Get the latest news and updates from Dawn
LA PAZ: Centrist Rodrigo Paz won Bolivia’s presidential runoff on Sunday, defeating conservative rival Jorge Quiroga, as the country’s worst economic crisis in a generation helped propel the end of nearly two decades of leftist rule.
Paz, a senator from the Christian Democratic Party, won 54.5 per cent of the vote, beating Quiroga’s 45.5pc, 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 new president takes office on Nov 8.
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 to Socialism, which once enjoyed overwhelming support from the country’s Indigenous majority.
