Bolivia right-wing presidential hopeful vows 'radical change'

One of the front-runners in Bolivia's upcoming presidential election, right-winger Jorge Quiroga, says the country was poised for "radical change" after two decades of socialist rule marked in recent years by a severe economic crisis.

Jorge 'Tuto' Quiroga Ramírez, who briefly served as president from 2001 to 2002, is running a close second behind centre-right business magnate Samuel Doria Medina in polls for the first round of the election on August 17.

The ruling Movement towards Socialism (MAS), founded by three-term ex-president Evo Morales, is shown at rock bottom, with voters poised to punish the party over its handling of the worst crisis in two decades.

Basics like fuel and food items are in short supply in the Andean nation, which is running out of the dollars it needs to import essentials.

After a rally with supporters in the administrative capital La Paz, Quiroga, 65, said Bolivians faced a period of "radical change [to] regain 20 lost years" – a reference to the Evo Morales era (2006-2019) and that of his successor, Luis Arce, in power since 2020.

Referring to MAS, which was credited with lifting many Bolivians out of poverty during a commodities boom in the 2000s, he declared: "Its cycle is over, its time is up."

Quiroga, Doria Medina and even the main left-wing candidate, Senator Andrónico Rodríguez, who is polling in third, have all prescribed varying degrees of austerity to turn around Bolivia's finances.

Quiroga, a supporter of Argentina's President Javier Milei, has advocated the deepest spending cuts.

Year-on-year inflation rose to 25.8 percent in July, the highest level since 2008, driven by a shortage of dollars, which has nearly doubled in value against the local boliviano in a year.

Quiroga, a US-educated former finance minister who served as vice-president under dictator Hugo Banzer in the 1990s, said if elected he would "change all the laws" to attract investment, including in the energy sector, which Morales nationalised in the 2000s.

He also vowed a change in international alliances, breaking from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – close allies of the Morales and Arce administrations.

Quiroga was the youngest vice-president in Bolivia's history when he was elected to the post in 1997 at the age of 37. He later served as president for one year after Banzer resigned in August 2001 due to cancer. 

– AFP