LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct 19, (AP): Bolivians began voting Sunday in their country’s first presidential runoff that pits two conservative, capitalist candidates against each other, ushering in a new political era after two decades of one-party rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party. Voters are choosing between former right-wing President Jorge "Tuto Quiroga and centrist Sen. Rodrigo Paz as they look for a leader to lift them out of their country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Since 2023, the Andean nation has been crippled by a shortage of US dollars that has locked Bolivians out of their own savings and hampered imports. The value of a boliviano on the black market is half the official exchange rate. Year-on-year inflation soared to 23% last month, the highest rate since 1991. Fuel shortages paralyze the country.

Both Quiroga and Paz have billed themselves as candidates of change, vowing to break with the budget-busting populism that dominated Bolivia under the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party founded by Evo Morales, a charismatic coca growers’ union leader who became Bolivia’s first Indigenous president in 2006.

Driven by internal divisions and battered by public anger over fuel lines, MAS suffered a historic defeat in the Aug. 17 election. The rivals in the dead-heat runoff vow to end Bolivia’s fixed exchange rate, restructure state-owned companies and attract foreign investment. Among the factors that most distinguish them is how far and fast they propose pushing their reforms.

Voting in the runoff is compulsory and around 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to cast ballot. Quiroga wants to get dollars flowing into Bolivia immediately with a big rescue package from the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral lenders. That would demand savage cuts in state spending, such as slashing fuel subsidies, shrinking the public payroll and cutting the state out of Bolivia’s gas and mining businesses.