Before writing this text, I waited for more than five hours to fill my car’s gas tank. In Bolivia, there is a shortage of diesel and gasoline, but also of dollars and support for democracy. There is an official exchange rate and a parallel one due to the exchange crisis, which has led to a rise of more than 50% in many household and imported goods; public discontent has increased. In this context, support for democracy is declining, which is concerning as a new election approaches.

According to the 2024 report from the Milenio Foundation, the fiscal deficit continues to expand; public debt increased by 12.1% of GDP in 2023. Additionally, gas production continues to decline, and although the employment rate remains high, the labor market is burdened by job precariousness and a rapid rise in self-employment. The worrying thing is that the public perception of a crisis and uncertainty is growing, affecting the trust of businesses and other economic actors. To this is added the veto on meat exports under the pretext of ensuring production for domestic consumption. In this context, democracy in Bolivia is losing support, as it is in much of the world.

Looking ahead to the general elections on August 17, more than a dozen presidential hopefuls promise to resolve the economic crisis and remove the MAS from government. However, their ideas seem more focused on superficial debates than structural issues, such as the risk of falling even further into authoritarianism.

According to the 2024 Latinobarometro, support for the idea that “democracy is preferable to any other form of government” has dropped by four points between 2023 and 2024 in Bolivia. In contrast, the idea that “under some circumstances, an authoritarian government may be preferable to a democratic one” increased by three points during the same period. This is a concerning signal considering the crisis of political party representativity and the mistrust regarding potential electoral fraud.

Additionally, the sense of closeness to any political party in Bolivia, according to the same report, is among the lowest in Latin America: 21%, compared to 62% in Uruguay. Regarding parliamentary representation, 8 out of 10 people feel that it does not represent them politically, and 9 out of 10 believe that elections are fraudulent.

The poor economic management of the MAS (Evo Morales and Luis Arce over almost two decades) has left the country drowning in debt and poverty belts. Furthermore, the political submission of democratic institutions (Constitutional Court, Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and Judiciary) has led to the de-institutionalization of the state.

In this context, the ideological realignment of the opposition presidential candidates (fragmented) after the erosion of traditional political parties is a symptom of the current moment. Therefore, many agree in their aggressive narrative toward the establishment (MAS) and in favor of privatizations. The economic adjustment from the right-wing perspective and preventing the political left from remaining in power is the new creed of a part of the population. The socio-economic dimension predominates over the political-institutional one.

The ideological realignment of presidential candidates between center-right and radical-right is conditioned by economic proposals: reducing the number of public employees, reducing the fiscal deficit, free trade, lithium industrialization (U.S. companies), removing subsidies on hydrocarbons, closing loss-making state-owned companies, and ensuring legal security for private investment (national and foreign). In summary, privatize and get closer to Trump.

On the other hand, Evo Morales, although no longer part of the ruling party, intends to run for president (under a different political banner), but his official candidacy is uncertain because he constitutionally cannot. Additionally, the former president has an open case for possible human trafficking with aggravating circumstances due to an accusation of having maintained an intimate relationship with a teenager in 2015, while he was President of Bolivia.

The shortage of diesel, gasoline, and dollars has shaped an agenda for socio-economic changes that various center-right and radical-right presidential candidates (fragmented) are trying to capitalize on electorally, with different economic proposals but the same political desire: to remove the MAS from power. While they have the ideological wind in their favor, they still haven’t managed to find a political ship to unite them.

The missing issue in this agenda for change is the low support for democracy. And this is fertile ground for the emergence of new populisms that promise a paradisiacal future with the aim of clinging to power.

_{*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.}