Jorge Quiroga

Jorge Fernando Quiroga Ramírez (born 5 May 1960), nicknamed Tuto, is a Bolivian 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.

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.

Background and early life Quiroga was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia on 5 May 1960 at 6 am. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1981 with a degree in industrial engineering, becoming the first head of state from that university. He went on to work for IBM in Austin, Texas

Vice President of Bolivia (1997–2001) Quiroga was Minister of Finance in 1992. He was elected as Vice President of Bolivia in 1997 running on the Nationalist Democratic Action ticket with former dictator Hugo Banzer. At 37, he was the youngest vice president in Bolivia's history.

President of Bolivia (2001–2002)

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 acknowledging Bolivia's economic situation at the time. He became the first president since 1896 to be inaugurated in Sucre.

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. 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. 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.

He was appointed as vice president of the Club de Madrid in 2011.

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. 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. 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.

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. He supported Javier Milei in the 2023 Argentine general election.

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. After receiving around 26% of the votes in the first round on 17 August 2025,

Electoral history Year Office Political party Electoral alliance Votes Result Total % . 1997 Vice president Nationalist Democratic Action ADN−NFR−PDC 484,705 22.26 1st 2005 President Independent Social Democratic Power 821,745 28.59 2nd 2014 Christian Democratic Party 467,3119.04 3rd 2020 Independent Libre 21 2025 Independent Libre 1,430,176 26.70 2nd 2,881,972 45.11 2nd Source: Plurinational Electoral Organ Electoral Atlas