 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. 6.9 million Bolivians will go to the polls on Sunday, October 20th, to vote for the next president of the country and their legislators. In the presidential election, a candidate in order to win in the first round has to obtain over 50% of the votes or over 40% while being 10% ahead of the nearest candidate. If this does not happen, a runoff will be held on December 15th. The elections in Bolivia have been the subject of much debate within the Andean country and across Latin America and the Caribbean. This is because the future of the continuation of the project of transformation is at stake. For the past 14 years, Bolivia has been governed by the party Movement Towards Socialism, MAS, led by President Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous head of state, and vice president Alvaro Garcia-Linera. The duo has been boldly taking measures to fundamentally transform the country and in order to serve its people and protect its sovereignty. Bolivia has been an exception in the region where country after country has been plunged into chaos under the leadership of neo-fascist leaders imposing neoliberal economics and uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. Bolivia has remained remarkably stable, registering 4% annual growth since 2006 and a significant reduction of poverty and extreme poverty. Now, for a fourth time, Bolivians will choose whether to continue on the path that has been forged by MAS under Morales and Garcia-Linera or to go with the opposition, whose claim is that they are not the MAS. In this explainer, we will take a deeper look at what is at stake in these elections, who the candidates are and more. So, who are the presidential candidates? According to pollsters, Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia-Linera, the candidates of the MAS, are predicted to obtain around 36 to 40% of the votes. If they do not win in the first round though, they may face a stiff challenge in the second round, where the rival candidate will be able to unite a fractured opposition. The strongest candidate from the Bolivian opposition is former president Carlos Mesa, who is running on the ticket of a centre-right political coalition called Citizen Community. He is some 10 points behind the MAS ticket in polling, obtaining around 20 to 28%. Mesa's campaign pitch is that he is the only viable opposition to Morales. He is claimed that he will recover and restructure Bolivian democratic and political institutions, which he alleges have been corrupted or tarnished under Morales rule. He has also mentioned the importance of re-establishing economic and political relationships with the United States. Interestingly, Mesa served as president from 2003 to 2005, during one of the most tumultuous times in Bolivia's recent history. He was a vice president to Gonzalo Sánchez de la Sada, who was elected in 2002, when their government drew up a plan to sell Bolivian gas at an extremely cheap rate to the United States. Of course, in the US, it would be sold for exponentially higher prices. The plan was met with mass uprising known as the gas wars, wherein people from across various sectors of Bolivian society joined to condemn and oppose the plan. The protesters called for the nationalization and industrialization of gas in Bolivia, so that the profits would directly benefit the people through development projects and social policies and programs. During the gas war, the police massacred over 80 people and injured hundreds on October 11, 2003, in the indigenous city of El Alto. Following the massacre, Losada was forced to resign due to political pressure and Mesa took over as president, but he too was eventually driven out after mass protests. Among other candidates, Oscar Ortiz follows Mesa with around 8 to 10 percent of the votes according to pollsters. He is from the Alliance Bolivia Says No, BDN. This emerged in 2016 to lead the No campaign against the constitutional referendum. The Alliance represents the far right-wing tendency of the province of Santa Cruz, which has been an opposition stronghold ever since Morales came to power. Ortiz has been unable to gather national support behind his candidacy. And while many sectors of the opposition have pressured him to withdraw in order to have a unified opposition candidate, he has refused. In the fourth place is doctor and evangelical pastor T. Huynh Chung of the Democratic-Christian Party. Some of the other candidates are Feliz Pazzi, the current governor of La Paz from the Third System Movement, former vice president Victor Hugo Cardenas from the Civic Unity Solidarity, Virgilio Lema of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, Israel Franklin Rodríguez of the Front for Victory, and Ruth Neena, the only female candidate from the National Bolivian Action. What is its take in these elections? What is the project of the MAS meant for Bolivia? During the 14 years under Morales, Bolivia has seen tremendous economic change and progress. The consistent economic growth in Bolivia since 2006 has had a direct impact on the socioeconomic conditions in the country. From 2000 to 2012, the poverty rate dropped by 32.2% in the country. This was praised by the United Nations as the highest rate of poverty reduction in the region. This was accompanied by an increase in employment, salaries, and a 20% increase in the minimum wage. What can this economic growth and success be attributed to? The centerpiece of the MAS economic program has been the nationalization, industrialization, and salvaging of state companies, and the use of the profits therein to sponsor social programs and build vital infrastructure. The nationalization of the oil company YPFB on May 1, 2006 marked the fulfillment of a long-standing demand of the people's movements in the country, and this was one of the earliest initiatives of the government of ever Morales. This move not only allowed the state to benefit from the development, extraction, and commercialization of gas and petroleum in the country, but it is also a firm political stance in the protection of Bolivia's sovereignty and natural resource wealth. Following the oil and gas nationalization, the Morales administration worked to strengthen and recover state mining companies, the state telecommunications company ENTEL, the national electricity company ENDE, and the airport service of Bolivia SABSA, among others. These policies were aimed at strengthening national industries and services and generating income for the state. All this nationalization enabled the launch of a large number of social programs that were key in pulling people out of extreme poverty. These include the RENTA dignitar program, which grants a dignified monthly salary to people over the age of 60. The Juana Azurdui program, which gives economic support and high-quality healthcare to pregnant women and their young children, and the Juansito Pinto program for young school kids to help pay for their school supplies. The Cuban literacy program, Yes I Can, which was also implemented in Bolivia, has had tremendous success, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UNESCO declared in 2016 that the country was free of illiteracy. What is the importance of these elections in the region? Evo Morales was first elected in 2006, in the midst of a moment commonly referred to as the progressive cycle in Latin America. This saw a collective regional response to the repressive neoliberal decade of the 1990s. It manifested in the growth of grassroots movements and electoral success of leftist and progressive candidates. In Brazil, there was Luis Inácio Lula de Silva. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez had been elected in 1999, and the Bolivarian Revolution was well underway. In Argentina, Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were reviving progressive peronism, while in Ecuador, Rafael Correa was undertaking the Citizen's Revolution. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front was elected, and in Haiti sometime before, John Bertrand Aristide had become the first democratically elected president. While each of these projects was distinct in terms of the radical structural changes they envisioned, together they represented a moment of hope and transformation in the continent. The continent had of course long been subject to the yoke of US imperialism and military dictatorship. Under the direction of Hugo Chavez, a number of initiatives to foster regional integration and cooperation were created. These include the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America People's Trade Treaty, the ALBA TCP, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, the Union of South American Nations, UNASUR, and others. This progressive cycle posed an obvious obstacle to the US hegemony in the region. It became a target of a series of well-planned attacks. The military coup d'etat in Haiti in 2004, the coup in Honduras in 2009, the parliamentary coup in Paraguay in 2012, the electoral victory of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, the parliamentary coup in Brazil in 2016, and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 were indicators that the progressive cycle was facing setbacks. However, throughout this period, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia persisted and continued to challenge the neoliberal imperialist onslaught. They continued to forge regional projects to foster solidarity, cooperation, and sovereignty. The persistence and resistance has been resonating across the continent as each of the right-wing regimes is facing massive resistance from the people. In the upcoming elections in Argentina, the Progressive Alliance Frente de Todos, led by Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández-Decartena, is likely to win. If Evo scores the victory in Sunday's election, it will be a remarkable step forward and a sign that the progressive cycle continues. Meanwhile, the popular rebellions in Haiti and Ecuador show that the people of the region will continue to resist and rise up against neoliberal imperialist lackeys.