Bolivia: No Surprises in the Electoral Farce
Featured image: Rodrigo Paz and Jorge Quiroga, the two candidates who will run for the presidency in the second round of the elections. Source: TRT World.
On Sunday 17th of August, 2025, general elections were held in Bolivia for the period 2025–2030. On October 19 the second round of the elections will take place, where the two most voted candidates will run for the presidency. The Association of New Democracy – Germany has published an analysis on the result of the first round.
The two most voted candidates are Rodrigo Paz, who gained 32.06% of the votes, and Jorge Quiroga, who was president between 2001 and 2002, with 26.70% of the votes. Among the different candidates who won’t participate in the second round is the MAS candidate (Movement to Socialism), Eduardo Castillo, who only reached 3.17% of the votes. According to the data of the Election High Court, there was 13% of abstention, which has grown from the 11.5% from the elections of 2020. The invalid votes also increased from 4% in the past elections to 19% in this occasion.
The Association of New Democracy – Germany points out that “After about two decades, that the MAS representing the bureaucratic faction of the big bourgeoisie has directed the old Bolivian State, the discontent of the masses is expressed in the rejection received by the MAS factions.” The MAS participated in these elections with an acute internal division, with diverse factions. The bureaucracy of the Party participated at the elections, and the other faction called to vote invalid. All these factions counted the 30% of the votes. This points out “The discontent against all the parliamentary Parties has grown, and the rejection of the old State elections and institutions has grown.” Therefore a decomposition of the MAS can bee seen. The Party has led the Bolivian government for the last years but now finds itself in an internal dispute between the Arce faction and the Evo Morales faction. We published various articles analyzing this question last year:
These elections are in the context of “cyclical economical crisis, which since 2014 have been in shorter and shorter periods, in which the boom of the export of fossil fuels is over”. This situation of the Bolivian economy is “an expression of the character of its economy: semi-colonial and semi-feudal, on which a bureaucratic capitalism develops in the service of imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism.”
The Association of New Democracy – Germany has analyzed the economic conditions of the country in these elections more in depth. They analyze that the Parties which participated in the first round: “all of them serve the development of bureaucratic capitalism, that is, an economy in the service of imperialist interests, what Thyrios and Trojans call “extractivist economy.” The axis of the difference is that those of the bureaucratic faction are based on the one hand oncorporations, and on the other hand on investment of the State. Those of the comprador faction are based on the one hand in corporations,and the other hand onprivate investment. The bureaucratic faction in the Bolivian case defines the first case as “Socialism of the 21st century”, and the second case as capitalist economy. Meanwhile thecomprador faction of the big bourgeoisie defines the first case as “Statism” and, the second case as “market economy.”
All the candidates used the economical situation as a spearhead for the elections, due to the crisis which severely affects the country. But despite that all of them spoke about the problem of extractivism in the Bolivian economy, “the candidates themselves wear mining helmets in their campaigns, appealing to a symbol associated with groups historically benefited from extractivism and neo-extractivism, such as the corporatized mining sector. None of the candidates mention alternatives to the extractivist model.” Thus, “The options in the Bolivian electoral race bet on lithium as if it were golden eggs, reproducing an endless loop of extraction and dispossession.”
Thus, the Association of New Democracy – Germany shows how the history of the Bolivian economy is marked by extractivism and in particular the spoils of mining resources, since the Spanish colonial times: for centuries silver was the exported resource, then tin and gas, and today oil, gas and lithium. At the same time a process of the concentration of land in the hands of few big landlords has taken place. From the 50s they specially applied a model of agribusiness with big extensions of land for industrial crops such as soy, sunflower, cane, cotton, etc. The big landlords own 86.11% of the arable land, according to the National Institute of Statistics (2015). The small peasantry are 91.42% of the owners, but it only owns 13.89% of the Bolivian land.
This situation is a consequence of “more than a century of development of bureaucratic capitalism in Bolivia, based on a semi-feudal and semi-colonial economy”.
