August 17, 2025, marks the end of an era: for the first time in two decades, MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) has been excluded from the presidential runoff. The country now heads to a second round on October 19 between Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga of the Libertad y Democracia alliance (Libre), after a first round that punished statist socialism for inflation, fuel shortages, and the exhaustion of the old rent-seeking and criminal model.
This is not a perception. Preliminary official results and unanimous international coverage, with over 90 percent of ballots counted, show that Paz led with just over 32 percent, Quiroga came in second with 27 percent, forcing a second round and symbolically ending MAS’s 20-year hegemony. MAS’s official candidate Eduardo del Castillo barely obtained 3.2 percent, Andrónico Rodríguez—considered by many the successor to Evo Morales—got around 8 percent, and Samuel Doria Medina, vice president of Socialist International, came in with roughly 20 percent.
This was a historic break: socialism had governed for the past 20 years. Evo Morales himself—disqualified and hiding as a fugitive—called for voters to cast null ballots, trying to appropriate a block of votes not his own. But even this vote did not reach 20 percent. In other words, even if every single null ballot had been for Morales, he still would not have reached third place.
MAS lost not because of a “media coup,” but because of economic reality. Decades of waste, corruption, and crimes against ordinary Bolivians left citizens weary of leftist policies that brought double-digit inflation, a parallel dollar market, and fuel scarcity. Punishment at the polls and the desertion of its base sealed a historic defeat. Election-day chronicles were unequivocal: the MAS era is over; the runoff is Paz vs. Tuto.
To the casual observer, this may sound like a turn toward liberalism. Yet we must pause to consider who is poised to enter government, for there is a long road between defeating socialism and embracing freedom. The criminal socialist regime has collapsed, and that deserves applause. But the crucial question remains: what comes next?
What Do the Finalists Propose?
Rodrigo Paz was the great surprise of the election: a candidate polling barely 5 percent just months ago who now emerged in first place. The son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, he has been variously placed on the center-left or center-right, though his discourse seeks to transcend labels. His government plan, dubbed the “50/50 Agenda,” is presented as a crusade against the “Estado tranca” (lockdown state), a centralist apparatus he blames for economic paralysis. He promises to rationalize spending with a zero-deficit rule for subnational governments, freeze new central-level hires, and halt public enterprises operating at a loss. He also calls for a simplified tax regime for small businesses, replacing bureaucratic licenses and permits with sworn statements, and liberalizing exports.
He further proposes to adjust fuel prices to reduce the deficit, unify the exchange rate through a “Currency Stabilization Fund” financed by multilateral banks and “asset regularization,” and encourage small and medium-sized enterprises through credit and fiscal incentives. His plan also mentions combating smuggling, formalizing employment, progressive wage hikes, sustained investment in research and development, and the exploitation of new strategic deposits.
In his rhetoric, Paz complements these ideas with a nod to the informal sector, which he estimates at 85 percent of the economy. He acknowledges that tax persecution and regulatory tangles have pushed millions outside legality, and says he wants “cheap formality” that reduces procedures and removes barriers instead of criminalizing small producers. He has summed it up under the slogan “Capitalism for All”: shutting down corrupt customs, making entry into the system cheaper, and broadening opportunities for marginalized traders and transport workers. In this way he seeks to distinguish himself from Quiroga, emphasizing that he will not turn to the IMF but instead reorder internal finances by reducing the state’s weight and decentralizing competencies.
Yet behind this modernizing discourse fundamental contradictions persist. The core of his plan remains statist. The so-called “Currency Stabilization Fund” is nothing but a new disguise for currency controls. Unifying the exchange rate by decree is an illusion, shifting distortions from the central bank to debt with multilateral banks. True stability can only come from freeing the currency market and ending monetary expansion. Likewise, his fuel-subsidy policy avoids the only real remedy: immediate price liberalization and a sharp cut to spending that bleeds billions. He speaks of gradualism, when what is needed is market surgery. His proposals for state investment in health, sports, or innovation are not a break with the MAS model but its continuation with technocratic clothing: every state hospital is prey to corruption, every “selective” fiscal incentive is an arbitrary privilege, and every innovation program turns into unproductive waste.
In short, Rodrigo Paz offers a state that is more orderly, more decentralized, and perhaps less grotesquely corrupt than MAS’s, but not a smaller state. He does not propose privatization, immediate price liberalization, or drastic spending cuts. His sole mention of inflation is a vague pledge to “reestablish macroeconomic balances to stop the deterioration of the currency’s purchasing power.” His “50/50 Agenda” contains timid steps toward freer conditions—export liberalization, cuts to loss-making public enterprises, simplified taxation—but its core remains statist. At best, his victory would mean partial relief from socialist disaster; at worst, another cycle of vague promises postponing the structural reforms Bolivia urgently needs.
Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga
Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga—former president of Bolivia and candidate of the Libre alliance—presents himself as the face of “economic seriousness” against MAS’s chaos. His program begins by recognizing a triple crisis—balance of payments, fiscal deficit, and energy collapse—and calls for a turn toward discipline with external support. He proposes an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for between two and four billion dollars, alongside debt restructuring and renewed international disbursements. His stated objective is to reduce the deficit to 3 percent of GDP without resorting to the central bank, restoring its independence and prohibiting it from financing the Treasury—a sharp break with socialist practice.
On exchange rate policy, Quiroga calls for a “Bolsín” system: a single, real, flexible exchange rate set by supply and demand instead of central bank manipulation. This would mean letting the boliviano find its true value—today propped up by reserves that no longer exist—and liberalizing the currency market, ending persecution of citizens who buy dollars in the parallel market. In the context of repressed inflation, these steps could restore some monetary confidence.
Another central axis is energy reform. Quiroga recognizes the collapse of the gas model and proposes attracting private investment in hydrocarbons through service contracts and legal stability. He also promises to gradually dismantle fuel-import subsidies, replacing them with a scheme of “popular ownership” and temporary compensation bonds. In electricity and telecommunications, he proposes partial privatizations of ENDE and ENTEL under mixed schemes, maintaining state participation. He further advocates debt renegotiation and new credit lines for infrastructure and energy transition.
On the positive side, recognizing that the central bank must not finance the government and liberalizing the exchange rate are healthy breaks with socialism. Opening hydrocarbons to private capital could revive investment and halt production decline. Yet his fiscal discipline rests on external debt, not real spending cuts—merely swapping inflation taxes for future taxes. Living perpetually on debt is the equivalent of living on a credit card. The IMF deal would provide temporary liquidity at the cost of new taxes and regulations—the classic technocratic package that postpones deep reforms. The same is true of subsidies: by dismantling them only gradually and with compensatory bonds, he risks perpetuating both the subsidies and the new spending.
His “popular ownership” plan is another contradiction. Marketed as inclusive, it is nothing more than a euphemism for keeping state companies under political control, distributing symbolic shares that confer neither decision-making power nor genuine ownership. The citizen gets a piece of paper, but the bureaucrat keeps control. It is socialism’s paternalistic logic, repackaged to create the illusion of private property.
In sum, Quiroga offers a more coherent macroeconomic program than Paz, but remains trapped in the idea of a strong state administering the transition. His discourse is conservative and Keynesian, stuck in gradual failure. He will not immediately liberalize fuel prices or dismantle the web of controls strangling entrepreneurs. At best, Bolivia would get a temporary respite and more serious management, at worst, another cycle of debt, disguised subsidies, and reformist statism.
The End of the Myth
Bolivia has not “swung to the right.” It has returned to common sense. Fifteen years of price controls, “strategic” state enterprises, and a central bank serving the Treasury ended as they always do: with lines, black markets, and deindustrialization under fictitious exchange rates. The election made it clear: when reality becomes non-negotiable, the narrative collapses. October 19 will decide how quickly Bolivia escapes the swamp.
With Paz, an administrative reordering that contains damage but ignores runaway inflation. With Quiroga, a sharper monetary and exchange correction, but with the temptation of debt and heavy statism.
Socialism has ended; statism, perhaps not. If Bolivia truly wants liberalism, it must liberalize prices, sell off state companies, and return money to the market. The middle of the road inevitably leads back to socialism.
On August 17, MAS’s tomb was sealed in Bolivia. Two decades of waste, persecution, and lies collapsed in an electoral implosion that once seemed impossible. MAS fell from absolute hegemony to a marginal force, and Evo Morales was reduced to a specter who cannot revive his criminal project even with null votes. That defeat must be celebrated.
But the death of socialism does not mean Bolivia is free. The October runoff is not liberty versus statism, but two variants of the same disease. Rodrigo Paz offers a more orderly state, but just as large, with disguised subsidies and technocratic dirigisme. Tuto Quiroga promises discipline and partial opening, but under IMF tutelage, “gradual” subsidies, and renamed state enterprises. Neither dares to say what reality demands.
The lesson is clear: without free prices, there is no economic calculation; without private property, there is no sustainable investment; without limits to political power, there is no true prosperity. Neither Paz nor Quiroga questions these fundamentals. Both seek to manage better a failed apparatus that should be dismantled.
The fall of socialism opens a historic opportunity, but only if we understand that the true alternative is not a new manager of a failed project, but its dismantling. Bolivia must return to its people the freedom to produce and exchange without permits or privileges. That is the only real transition: from control to liberty.
It is worth stressing that this analysis is based on formal proposals and early campaign discourse. On the road to the runoff, both candidates are likely to adapt their messaging, change priorities, or negotiate alliances that reshape their programs. Yet beyond tactical shifts, the deeper question remains: will Bolivia remain trapped in an omnipresent state, or will it finally open space for real economic liberty?
Socialism is dead. Statism lives on. And that is the battle still to be fought.