Bolivia heads to polls in a tight run-off as voters seek a Prez to end crisis

La Paz: Bolivians began voting Sunday in their country’s first presidential runoff that pits two conservative, capitalist candidates against each other, ushering in a new political era after two decades of one-party rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party.

Voters are choosing between former right-wing President Jorge “Tuto Quiroga and centrist Sen Rodrigo Paz as they look for a leader to lift them out of their country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Since 2023, the Andean nation has been crippled by a shortage of US dollars that has locked Bolivians out of their own savings and hampered imports. The value of a boliviano on the black market is half the official exchange rate.

Year-on-year inflation soared to 23 per cent last month, the highest rate since 1991. Fuel shortages paralyse the country. Both Quiroga and Paz have billed themselves as candidates of change, vowing to break with the budget-busting populism that dominated Bolivia under the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party founded by Evo Morales, a charismatic coca growers’ union leader who became Bolivia’s first Indigenous president in 2006.

Riven by internal divisions and battered by public anger over fuel lines, MAS suffered a historic defeat in the August 17 election. The rivals in the dead-heat runoff vow to end fixed exchange rate, restructure state-owned companies and attract foreign investment.