Bolivian general election, 1989

General elections were held in Bolivia on 7 May 1989. As no candidate for the presidency received over 50% of the vote, the National Congress was required to elect a President on 6 August. Although the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement had received the most votes, its candidate for President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was defeated by Jaime Paz Zamora of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in the Congressional vote, despite the MIR only finishing third in the public vote.

In the initial months of 1989, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) tried in vain to postpone the election date, arguing that the deadline for electoral registration restricted citizen participation. In December 1988, the party's delegation in Congress had managed to amend the electoral law of 1986. Arguing that the new registration requirements, which limited registration to citizens who possessed cédulas de identidad (national identity cards), constituted a violation of universal suffrage, the MNR pushed through legislation that added birth certificates and military service cards as valid registration documents. Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN) refused to go along with its ally and eventually charged the MNR with conducting fraudulent registrations. By mid-February this issue had triggered the rupture of the pacto.

The end of the pacto revealed an old reality about Bolivian politics. To achieve power, broad electoral alliances must be established; yet, electoral alliances have never translated into stable or effective ruling coalitions. On the contrary, electoral alliances have exacerbated the tensions built into a complex system. Thus, once in power, whoever controls the executive must search for mechanisms or coalitions such as the pacto to be able to govern. This search was the single most important challenge facing Bolivian politicians into the 1980s.

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