Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator who was never a nationally prominent figure until now, won Bolivia’s presidential election on Sunday, preliminary results showed, galvanizing voters outraged by the country’s economic crisis and frustrated with 20 years of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party.

“The trend is irreversible,” Óscar Hassenteufel, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, said of Paz's lead over his rival, former right-wing President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.

Paz won 54% of the votes, early results showed, versus Quiroga's 45%.

Shortly after the results came in, Quiroga conceded to Paz.

“I've called Rodrigo Paz and wished him congratulations,” he said in a somber speech, prompting jeers from the audience. “We need a mature attitude right now."

Paz and his popular running mate, ex-police Capt. Edman Lara, gained traction among working-class and rural voters disillusioned with the unbridled spending of the long-ruling Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party but wary of Quiroga's radical 180-degree turn away from its social protections.

“We're grateful to the Bolivian people,” Lara told supporters after learning of his win, taking a more conciliatory tone than usual. “It's time to unite, it’s time to reconcile. Political divisions are over.”

Although Paz plans to end Bolivia’s fixed exchange rate, phase out generous fuel subsidies and reduce hefty public investment, he says he’ll take a gradual approach to free-market reforms in hopes of avoiding a sharp recession or jump in inflation that would enrage the masses.

In contrast, Quiroga advocated relying on the International Monetary Fund for a shock treatment package of the kind Bolivians came to know and fear in the 1990s.

Paz’s victory sets this South American nation of 12 million on a sharply uncertain path as he seeks to enact major change for the first time since the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the founder of MAS and Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.

Paz’s Christian Democratic Party has the cushion of a majority, albeit a small one, in Congress as he prepares to pursue an ambitious overhaul.

Erupting into cheers, Paz's supporters ran into the streets of La Paz, the capital, setting off fireworks and honking car horns. Crowds gathered outside a hotel downtown where Paz was expected to speak, some shouting, “The people, united, will never be defeated!"

Behind the celebrations, though, Bolivia faces an uphill battle.

Since 2023, the Andean nation has been crippled by a shortage of U.S. dollars that has locked Bolivians out of their own savings and hampered imports. Year-on-year inflation soared to 23% last month, the highest rate since 1991. Fuel shortages paralyze the country, with motorists often waiting days in line to fill up their tanks.

To survive even his first few months, Paz must replenish the country’s meager foreign currency reserves and get fuel imports flowing.

Shunning the IMF — an organization that has aroused political resentment in Bolivia before — Paz has pledged to scrape together the necessary cash by fighting corruption, reducing wasteful spending and restoring enough confidence in the country's currency to lure U.S. dollar savings out from under Bolivians' mattresses and into the banking system.

AP Video shot by Victor R. Caivano