Jorge Quiroga

Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Family name hatnote Template:Infobox officeholder Jorge Fernando Tuto Quiroga Ramírez (born 5 May 1960) is a Bolivian conservative politician and industrial engineer who served as the 62nd president of Bolivia from 2001 to 2002. A former member of Nationalist Democratic Action, he previously served as the 36th vice president of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001 under Hugo Banzer and as minister of finance under Jaime Paz Zamora in 1992. During the interim government of Jeanine Áñez, he was briefly appointed from 2019 to 2020 as the country's international spokesperson to denounce alleged human rights violations by the previous government.

Quiroga was a candidate in the 2005 and 2014 presidential elections, in which President Evo Morales was elected for a first and third term respectively. In both elections, Quiroga ran on the Christian Democratic Party ticket. In the 2020 presidential election, Quiroga ran as a candidate for the Libre21 coalition, but withdrew his candidacy on 11 October 2020 (seven days prior to the election) in an unsuccessful attempt to unify the Bolivian opposition and prevent the socialist MAS-IPSP candidate Luis Arce from emerging victorious.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He contended for the presidency again in the 2025 presidential election. After placing second with around 27% of the votes cast, he was defeated in the runoff against Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira.<ref name="AP-17Aug">Template:Cite news</ref>

Background and early life

Quiroga was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia on 5 May 1960 at 6 am.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1981 with a degree in industrial engineering, becoming the first head of state from that university.<ref name="New Yorker">Template:Cite magazine Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2007</ref> He went on to work for IBM in Austin, Texas<ref name="New Yorker"/> while earning a master's degree in business administration from St. Edward's University. He then moved back to Bolivia with his American wife Virginia Gillum.<ref name="New Yorker"/> He has 4 children: Vanessa Elena, Cristina Andrea, Adriana Patricia and Jorge Cristian.

Quiroga and Gillum divorced in 2008. On 19 April 2025, he married Milena Dobronic, who is of Croatian origin.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Vice President of Bolivia (1997–2001)

Quiroga was Minister of Finance in 1992.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was elected as Vice President of Bolivia in 1997 running on the Nationalist Democratic Action ticket with former dictator Hugo Banzer.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> At 37, he was the youngest vice president in Bolivia's history.

President of Bolivia (2001–2002)

Template:See also He became president when Banzer resigned because of aggravated health problems (he died a year following his resignation). Quiroga assumed office as acting president on 1 July 2001 and was sworn in on 7 August, to complete Banzer's five-year mandate. Quiroga first praised Banzer in his inauguration speech, stating: "With our applause, let's honour the man (...) who left deep footprints in our history.", while acknowleging Bolivia's economic situation at the time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He became the first president since 1896 to be inaugurated in Sucre.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Soon after becoming president he told a reporter from the New Yorker "We [Bolivia] will be the vital heart of South America," believing that gas exports would lift the economy, that a long-anticipated transcontinental highway connecting Brazil to Chile would be built passing through the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, and that fibre-optic cables would soon be laid.<ref name="New Yorker"/> He blamed Bolivia's lack of economic progress on hypocrisy on free trade in the United States and Europe, saying "Bolivia is the most open economy in South America. Meanwhile, American and European farm subsidies, along with tariffs on textiles and agricultural products, make it impossible for Bolivia to sell its exports in the Global North. They tell us to be competitive while tying our arms behind our backs."<ref name="New Yorker"/> When asked about the Bolivian Water Wars of 2000, he said, “A lot of things certainly could have been different along the way, from a lot of different actors. The net effect is that we have a city today with no resolution to the water problem. In the end it will be necessary to bring in private investment to develop the water."<ref name="New Yorker"/>

Post-presidency (2002–present)

File:Jorge Quiroga irá a México a explicar lo que pasó en Bolivia- "Aquí no hubo golpe".jpg

Quiroga in a press conference in late 2019.

