Bolivia Pres. Runoff Lurches Right     10/17 06:13

   

   EL ALTO, Bolivia (AP) -- After nearly two decades of one-party rule, three 
years of an accelerating currency crisis and too many months of mind-numbing 
fuel lines, Bolivia is lurching to the right.

   For the first time since Bolivia's Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, 
rocketed to power in 2005 under the maverick former union leader Evo Morales, 
Sunday's presidential runoff pits two conservative, business-friendly 
candidates against each other. MAS received so few votes in the Aug. 17 
elections that it almost lost its legal status as Bolivians expressed a 
prevailing desire for change.

   Now, the question is how much change do Bolivians want -- and how fast.

   The next president's immediate task must be to draw dollars into Bolivia and 
import enough fuel to ease the shortage. Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, a right-wing 
former president who has run and lost three times before, envisions a bailout 
from the International Monetary Fund and a shock fiscal adjustment.

   His rival Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator, says he'll scrounge up the cash 
by legalizing the black market, phasing out wasteful subsidies and luring 
Bolivians' hoarded dollars back into the banking system.

   In the midst of the country's worst economic crisis in four decades, several 
ambivalent voters interviewed Thursday in El Alto, the sprawling city 
overlooking the capital of La Paz, doubted that either candidate could succeed 
in digging Bolivia out of its hole.

   "It's not going to be solved quickly, it's going to take time," said Luisa 
Vega, a 63-year-old vendor of teddy bears at a frigid open-air market, knitting 
out of boredom because she had no customers. "Almost no one had confidence in 
the previous politicians. Who is going to have confidence now?"

   From the border, a glimpse into currency chaos

   Before dawn on the shores of Lake Titicaca, rafts piled high with bread, 
fuel, cooking oil and eggs slip across the border to Peru, where 
state-subsidized goods fetch triple what they do at home.

   Smugglers in the border town of Desaguadero, two hours from La Paz, make 
little attempt to hide. Border guards look away.

   With the official exchange rate between the boliviano and the dollar all but 
collapsed, it has become dirt cheap for Peruvians to shop in Bolivia and 
lucrative for Bolivians to sell in Peru. One Peruvian sol is worth nearly four 
bolivianos on the black market.

   "Crises are opportunities," said Ronald Vallejos, who travels twice a week 
to hawk flour and sugar in Peru. Dollars are sold at a steep premium so 
Vallejos arrives with stacks of bolivianos to trade for soles, later stashing 
the bills under his mattress and floorboards.

   Because of strict price controls and dollar scarcity, Bolivia can't scrape 
together enough cash for imports. Food shortages have become a part of life. 
Queues snake outside subsidized bakeries. Empty shelves send shoppers on 
scavenger hunts for oil and rice.

   Authorities blame smugglers for the scarcity and sky-high prices of staples 
-- even as the black market is more a consequence of the shortages than the 
cause.

   "Gratuitous spending, speculation, and smuggling are worsening the 
situation, increasing prices by up to 300% in some cases," said Jorge Silva, 
the deputy minister of consumer protection. It's a tough job in this bankrupt 
country; Silva said he was recently chased out of a street market when he tried 
to monitor prices.

   Paz walks a tightrope between the left and right

   Paz, 58, is struggling to strike the balance between appeasing Bolivians' 
desperation for change and courting working-class voters, many of whom are 
disillusioned MAS supporters who see Quiroga's austerity as a recipe for 
recession.

   Rather than focusing on foreign investors as the key to development, Paz 
hopes to uncover hidden cash by cracking down on corruption and formalizing the 
black market. He proposes legalizing smuggled vehicles, offering tax amnesties 
to Bolivians who declare their stashed dollars and allowing the cross-border 
smugglers to register as vendors.

   "There will be no more smuggling, everything will be legal," he declared at 
his closing campaign rally Wednesday.

   Paz's running mate, Edman Lara, has emerged as the real star of the 
campaign, helping the senator pull off a shock victory in the first round of 
elections. He captured first place after weeks of polling far behind Quiroga.

   Ahead of Sunday's vote, Quiroga is again leading opinion polls.

   The underdog status has helped endear the privileged son of former President 
Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993) to the public.

   "Everyone is against him, the mainstream media, the pollsters, they want him 
to lose," said Salom Ramrez, 37, waiting at a bus stop in downtown La Paz. 
"That means he gets my vote."

   Captain Lara, as the vice presidential candidate is known, became something 
of a folk hero a few years ago after being fired from the police for denouncing 
corruption in viral TikTok videos.

   The ex-officer has no political experience and an awkward habit of making 
populist promises -- like universal income for women -- in rousing speeches 
that contradict Paz's goal of restoring fiscal order.

   Although Paz has walked back some of Lara's more expensive proposals like 
fivefold increases to pensions, they both insist on balancing tough, 
free-market reforms with MAS-style social protections.

   "Paz and Lara are visiting places that other presidents haven't, they're 
reaching the poorest people who need their help the most," said Jos Torres 
Gmez, a 28-year-old student in El Alto.

   'Tuto' promises a bitter pill

   As the country's inflation rate hits its highest level since 1991, Quiroga, 
65, is betting that Bolivians want whatever the complete opposite of MAS looks 
like.

   "We will change all the laws," he told supporters at his final campaign 
rally. "We will change Bolivia."

   If elected, Quiroga -- who graduated from Texas A&M University and worked 
for IBM in Austin, Texas -- would trigger a major geopolitical realignment in a 
country that for the past two decades has shunned the U.S. and cozied up to 
China and Russia.

   Last month, Quiroga flew to Washington for what he said were meetings with 
"people who can get us out of this rut," promising progress in talks on a $12 
billion bailout from the IMF, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank 
that would restore public confidence in the boliviano and allow Bolivia to 
immediately source more fuel.

   At rallies, he pitches the potential windfalls from foreign investment in 
Bolivian gas exploration and lithium production, a contentious issue due to 
Indigenous communities' opposition to water-intensive extraction on their lands.

   Some Bolivians, wary of American meddling in their affairs since the bloody 
U.S.-led war on drugs, balk at these gestures. Others feel reassured by 
Quiroga's commitment to 180-degree change and speak of Paz and Lara as the 
latest incarnation of ruinous left-wing populism.

   "There are big differences between the candidates," said Antonio, 58, a 
struggling textile importer who declined to give his last name for fear of 
reprisals from the outgoing government. "With Paz and Lara, we'll continue the 
past 20 years of economic disaster."