Centrist Rodrigo Paz wins Bolivia’s presidential polls

• Centrist Rodrigo Paz won Bolivia’s presidential runoff, defeating conservative rival Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga on October 19.

• Paz, a senator from the Christian Democratic Party, won 54.5 per cent of the votes,  according to early results from Bolivia’s electoral tribunal. 

• But Paz’s party does not hold a majority in the country’s legislature, which will force him to forge alliances to govern effectively.

• The 58-year-old senator’s win marks a historic shift for the South American country, governed almost continuously since 2006 by Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, which once enjoyed overwhelming support from the country’s Indigenous majority.

• Bolivia’s fragile economy dominated the runoff campaign.

• Both candidates pledged to strengthen diplomatic ties with Washington and seek US-backed financial support to stabilise Bolivia’s fragile economy.

• Once plentiful natural gas exports have plummeted, inflation is at a 40-year high, and fuel is scarce.

• Paz and his popular running mate, former police captain Edman Lara, gained traction among working-class and rural voters.

• Paz’s victory sets this nation of 12 million on a sharply uncertain path as he seeks to enact major change for the first time since the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the founder of MAS and Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.

• Paz is the third member of his extended family to be elected President of the landlocked nation.

• Paz, the son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora, was in office from 1989 to 1993, and has spent more than two decades in politics as a lawmaker and mayor.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Paz on his election as the President of Bolivia.