Jorge Quiroga, known in Bolivia simply as Tuto, was Evo Morales’ primary opponent in the December elections. As I have mentioned before, a vote for Evo Morales was in many cases a vote against Jorge Quiroga. Why would citizens vote against Tuto instead of voting for Evo?

 
The answer to this question is multi-faceted. First, this most recent of Bolivian elections was unprecedented not because Morales won a landslide victory, but because the Bolivian electorate was polarized in a way that has not been seen in recent history.

 
Traditionally, Bolivian constituencies have been fractured rather than polarized; in other words, instead of two political parties dominating the debate and receiving the vast majority of votes, they would be divided between three, four, five political parties. Then, the party with the greatest majority would scramble to put together a coalition.

 
This was not the case in the 2005 elections. Podemos, the neoliberal political party of Tuto Quiroga, and MAS, the Socialist party of Evo Morales, were the two viable, diametrically opposed options presented to the Bolivian electorate. Podemos campaign managers now admit that polarization was indeed their election strategy.

 
The nature of the choice was made clear by the list of candidates presented by Podemos. Full of old "politicos", the list was a text book case of what analysts are now calling "candidate recycling". It read like a who’s who in the past 25 years of Bolivian politics. Thus voters had a choice: they could vote for change, or they could vote to maintain the status quo.

 
For many, voting for the status quo was an unsavory option. The status quo meant more of the same: stagnant economic growth, soaring migration rates, greater social and economic inequality, and, perhaps most importantly, a central government rendered completely ineffective by chronic road blockades and worker strikes.

 
After years of social and political mobilization, President or not, Bolivians realized that Evo Morales had become the most powerful man in the country. His control of the rural countryside was complete. At his request, the rural sindicatos would seize control of the country’s roads, filling them with tree trunks, thorny vegetation, rocks, and cantankerous indigenous farmers armed with machetes and other farm tools.

 
In every instance, the blockades cost the Bolivian economy millions in lost revenue, endangered the food security of urban areas, and provoked a sentiment of political fatigue and desperation amongst average citizens. Sindicalismo became an extremely powerful form of political opposition, and governing the country became virtually impossible, even for well-intentioned leaders like Carlos Mesa.

 
Bolivians had no reason to believe that the situation would change with Tuto Quiroga, who had become a political representation of the neoliberal elitism that Morales so vehemently denounces. So a vote against Tuto Quiroga was a vote against the status quo, and ultimately, a vote against a future Bolivia that would be entirely ungovernable.