Bolivia Turns Right: Voters to Reset Dial as Support for Morales' Old Party Slumps

In Plaza Murillo, the heart of Bolivia's political capital, La Paz—and home to the presidential palace, parliament, and the country's main Catholic cathedral—time may be running out for a clock that runs backward.

- Tiago Rogero

Installed atop the congressional palace during the years of prosperity under former president Evo Morales, 65, the clock was conceived as a symbol of the "decolonial and anti-imperialist" worldview championed by the left.

But it has since become an emblem of the decline of Morales's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party—with some saying that, as the country faces its worst economic crisis in 40 years, Bolivia itself has been moving backward.

When 7.9 million Bolivians head to the polls tomorrow to choose their next president, MAS not only risks losing power after nearly 20 years but could disappear as a political force altogether.

Pre-election polling points to a potential runoff between two rightwing candidates: the center-right business tycoon and former planning minister Samuel Doria Medina, 66, followed closely by Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, 65, a rightwing former president who briefly led the country in 2001 after the resignation of former dictator Hugo Banzer.

The deeply unpopular current president, Luis Arce, 61—a former finance minister under Morales who wrested control of MAS from his former mentor—opted not to seek re-election and instead nominated his 36-year-old minister of government, Eduardo del Castillo.

Unlike previous elections in which Morales and then Arce secured outright first-round victories with more than 50% of the vote, Del Castillo is polling below 3%, the minimum threshold for a party to remain eligible to contest future elections.

"Arce will go down in history as the one who buried the 'father,' seized the party and, in all likelihood, led it to its end," said the political and economic analyst Gonzalo Chávez Alvarez, a professor at the Universidad Católica Boliviana.

Although polling in Bolivia has historically proved unreliable, the prospect of a party that was once hegemonic now on the brink of oblivion is anything but trivial.