Quiroga ran for president in his own right in the 2005 election, as the candidate for a new right-of-center coalition known as Social and Democratic Power (PODEMOS), which included the bulk of Banzer's former ADN organization. His main opponent was the leftist Evo Morales of the Movement Towards Socialism. Morales won the election and Quiroga finished a distant second place, receiving 28.6% of the vote.

He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 2002, he was honored in a tribute exhibit at his alma mater, Texas A&M University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He is, as of November 2016, active in the private sector and many international organizations, among them: as vice-president of Club de Madrid with almost 100 former heads of state and government; on the board of Results for Development-R4D in Washington D.C.; as a member of the Inter-American Dialogue and the International Advisory Council of the China Economic Club; and in different capacities on the Global Adaptation Institute, the Foro Iberoamericano and many others.<ref name="oneyoungworld.com">Template:Cite web</ref> He has presided FUNDEMOS since 2002, a Bolivian public policy foundation. His areas of expertise are: management of international aid and cooperation for developing countries; macroeconomic policy; constitutional, legal and institutional reforms; private and official external debt restructuring and relief; programs to reduce drug trafficking and cocaine production; and broadly in South American public policy, trade, economics, finance and banking, integration, politics and development issues.<ref name="oneyoungworld.com"/>

In 2010 he was charged with libel and slander. He accused the management of the public banking group Banco Unión S.A. of corruption, money laundering, and mismanagement. In the first instance, he was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. According to the constitution, this means he can no longer run for public office. However, Quiroga filed an appeal.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He was appointed as vice president of the Club de Madrid in 2011.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On 2 December 2019, the interim government of Jeanine Áñez appointed Quiroga as an international delegate on a special mission to denounce alleged human rights violations by the ousted Morales administration.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He held the post for just over a month, before resigning on 8 January 2020 in order to announce his presidential candidacy for the snap elections to be held later that year.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Throughout the election cycle, he remained around sixth place reaching between 1 and 2% in opinion polling and never surpassing 7%. On 11 October, one week before the scheduled election, Quiroga announced he was dropping out of the presidential race. He indicated in his withdrawal announcement that he wished to prevent an outright victory of Luis Arce of the Movement for Socialism party in the first electoral round by consolidating the right around Carlos Mesa.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He previously served as a senior advisor at New Direction, a think tank affiliated with the European Conservatives and Reformists Party in the European Parliament, until 2023.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He supported Javier Milei in the 2023 Argentine general election.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

For the 2025 elections, he announced his presidential candidacy with the electoral alliance Libertad y Democracia ("Freedom and Democracy"), abbreviated as Libre: a coalition formed by the Frente Revolucionario de Izquierda (Revolutionary Left Front) and the Movimiento Demócrata Social (Social Democratic Movement), with Juan Pablo Velasco as his running mate for vice president.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After receiving around 26% of the votes in the first round on 17 August 2025,<ref name="AP-17Aug"/> he lost a run-off against Senator Rodrigo Paz on 19 October, winning 45.5% of the vote.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Electoral history

Year	Office	Political party		Electoral alliance		Votes			Result
						Total	%	Template:Abbr.
1997	Vice president	rowspan=2 style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Nationalist Democratic Action	style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	ADN−NFR−PDC	484,705	22.26	1st	rowspan=2 Template:Yes2
		style="background-color:Template:Party color" |
2005	President	style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Independent	style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Social Democratic Power	821,745	28.59	2nd	Template:No2
2014		style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Christian Democratic Party	colspan=2 Template:CNone	467,311	9.04	3rd	Template:No2
2020		style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Independent		Libre 21	colspan=3 Template:CNone	Template:No2
2025		rowspan=2 style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Independent	rowspan=2 style="background-color:Template:Party color" |	Libre	1,430,176	26.70	2nd	Template:Partial
		2,881,972		45.11		2nd	Template:No2
Source: Plurinational Electoral Organ | Electoral Atlas

External links

• Biography by CIDOB (in Spanish)
• Member profile at The Dialogue
• Profile at the BBC
• thebatt
• Bolivia's Precarious Upcoming Election-Council on Hemispheric Affairs Template:Webarchive