Jorge Quiroga: Bolivia Crisis, Neoliberal Return – Chicago Tribune

By Paola Flores and Carlos Valdez

La Paz, Bolivia (AP) – A message in his X account summarizes why former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga believes that it was time to put an end to two decades of leftist governments.

“After 20 years of evism/arcism, the dilemma is clear and clear: crisis, inflation, fuel queues, lack of dollars, stagnation and unemployment … or stability, diesel/gasoline, dollars, growth and work,” says Quiroga’s tweet, a neoliberal and right -wing that competes in the elections of August 17 with Free, an electoral coalition of citizen parties and groups.

Quiroga has been the hardest critic of Evo Morales when this indigenous leader exercised the Presidency (2006-2019), and the current president Luis Arce. To both of them the country to have taken the country to the “ruin”, in a good part for the internal struggle that both have fought within the leftist movement to socialism (more). None of them will compete in the elections.

Quiroga is commonly known as “Tuto”, an nickname he has told his dad of love. And he became so popular that today he is named for his friends and detractors.

With 41 years and being a figure outside of traditional politics, Quiroga became 2001 in one of Bolivia’s youngest presidents, when he was appointed interim president in replacement of the then ruler Hugo Bánzer, who left the position after being diagnosed with cancer. In 2005, 2014 and 2020, he ran again – without success – to the Executive.

Now, with 65 years and a neoliberal and public manager profile, he believes that, if triumphing in the elections he can get the country out of the worst economic crisis in the last four decades.

“I firmly believe that he can move us forward,” said Franz Choque, a public transport driver, while making a kilometer row at a service station in La Paz to stock up on the low gasoline available in the middle of the fuel crisis suffered by the South American country.

With just over 20% of the intention to vote, the most recent surveys have practically put it in technical draw with businessman Samuel Doria Medina.

He started his public career under the wing of an ex -dictator

Formed as engineer and business administrator at universities in the United States, after passing through the multinational IBM, a public career began under the tutelage of Hugo Bánzer, Bolivian dictator between 1971 and 1978 and who years later took a turn and embraced democracy to the point of running to the presidency, which assumed in 1997 with Quiroga as vice president.

Bánzer left the position a year before concluding his mandate after being diagnosed with cancer and “tuto” succeeded him interim (2001-2002). Bánzer died in 2002.

During his career, Quiroga has had to defend himself from the questions of Morales and other politicians for having been close to Bánzer highlighting the ex -ddgetter’s political turn and the fact that “democracy was built.” In the current electoral campaign, his past with the deceased military has not been used as a throwing weapon against him by his adversaries.

Ancient judicial problems

In 2010 he was prosecuted and sentenced to more than two years in prison for defamed a state bank managed by the Government of Morales, but did not go to jail because it was a minor penalty. He had said that this bank “became the laundry of Chavista resources, corruption and bad money.”

Six years later he was prosecuted for alleged irregularities in the signing of oil contracts as a president, but was amnestied. He states that he managed foreign investments that allowed the discovery of a successful gas well.

“Tuto” encouraged the rise to the presidency of Senator Jeanine Añez after the political crisis of 2019 that led Morales to resign in the midst of a social outbreak after the presidential elections he claimed to have won and were considered fraudulent. Quiroga, however, remained away from the government of Áñez, who was less than a year in power and since 2022 he celebrates a 10 -year sentence for “breach of duties.”

Your adjustment proposals

What one day moved away from voters for his strong anti-moral speech and his conservative look of the economy, today seems to give him political oxygen.

The candidate proposes a “radical change” that allows sealing free trade agreements, encouraging foreign investment and “ceasing to be submissively aligned to the three regional totalitarian Trogloditas tyrannies: Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.”

In line with his critical posture towards leftism in the region, Quiroga has asked hard questions against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) and his successor, Nicolás Maduro.

The neoliberal recipe that “tuto” proclaims would lead to eliminating the expensive subsidy to the fuels, ending the fiscal deficit by going to the International Monetary Fund to obtain a stabilization fund, cut expenses and close deficit public companies.

“We have never had such a hard crisis in 40 years,” says Quiroga.

The price increase is one of Bolivian’s biggest concerns. The accumulated inflation during the first semester was 15.53% compared to the same period last year, the highest in almost two decades.

The political science professor Carlos Saavedra warned that Quiroga “has the most radical proposal of adjustment and could generate strong rejection.”

Meanwhile, the political analyst Jimena Costa said that although “tuto” “has been a good public manager and has cultivated relations at the international level, he lacks a strong political party behind” as the ruling more, which despite having fractured still has strength among the unions.

Originally Published: August 14, 2025 at 9:45 AM CDT