(31 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
La Paz, Bolivia – 30 July 2025
1. Doria Medina on a camera viewfinder
2. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Samuel Doria Medina, Bolivian presidential candidate:
"I believe that on August 17th, not only will we change the president, but there will be a change of cycle in Bolivia. And part of that change of cycle will be that there will be new actors. The MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) will be a thing of the past; it will be a minority."
3. Doria Medina during the interview
4. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Samuel Doria Medina, Bolivian presidential candidate:
++PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 5-6++
"Bolivia had preferential treatment (with the United States), we didn’t pay tariffs, and we could enter the North American market. And with Evo Morales’ decision, that treatment was lost, and several thousand jobs were lost in Bolivia. Obviously, for that reason, we are going to seek an agreement so that Bolivian products can reach the largest market in the world."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: La Paz, Bolivia – 17 September 2024
5. Former President Evo Morales, at a Pachamama ceremony, waving to supporters, people chanting UPSOUND (Spanish): "Evo, Evo"
6. Morales leading an opposition march
STORYLINE:
It’s no surprise that Samuel Doria Medina is running for president of Bolivia: The 66-year-old multimillionaire ran as a center-right candidate in the elections of 2005, 2009, and 2014. He failed each time as Bolivia’s leftist ruling party, founded by Former President Evo Morales, maintained a tight grip over politics.
What’s unexpected is that next month, after almost two decades of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party in power, the long-shot candidate who promises to arrest Morales and cozy up to U.S. President Donald Trump stands a real chance of victory.
Polls show Doria Medina, owner of hotel chains and Bolivia’s Burger King restaurants, as a frontrunner in the Aug. 17 election.
"Not only will we change the president, but there will be a change of cycle in Bolivia," Doria Medina, a former cement magnate, told The Associated Press Wednesday from his sleek office on the 20th floor of one of Bolivia’s tallest towers that he helped build.
Doria Medina, a successful businessman and entrepreneur, is tapping public outrage over Bolivia’s worst economic crisis since 1991.
He promises unity to voters frustrated by the fracturing of the MAS party between current President Luis Arce and his erstwhile ally, the larger-than-life Morales, who oversaw a so-called economic miracle of rising growth and falling poverty for much of his tenure from 2006-2019.
But Morales’ statist economic model, built on natural gas exports, has gone bust. Now the landlocked nation of 12 million is approaching a watershed moment as crippling dollar shortages, mass unrest, and fuel scarcity threaten the once-unquestioned dominance of the MAS party, founded in the 1990s.
Much remains uncertain in the run-up to the highly anticipated vote, with Morales’ large base of loyalists vowing to leave their ballots blank on account of the former president’s contentious exclusion from the race — in part a result of his bitter political fight with Arce.
Facing a humiliating defeat, Arce dropped out of the race.
The only leftist candidate leading polls is Andrónico Rodríguez, the 36-year-old president of the senate and vice president of Morales’ coca-farming union, trailing in the pools. Rodríguez would be considered the political heir of Morales’ MAS if it weren’t for Morales branding him a traitor for running against him.
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