(17 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
La Paz – 17 August 2025
1. Various of Samuel Doria Medina, who is running for president, obtaining his ballot to vote
2. Various of Doria Medina voting
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Samuel Doria Medina, presidential hopeful:
"(In reference to denouncements made by supporters of Evo Morales) "Yesterday, they tried to break into our computing center, claiming that fraud was being prepared, when it is public knowledge that all parties carry out electoral controls. They have not succeeded. We have defended our electoral center. It seems that they want to argue that there will be fraud to cover up their failure."
4. Various of voter Angelica Mamani (woman in red vest) and others waiting to cast ballot
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Angelica Mamani, 66, voter:
“We suffer. There is nothing, nothing to buy, things are expensive. Prices have gone up. Those of us who don’t work suffer. Sometimes we go without eating. There are no work. If there are jobs, they pay a pittance.”
6. Voter casts ballot
7. Various of voters preparing to vote
8. Various of people voting
9. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Justina Choque, voter:
"We don’t have money or anything. I want things to change. I want things (to be better) for children and the elderly. I want there to be jobs for young people."
10. Various of voting center
STORYLINE:
Bolivians headed to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president and parliament in elections that could spell the end of the Andean nation’s long-dominant leftist party and see a right-wing government elected for the first time in over two decades.
The vote is one of the most consequential for Bolivia in recent times — and one of the most unpredictable.
Even at this late stage, a remarkable 30% or so of voters remain undecided.
Polls have shown the two leading right-wing candidates, multimillionaire business owner Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge Fernando “Tuto” Quiroga, locked in a virtual dead heat.
A right-wing victory isn’t assured.
Many longtime voters for the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, now shattered by infighting, live in rural areas and tend to be undercounted in polling.
With the nation’s worst economic crisis in four decades leaving Bolivians waiting hours in fuel lines, struggling to find subsidized bread and squeezed by double-digit inflation, the opposition candidates bill the race as a chance to alter the country’s destiny.
The outcome will determine whether Bolivia — a nation of about 12 million people with the largest lithium reserves on Earth and crucial deposits of rare earth minerals — follows a growing trend in Latin America, where right-wing leaders like Argentina’s libertarian Javier Milei, Ecuador’s strongman Daniel Noboa and El Salvador’s conservative populist Nayib Bukele have surged in popularity.
A right-wing government in Bolivia could trigger a major geopolitical realignment for a country now allied with Venezuela’s socialist-inspired government and world powers such as China, Russia and Iran.
AP Video by Victor R. Caivano and Carlos Guerrero
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