After nearly two decades of one-party rule, three years of an accelerating currency crisis and too many months of mind-numbing fuel lines, Bolivia is lurching to the right.

For the first time since Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, rocketed to power in 2005 under the maverick former union leader Evo Morales, Sunday’s presidential runoff pits two conservative, business-friendly candidates against each other.

MAS received so few votes in the Aug. 17 elections that it almost lost its legal status as Bolivians expressed a prevailing desire for change.

Now, the question is how much change do Bolivians want — and how fast.

The next president’s immediate task must be to draw dollars into Bolivia and import enough fuel to ease the shortage.

Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, a right-wing former president who has run and lost three times before, envisions a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and a shock fiscal adjustment.

His rival Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator, says he’ll scrounge up the cash by legalizing the black market, phasing out wasteful subsidies, and luring Bolivians' hoarded dollars back into the banking system.

In the midst of the country's worst economic crisis in four decades, several ambivalent voters interviewed Thursday in El Alto, the sprawling city overlooking La Paz, the capital, doubted that either candidate could succeed in digging Bolivia out of its hole.

"Those who have been former politicians, almost no one trusts them anymore. And who is going to trust them since they have stolen so much?" said Luisa Vega, a 63-year-old vendor of teddy bears at a frigid open-air market, knitting out of boredom because she had no customers.

Paz, 58, is struggling to strike a balance between appeasing Bolivians' desperation for change and courting working-class voters, many of whom are disillusioned MAS supporters who see Quiroga's austerity as a recipe for recession.

Rather than focusing on foreign investors as the key to development, Paz hopes to uncover hidden cash by cracking down on corruption and formalizing the black market.

He proposes legalizing smuggled vehicles, offering tax amnesties to Bolivians who declare their stashed dollars and allowing the cross-border smugglers to register as vendors.

Paz's running mate, Edman Lara, has emerged as the real star of the campaign, helping the senator pull off a shock victory in the first round of elections. He captured first place after weeks of polling far behind Quiroga.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, Quiroga is again leading opinion polls.

The underdog status has helped endear the privileged son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora (1989-1993) to the public.

Captain Lara, as the vice presidential candidate is known, became something of a folk hero a few years ago after being fired from the police for denouncing corruption in viral TikTok videos.

The ex-officer has no political experience and an awkward habit of making populist promises — like universal income for women — in rousing speeches that contradict Paz's goal of restoring fiscal order.

Although Paz has walked back some of Lara's more expensive proposals like fivefold increases to pensions, they both insist on balancing tough, free-market reforms with MAS-style social protections.

As the country's inflation rate hits its highest level since 1991, Quiroga, 65, is betting that Bolivians want whatever the complete opposite of MAS looks like.

If elected, Quiroga — who graduated from Texas A&M University and worked for IBM in Austin, Texas — would trigger a major geopolitical realignment in a country that for the past two decades has shunned the U.S. and cozied up to China and Russia.

Last month, Quiroga flew to Washington for what he said were meetings with people promising progress in talks on a $12 billion bailout from the IMF, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank that would restore public confidence in the boliviano and allow Bolivia to immediately source more fuel.

At rallies, he pitches the potential windfalls from foreign investment in Bolivian gas exploration and lithium production, a contentious issue due to Indigenous communities’ opposition to water-intensive extraction on their lands.

Some Bolivians, wary of American meddling in their affairs since the bloody U.S.-led war on drugs, balk at these gestures.

Others feel reassured by Quiroga's commitment to 180-degree change and speak of Paz and Lara as the latest incarnation of ruinous left-wing populism.

AP Video by Victor R. Caivano