Bolivia - Evo is running

The former president wants to be a candidate in 2025. The current president from Evo's party isn't thrilled.

Evo Morales announced he will run for Bolivia's presidency in 2025. This is surprising because Morales's MAS party currently controls the presidency and Congress and the current president, Luis Arce, is eligible to run for reelection. This is not surprising because he's Evo Morales, a populist leader from the 2000's convinced that the entire political system should revolve around him as an individual for the rest of his life.

Arce and Morales have been at odds with each other for nearly the entire year. On one hand, Arce has often bowed to Morales's political preferences, including the persecution of politicians involved in the former president's 2019 ouster and the Jeanine Añez administration that followed. However, on economic policy, Arce has attempted to manage a moderate path while Morales has moved to a more extreme position than he held when he was actually president. That, combined with general bureaucratic tensions over who runs policy, has the lead in negotiating with Congress, and appoints government positions, have led to the split.

Populist former leaders often do poorly when they can't control their successors like puppets. Lenin Moreno broke from Rafael Correa. Alvaro Uribe disavowed the policies of Juan Manuel Santos. President Alberto Fernandez in Argentina has had significant differences with his own vice president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. 

The Evo-Arce split in Bolivia matches all those splits, including leaving the sitting president with fractured congressional support, but differs in one important way. While enormously influential, Correa, Uribe, and CFK all knew that running for president again would be a political error and legally problematic. Morales, on the other hand, seems convinced he can run and win in spite of polling showing his approval rating below 30%.

This split should help the opponents of the MAS, but only if they actively work to take advantage of it. Bolivia's left has already split, with those opposed to Evo being swiftly exiled from the party no matter what their other policy preferences on economics or politics. On that side of the spectrum, it's not about left-right; it's about devotion to the former leader. Whether Evo's and Arce's opponents can win depends on their own ability to unite. Sitting back and taking joy in the split won't be enough to win. Evo is a savvy campaigner and still controls enough levers of power in the country to cheat.

Meanwhile, for the next two years, Arce is a lame duck. He's lost his key political benefactor and is about to lose his party. The president's ability to govern will be hampered. There is a small chance the president could make a sudden shift towards moderation and attempt a center-left / center-right coalition, but that seems unlikely given the current political climate. The more likely outcome is policy stagnation and greater economic turmoil as the domestic political system and international markets hold their breath for 2025.