The electoral tragicomedy in Bolivia to sustain the narco-state

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 24/07/2025

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With less than a month left for elections to elect a President, Vice-President, 130 Representatives of the lower house, and 36 Senators in Bolivia, to be conducted this forthcoming 17th of August, the 21st Century Socialism regime that controls this country has shown that this is only a new farce to take the people to vote without electing. It is the painful manipulation of hope that is repeated in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We are witnessing an electoral tragicomedy, devoid of any fundamental component of democracy, being played out in Bolivia to keep the narco-State and impunity.

Tragicomedy is the “situation or event in which the tragic and the comic are blended.” In literature, it is a “dramatic work with features of comedy and tragedy.” Taking that definition to the current situation in Bolivia, the tragedy consists of a country without democracy that in 2003 was steadily advancing on the road to sustainable development and that -instead- it has been taken to misery under the narrative of 21st Century Socialism, it has been turned into a satellite of Cuba and Venezuela’s dictatorships, it has become a territory occupied by China, Russia, and Iran, and is a narco-State. The comedy consists in that, under those circumstances, the regime continues to present itself as if it were a democracy.

Bolivia’s poverty has grown, and this year it will surpass 61% “with a greater impact in rural areas.” News Agency FIDES, reporting in May of this year on the Jubilee Foundation’s statement that in Bolivia the middle class is receding, which shows that “the social advancements were fragile and hid silent falls ... data from the National Institute of Statistics underestimate the reality.” Jubilee expressed that “in rural areas, six out of every ten people will live under extreme poverty” in 2025.

The country’s foreign debt is not known and has not been determined due to the manipulation of economic data by the government that -with its total control- has pretty much eliminated the institutionality of the country’s financial system. The internal debt, that is also manipulated, grows by the embezzlement of retirement funds and deposited contributions of active workers that the regime makes through “Administrators” that to facilitate the scamming and get ownership of the funds have replaced Retirement Funds Managers. Needlessly to say that these misappropriated funds represent the sole source of income for the sustenance of retiring workers. The government’s debt far exceeds the Gross Internal Product index, but it is maintained through counterfeiting –each time more difficult to sustain- before international financial organizations.

Objective reality is clearer than statistics. The dictatorship has liquidated Bolivia’s gas wealth, the Central Bank does not have reserves, they have sold the gold, there is neither gasoline, nor diesel, the U.S. Dollar costs three times more than the non-existing official U.S. Dollar exchange, the cost of basic groceries has gone up over 25%, and the purchasing power of workers’ salaries has fallen by nearly 50%. The dictatorship/narco-State regime is directly responsible for causing the existing crisis and for causing narcotics trafficking, corruption, protection to crime, contraband, and the citizenry’s insecurity that is taking Bolivians to the “successful” misery of Cuba and Venezuela that the regime proclaims to be a paradigm.

In Bolivia, there is none of the fundamental components of democracy. It is a replica of the vote-catching dictatorial system, one of the dictatorships’ methodologies of 21st Century Socialism applied as well in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. In Bolivia, just as in the rest of the countries controlled by Castrochavism, the voters’ registry is counterfeited, and is the basis for fraud by 30% or more. In-spite of repeated requests to review the voters’ registry, it has never been released to the media or to any one, this scheme produced the electoral fraud in 2019 and before, and was again repeated in 2020. The last massive civic demonstrations and protests in Santa Cruz, ended with its Governor being sent to jail where he has remained since.

Electoral officials are not independent because they maintain the counterfeited electoral registry, whose legality was certified by Rosario Baptista -now in exile- the very magistrate of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal who showed that it was impossible to win elections with the regime due to institutionalized fraud. There is no possibility of constitutional control because the Judicial Branch is dependent of the dictatorship. There is not a single component that will enable elections to be free, fair, and transparent as confirmed by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal that has disqualified any and all candidates who may pose a risk of representing a real non-functional opposition, as in the recent case of Jaime Dunn.

In Bolivia, there are over 300 political prisoners and over 10,000 exiles, as certified by the United Nations Agency for Refugees (ACNUR). Approximately 80% of Bolivians reject the regime and want a change, but the functional opposition repeats its efforts to divide the constituency in order to sustain the dictatorship. The same actors, Doria Medina a candidate to the Vice-Presidency in 2020 with Añez, and he withdrew, Quiroga was a candidate in 2020 and he withdrew (in 2008, both of these actors sold-out and surrendered the Republic and the constitution for political favors); Reyes Villa, Johnny Fernandez functional mayors and more, all participate to divide the electorate, and give the dictatorship its space for fraud.

The only difference is the regime’s internal dispute wherein Evo Morales is being prevented to run in a fight for corruption with the siting President Luis Arce. It will not be long before the regime props Andronico Rodriguez in the first round of voting. Andronico, as the new Head of the Plurinational State, Will not have governance or options and the crisis will take him to his demise. If -by chance- a functional candidate makes it to the second round of voting and the popular rejection makes him Head of the Plurinational State, we would have a very short-lived para-dictatorial government.

*Lawyer & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

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