Centre-right senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira, 58, won Bolivia\u2019s presidential runoff on Sunday and will be the country\u2019s next president, marking a shift to the right after nearly 20 years of dominance by the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas) party.<\/p>\n
With just over 97% of ballots counted in the electoral court\u2019s \u201cpreliminary\u201d tally, Paz Pereira secured 54.6% of the vote, while rightwing former president Jorge \u201cTuto\u201d Quiroga received 45.4%.<\/p>\n
The electoral court stressed that the figures are \u201cpreliminary and not definitive\u201d. That is because Bolivia uses two counts: a quicker one, based on photos of each ballot sent to a data-processing centre, and the slower definitive one, in which every vote is publicly counted and scrutinised at polling stations before entering the system.<\/p>\n
The court has up to seven days to release the official results.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s keep building a future, a new path after 20 years that have left us out of the economy \u2026 and geopolitics. We must create jobs,\u201d Paz Pereira told supporters at a hotel in La Paz, just over two hours after the results were announced.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIdeology doesn\u2019t put food on the table. What does is the right to work, strong institutions, legal security, respect for private property, and having certainty about your future \u2013 and that\u2019s what we want to work for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bolivia\u2019s next president also mentioned his US counterpart, Donald Trump, saying he hoped \u201cto build a close relationship with one of the most important governments in the world, to be part of the solutions from 8 November [the inauguration date] onwards, and to ensure that Bolivia does not lack hydrocarbons.\u201d<\/p>\n
A senator for the department of Tarija, Paz Pereira is the son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, who governed from 1989 to 1993.<\/p>\n
Supporters of Bolivia\u2019s presidential candidate Rodrigo Parereira celebrate after learning the results Photograph: Martin Bernetti\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Despite being an experienced politician \u2013 having served as a city councillor, mayor and congressman \u2013 he sought to present himself as an outsider and was the big surprise of the first round<\/a>, winning after starting his campaign near the bottom of the opinion polls.<\/p>\n Election day passed without incident<\/a>, according to the electoral court and international observers, including those from the European Union.<\/p>\n The defeated candidate, Quiroga \u2013 who served as president for 12 months between 2001 and 2002, and was making his fourth attempt to return to power \u2013 began his speech at a hotel in La Paz, where his team had gathered, by saying he had called Paz Pereira to congratulate him \u2013 prompting cries of \u201cNo!\u201d from the crowd.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease, I understand the pain we\u2019re feeling. Believe me, if we had systemic evidence [of electoral fraud], we would put it on the table,\u201d said Quiroga, who stated that he would monitor the final vote count but added that he \u201crespected the work\u201d of the electoral court in the first round and \u201cwill respect it\u201d in the run-off.<\/p>\n In addition to being Bolivia\u2019s first presidential runoff, Sunday\u2019s election marked the first time since 2005 that no candidate from the Mas party \u2013 which first came to power with Evo Morales and later with the current president, Luis Arce \u2013 was on the ballot for a presidential election.<\/p>\n Deeply unpopular<\/a>, Arce chose not to run and instead put forward his interior minister, Eduardo del Castillo, who won just over 3% of the vote in the first round \u2013 the minimum needed for the party to avoid losing its legal status.<\/p>\n