Who Will Lose Out If the Rich Succeed in Helping the Right Win in Bolivia?

Ahead of this Sunday’s presidential election in Bolivia, the latest polling from Ipsos Ciesmori, released last weekend, reveals a close horserace in Bolivia’s presidential race between perennial centrist candidate and business magnate Samuel Doria Medina (21.2%), former conservative and Banzerite President Tuto Quiroga (20%), as well as Manfred Reyes Villa, Cochabamba mayor, retired Army captain, and pro-Banzer right-winger, at 7.7%.

The two left-wing MAS-affiliated candidates, Senate Leader Andrónico Rodríguez and Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo, both poll below 10% despite the MAS leading in voting intentions early on in the cycle. Current President Luis Arce is not running due to his administration being marred by continuous crises, scandals, and unpopularity.

The unpopularity facing the MAS and the left, particularly amid various crises—inflationary, political, judicial, energy, and financial—has created the possibility that the right could win an election for the first time in more than 20 years. The “nill-blank-undecided” camp stands at 33%, with most of them being disaffected leftist voters; most prominently, supporters of Evo Morales, who has been barred from running and wanted on pedophilia charges.

The race is likely to head to a second round in late October if no candidate secures 40% of the vote and a 10% lead over the next competitor. As things stand, two right-of-center candidates, Doria Medina and Quiroga, are likely to advance, a blow to the left’s progressive agenda. It would be the first second-round runoff in Bolivia’s history.

A right-wing government today would mean more poverty, more austerity, more militarism (and a likely return to heavy US influence), and less representation for Indigenous peoples and women.

The socialist movement’s downfall has been the right’s elation, and they have not been able to contain it, perhaps even overplaying their hand right before Sunday’s election.

Marcelo Claure, Bolivia’s richest man and loud financial backer of multi-millionaire Samuel Doria Medina, has declared Bolivia will soon be “free from socialism and communism” and says he looks forward to returning to the country under a “new government.” Claure, who lives between New York and Miami, backs a neoliberal, private-sector-focused corporate economic plan that suspiciously mirrors Doria Medina’s, calling for the privatization of key industries, inviting international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, and relying on “public-private partnerships.” Much of Doria Medina’s financing has also come from his personal fortune, ironically earned through state contracts.

Jaime Dunn, the right-wing libertarian Wall Street tycoon who dropped out of the race after claiming to be the “most talked about politician in Bolivia,” has also been actively lobbying for a right-wing government. Dunn has said that “Bolivia is a country of owners, not proletarians,” claiming both Doria Medina and Quiroga have “copied [his] economic plans.” He has celebrated what he calls “an end to socialism and authoritarianism” while proposing to dismantle all government industries, shut down the tax service, cut taxes for the wealthy, and end fuel and other subsidies, policies that would trigger a tsunami of chaos and suffering across the country.

Dunn openly praises Argentine President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” cuts, which have already pushed more than half of Argentines into poverty; left thousands more living on the street; and sold the country off to crypto scammers, big exporters, and foreign investors.

The financier class has made its preferences crystal clear. In a Reuters piece, foreign investors expressed elation at the prospect of a new right-wing government, saying the election was “fueled by investors’ hopes that a political U-turn could help shore up the country’s fragile economy and pave the way for an IMF program.”

Carlos de Sousa, a debt strategist at Vontobel, said a change in government would be “quite positive for the economy.” Ajata Mediratta, a partner at Greylock Capital, described a non-leftist government as one that would bring about “liberalizing reforms” which “will eventually allow the economy to flourish” and “unshackle the economy.”

That’s a hell of a way to say people are going to suffer immensely under austerity and policies designed to enrich the wealthy and foreign capital.

Mainstream media, particularly in the US, has lavished coverage on the right-wing frontrunners, presenting their ideas and personalities in a vacuum of “neutrality” without acknowledging their history. This includes their roles in the Banzer dictatorship, their role in selling Bolivia’s energy and commercial sectors to foreign interests in the 1990s and early 2000s (leading to the Cochabamba Water War and the rise of the MAS), and their track record with IMF-backed austerity programs that brought very mixed results despite the costs.

A right-wing government today would mean more poverty, more austerity, more militarism (and a likely return to heavy US influence), and less representation for Indigenous peoples and women.

Inside Bolivia, the corporate media ecosystem has spent years boosting conservative candidates. Most outlets in the country are private, running cover, and buying skewed polls for their preferred right-wing hopefuls. These include Red Uno, Bolivia TV, Unitel, ERBOL, El Deber, the two Catholic Fides networks, and La Brújula Digital. Página Siete, Bolivia’s only independent media outlet, was closed through government pressure, and has left a wide hole in the country’s press freedom.

Affiliated TikTok, X, and Facebook accounts have also been busy spreading misinformation in their favor, publishing manipulated or outright false polls bought by candidates and running disproportionate favorable coverage of conservatives. Negative coverage of MAS and the left, with overwhelmingly positive or neutral coverage of the right, dominates their reporting.

Even Evo Morales has been running fake polls to claim the election is rigged against him.

There is now a coordinated, well-funded network, backed by big capital, big business, and international financial institutions, working to bring in a new conservative government in Bolivia. That would mean dismantling much of the progress achieved by the MAS and the left over the past 20 years.

The MAS, though highly imperfect (we can talk about crisis mismanagement, corruption, embracing of dictators, and centralization of power forever), has made significant progress on various and significant fronts. That includes drastically reducing poverty and extreme poverty by more than half; cutting child hunger; expanding access to public education; creating new public universities; defending water rights; more than quadrupling gross domestic product per capita after decades of stagnation; getting Bolivia to a low and stable unemployment rate; successfully nationalizing key industries; expanding public healthcare through SUS; and giving Indigenous peoples, women, and other marginalized groups meaningful political representation under a Plurinational government.

If the polls are right, that legacy could soon be gone, making way for austerity and widespread suffering amid historic crises.