Rodrigo Paz wins presidential runoff, becoming Bolivia's first conservative leader in decades

Paz and his popular running mate, ex-police Capt. Edman Lara, galvanized working-class and rural voters outraged over record inflation and an acute dollar shortage that has sapped food and fuel supplies.

But for all their disillusionment with the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, Bolivian voters seemed skeptical of Quiroga’s radical 180-degree turn away from the MAS-style social protections and toward an International Monetary Fund bailout.

“A lot of people are wary of (Quiroga's) shock measures. Paz’s appeal is strong in rural areas and among some older voters — the kinds of people who might have supported MAS if it had fielded a real candidate,” said Gustavo Flores-Macías, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

Riven by internal divisions and battered by public anger over the economic crisis, MAS suffered a historic defeat in the Aug. 17 elections that propelled Quiroga and Paz to the runoff.

Paz’s victory sets this South American nation of 12 million on a sharply uncertain path as he seeks to enact major change for the first time since the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the founder of MAS and Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.

Although Paz’s Christian Democratic Party has the cushion of a slight majority in Congress, he’ll still need to compromise to push through an ambitious overhaul.

Paz plans to end Bolivia’s fixed exchange rate, phase out generous fuel subsidies and reduce hefty public investment, redrawing much of the MAS economic model that has dominated Bolivia for two decades.

But he says he’ll take a gradual approach to free-market reforms, in hopes of avoiding a sharp recession or jump in inflation that would enrage the masses — as has happened before in Bolivia. Morales’ effort to lift fuel subsidies in 2011 lasted less than a week as protests engulfed the country.

Paz basks in victory, for a moment

Paz’s supporters erupted into raucous cheers and ran into the streets of La Paz, Bolivia's capital, setting off fireworks and honking car horns. Crowds descended around the downtown hotel where Paz declared victory. Some shouted, “The people, united, will never be defeated!”

“Today, Bolivia can be certain that this will be a government that will bring solutions,” Paz said, flanked by his wife and four adult children. “Bolivia breathes winds of change and renewal to move forward.”

Shortly after the results came in, Quiroga conceded to Paz.

“I’ve called Rodrigo Paz and wished him congratulations,” he said in a somber speech, prompting jeers and cries of fraud from the audience. But Quiroga urged calm, saying that a refusal to recognize the results would “leave the country hanging.”

“We'd just exacerbate the problems of people suffering from the crisis,” he said. “We need a mature attitude right now.”

For the first time in years, the U.S. State Department congratulated the Bolivian president-elect and said it was looking forward to working with Bolivia to “restore economic stability, expand private-sector growth and strengthen security.”

Tensions have simmered between the nations ever since Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador in 2008 and the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2009. Paz has vowed to rebuild Bolivia's relations with Washington.

Paz inherits an economy in shambles

Behind the celebrations, Bolivia faces an uphill battle. To make it through even his first months, Paz must replenish the country’s meager foreign currency reserves and get fuel imports flowing.

Since 2023, the Andean nation has been crippled by a shortage of U.S. dollars that has locked Bolivians out of their own savings. Year-on-year inflation soared to 23% last month, the highest rate since 1991. Fuel shortages paralyze the country, with motorists often waiting days in line to fill up their tanks.

Vowing to avoid the IMF, Paz has pledged to scrape together the necessary cash by fighting corruption, reducing wasteful spending and restoring enough confidence in the country's currency to lure U.S. dollar savings out from under Bolivians' mattresses and into the banking system.

But Paz's stated reluctance to slam on the fiscal brakes — with promises of cash handouts for the poor to cushion the blow of subsidy cuts — has led to criticism.

“It’s just so vague, I feel like he’s saying these things to please voters when fiscally it doesn’t add up,” said 48-year-old Rodrigo Tribeño, who voted for Quiroga on Sunday. “We needed a real change.”

An outsider with political experience

Although Paz, the son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora, who was in office from 1989 to 1993, has spent more than two decades in politics as a lawmaker and mayor, he appeared in this race as a political unknown — shooting unexpectedly from the bottom of the polls to a first-place finish in the August vote.

His party swept six of nine regional departments in the country, including the Andean highlands of western Bolivia and the large, coca-producing region of Cochabamba, winning over key swaths of Indigenous Bolivians that once comprised Morales’ base.

Paz’s slogan of “capitalism for all” appealed to merchants and entrepreneurs who flourished in Morales’ heyday of booming natural gas exports but later chafed against his high taxes and regulation as the coffers ran dry.

“We’re all so tired of this crisis. We just want things to go back to how they were in the first years of Morales, when we had money — but for the better this time,” said Wendy Cornejo, 38, a former Morales supporter selling crackers in downtown La Paz.

Quiroga, by contrast, carried the wealthier eastern lowlands of Santa Cruz, known as the country’s agricultural engine.

“There’s a very clear class difference. For Quiroga, you have people who’ve been in politics and in the economic elite for a long time — businesspeople, agro-industrialists,” said Verónica Rocha, a Bolivian political analyst. “With Paz, it's the opposite.”

An ex-cop shakes up the race

The race looked to be a staid affair until Paz surprised everyone by picking Lara as his running mate. The charismatic young ex-policeman had zero political experience but gained fame on TikTok after being fired from the police for denouncing corruption in viral videos.

Unemployed for months, Lara scraped by selling second-hand clothes and worked as a lawyer helping Bolivians come forward to expose corruption. His humble origins and fiery promises of universal income for women and higher pensions for retirees resonated with many former MAS supporters. But they also frequently forced Paz into damage control, causing tension on the campaign trail.

Lara didn’t accompany Paz to the campaign headquarters in La Paz late Sunday, surprising many supporters. But he struck an unusually conciliatory tone in his remarks after learning of their victory.

“It’s time to unite, it’s time to reconcile,” Lara said. “Political divisions are over.”

Paz takes office on Nov. 8.

Associated Press writer Carlos Valdez in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.