Barred from appearing on Sunday’s ballot, former leftist president Evo Morales has launched a scrappy campaign for a presidential candidate with no name, no face and no platform.

He's called “Nulo" — Spanish for the null-and-void vote.

Nulo has a reliable base in Bolivia, where voting is compulsory. For many years, Nulo drew its support from voters disillusioned with Morales' increasingly high-handed attempts to prolong his presidency over three consecutive terms.

But with the coca-farming union leader disqualified from the race and seeking to distance himself from the unpopular President Luis Arce and other leftist rivals associated with Bolivia's worst economic crisis in four decades, Nulo has found in Morales its greatest champion.

It’s a last-ditch bid for relevance by Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, who, like other Latin American leftist leaders of his generation, has tried a range of tactics to prolong his time in power.

But under Bolivian law, Nulo cannot win — nor annul the elections, nor trigger a redo.

Morales is betting that an unusually high proportion of votes for Nulo would embarrass the right-wing frontrunners, former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga and businessman Samuel Doria Medina, undermine the credibility of the consequential election and extend his own political relevance.

To run for a third term in 2014, Morales changed the Constitution’s two-consecutive-term limit and stacked the top courts with his supporters.

To run for a fourth term in 2019, he found a way around a referendum blocking his bid.

That last attempt six years ago led to Morales resigning under pressure from the military and fleeing into exile as violent protests erupted over his disputed re-election.

This time, with his ally-turned-rival Arce in charge, Morales had all the cards — rather, courts — stacked against him.

The ex-president's power struggle with Arce splintered his once-dominant Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, into factions.

Although not running for MAS, Senate President Andrónico Rodríguez was thought to represent the party's best hope.

But support for Rodríguez, a coca-farming union activist like Morales, has dropped as an accelerating currency crisis stokes outrage at Bolivia's left-wing establishment.

Morales' supporters have attacked the left-wing candidates almost as much as the right-wing that their leader built his career opposing.

As anger flared in June over Morales' disqualification, his supporters blocked highways and clashed with police in unrest that left eight dead. Morales warned that the country would “convulse” should the election proceed.

Yet in recent months he has changed his tune, urging his followers to register their frustration through the ballot box.

AP Video by Carlos Guerrero