Who is Rodrigo Paz? Centrist senator wins Bolivia presidency, ending decades of leftist rule

Centrist Rodrigo Paz won Bolivia’s presidential runoff on Sunday, defeating conservative rival Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, as the country’s worst economic crisis in a generation helped propel the end of nearly two decades of leftist rule. Paz, a senator from the Christian Democratic Party, won 54.5% of the vote, beating Quiroga’s 45.5%, according to early results from Bolivia’s electoral tribunal, as per CNN. But Paz’s party does not hold a majority in the country’s legislature, which will force him to forge alliances to govern effectively. The new president takes office on November 8 . The 58-year-old senator’s win marks a historic shift for the South American country, governed almost continuously since 2006 by Bolivia’s Movement to Socialism, or MAS, which once enjoyed overwhelming su