular has energized young voters with his running mate, JP Velasco, a successful 38-year-old tech entrepreneur with no political experience who vows to reverse a brain drain in Bolivia and create opportunities for youth in exploiting the country’s abundant reserves of lithium, the critical metal for electric vehicle batteries, and developing data centers.

Young crowds packed Quiroga’s Wednesday night campaign rally, even as 20-somethings in goth makeup and tight-stretch dresses expressed more interest in the lively cumbia bands than the political speeches.

Others sported red MAGA-style caps with Velasco’s slogan, “Make Bolivia Sexy Again.” Cap-wearers offered varying answers on when Bolivia was last “sexy,” with some saying never, but agreed it meant attractive to foreign investors.

“It won’t just be tech companies coming here, McDonald’s might even come,” Velasco told the crowd, eliciting whoops and howls. “Young people, if you go abroad, let it be for vacation.”

Debre and Valdez write for the Associated Press.