The economic crisis in Bolivia passes the bill to President Luis Arce | International

President Luis Arce is no longer the most popular Bolivian politician. He loses footing in the polls because of the country's economic crisis, the existence of which the president denies, but which 80% of Bolivians consider a reality. He is also harmed by cases of corruption within his government. A study that has just appeared indicates that he would not be the best candidate on the left in the 2025 elections, according to the voters of this current. The ruling party pointed out that it is "a bad moment and it will pass."

“We are the most stable economy, the financial system is totally stable, the financial solvency and liquidity indicators that the financial system has are good, there is no doubt about it,” Arce boasted a month ago in a television interview. The last of the surveys published periodically by the newspaper Page Seven, who consider themselves critical of the government, found that people do not believe him: 44% of Bolivians think that there is a "strong economic crisis" and 38%, a "moderate crisis." And only 31% believe that Arce has the ability to solve it. Among the skeptics are, according to this survey, 20% of voters for the Bolivian president in the elections that he won by an absolute majority in 2020.

It is possible that the disillusioned are supporters of former president Evo Morales, who no longer supports Arce, despite the fact that he was elected with the colors of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), which Morales leads. Another study by the Diagnosis company indicates that the approval of the president's management fell from its best moment, in the middle of last year and that now, with 37%, it is ten points lower than then. The survey shows that this loss of positions is related to the appearance of a demographic group (around 16% of the population) that manifests itself as "indifferent" regarding government management. This group does not come from the social sectors traditionally opposed to MAS, which are the country's affluent middle classes, but from the less educated and poorer segments of the electorate that have consistently voted for MAS. Hence, Diagnosis considers that they are "vistas" that have stopped supporting the Government.

The division of the Bolivian left into two wings began with the antagonism between Morales and Arce regarding the way in which the latter should govern and with whom he should do it. The bottom line of the conflict resides in the fact that Morales, who has already been president of Bolivia three times, wants to return to power in 2025, while Arce also cherishes the dream of his re-election. The mutual aggressions between the two wings have been so many and so strong that a reconciliation is very unlikely, despite the fact that, according to the polls, if the elections were held now, the opposition would win widely against the two factions of the MAS.

The difficult thing for the opposition current will be finding a way to define a single candidate. Although Bolivian law establishes the obligation to hold primaries, few think that this will be the way to resolve the fragmentation of the government and the opposition. In Bolivia there is no political tradition of going to the polls to resolve party issues. According to the survey of Page Seven, if that happened anyway, Arce would lose to Morales in the MAS primary.

The best-known leaders of the opposition do not appear in good positions in the opinion polls. Instead, the desire of the population for a new figure to appear that renews the alternatives to get out of the cycle of leftist governments that began in 2006 is detected. At this moment, the opponent with the greatest intention to vote is Luis Fernando Camacho, the governor of Santa Cruz who is a prisoner in a prison in La Paz. He is accused of his participation in the overthrow of Evo Morales, which he considers purely political, but which the MAS describes as conspiratorial and criminal.

From Santa Cruz, Camacho led the protests that marked the resignation of Morales on November 10, 2019. He is considered the "Bolivian Bolsonaro" and his rise in the polls is due to his personal situation, but it also coincides with regional trends and global strengthening of far-right options

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