Bolivia’s Interim President Abandons Campaign

Jeanine Añez served as controversial former Bolivian President Evo Morales after his flight to Belize. (Source)

Bolivian Interim President Jeanine Añez dropped out of the presidential race on September 17 in an attempt to avoid splitting the conservative vote in the race against former Economic Minister Luis Arce. The election in Bolivia will be held on October 18. 

Añez announced her candidacy in January, but recent polling prior to Añez’s dropout estimated her support to be between 7.7 and 8 percent, far behind the two candidates with the largest leads. According to the Mercados y Muestras poll, Arce maintains a lead at 25 percent support while Carlos Mesa, the most popular conservative candidate, maintains 22% support. Añez’s hard-line conservative policies, poorly-managed coronavirus response, and resulting economic damages were a few of the factors hampering her candidacy. 

Inaugurated on November 12, 2019, Añez and her administration enacted a series of new legal measures that attempted to contest or reverse Morales’s left-leaning and pro-indigenous policies. An evangelical Catholic, Añez publicly embraced Christianity’s return to the national government; in contrast, in 2009, Former President Evo Morales removed special protections of the Catholic Church from the Bolivian government and replaced acts celebrating the Bible with those honoring the Inca deity Pachamama.

Añez’s self-removal as a candidate is the latest event in a tumultuous political period for Bolivia—in November 2019, the Organization of American States released a statement reporting electoral irregularities and manipulation of the October 20 re-election of Morales. Over the following month, protests erupted across the country. After top military officials abandoned him, Morales stepped down and fled to Belize; an interim government headed by Añez and her party, the Social Democratic Movement (MDS), quickly replaced him.

Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal disqualified Morales from running for the upcoming senatorial election due to his residence in Argentina, where he remains in exile. However, Morales’s party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), remains popular.