Will Bolivian president Rodrigo Paz Pereira remain in power through the end of 2026?

TL;DR

I estimate a 70% chance that Rodrigo Paz Pereira remains Bolivia’s president continuously through 31 December 2026. The street crisis is severe, but the decisive collapse signals are still missing: no public military or police defection, no congressional removal front, and no unified protest actor able to impose a successor. The main NO path is a renewed blockade wave or lethal state-of-exception crackdown that pushes elites or security forces to abandon him.

Context

Paz is the incumbent president; Bolivia’s presidency page says he assumed office on 8 November 2025, and AP also reported his swearing-in before Congress on that date (Bolivian Presidency, AP). His October 2025 runoff mandate was real: Bolivia’s electoral authority proclaimed the PDC ticket of Rodrigo Paz and Edmand Lara the winner with 54.96% of valid votes and 100% of tally sheets processed (OEP/TSE).

As of 18 June 2026, he is in a major governing crisis. El País reported almost 50 days of conflict, 360 people apprehended since 1 May, 22 pretrial detentions, and the first government-COB meeting ending with roads still blocked; the same report said the COB’s demands had narrowed to eight points and were no longer only “Paz must resign” (El País, 18 Jun 2026). That makes the crisis live, but not yet a completed regime break.

Evidence

The historical backbone is bad for a Bolivian president under blockades. Since the 1982 return to civilian rule, I count five all-cause early exits or shortened presidencies before the intended endpoint: Hernán Siles Zuazo, Hugo Banzer, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, Carlos Mesa, and Evo Morales. Four were political or protest/economic interruptions. Over about 43.7 years from October 1982 to June 2026, that is a crude all-cause interruption hazard near 11% per president-year, or about 6% over the 196-day horizon from 18 June to 31 December. The protest-political hazard alone is about 5% over the same horizon. Paz is far above that baseline because he is already in a blockade crisis.

The current crisis has already crossed danger lines. On 3 June, El País reported that the defense and education ministers resigned after the labor minister had resigned on 21 May, making three cabinet exits in ten days; it also reported nearly 100 road cuts in seven of Bolivia’s nine departments and shortages of food, gasoline, and medicines in La Paz and El Alto (El País, 3 Jun 2026). EFE reported on 8 June that protests and blockades had caused at least 10 deaths, including deaths linked to lack of timely medical care, and that Paz promulgated a states-of-exception law while still needing a separate decree to activate a state of exception (EFE, 8 Jun 2026). This is not ordinary midterm unrest.

The latest direction is less bad for Paz. La Razón reported 52 active blockade points on 16 June, with 20 in La Paz, 13 in Cochabamba, 12 in Oruro, 6 in Potosí, and 1 in Santa Cruz, based on the highway authority’s transitability map (La Razón, 16 Jun 2026). El País reported the same week that Paz was avoiding a broad army deployment and trying to wear down or split the movement rather than immediately using maximum force (El País, 16 Jun 2026). The 18 June government-COB meeting did not reopen the roads, but it did shift one leading protest actor toward detainee releases and an eight-point agenda rather than a single resignation demand (El País, 18 Jun 2026).

Formal removal routes are narrow in 2026. Bolivia’s constitution gives the president and vice president five-year terms, provides succession to the vice president in a definitive absence, and says the president ceases by death, resignation before the Legislative Assembly, definitive impediment, final criminal sentence, or recall (Bolivian Constitution, arts. 168–171). Article 240 says recall can be requested only after at least half the term has elapsed and not in the final year, so a normal recall should not open for a president sworn in on 8 November 2025 until May 2028 (Bolivian Constitution, art. 240). A trial route is also hard: the constitution requires authorization by at least two-thirds of members present for a presidential trial of responsibilities (Bolivian Constitution, art. 184).

The seat math does not show a removal front. The EU Election Observation Mission’s final annex lists the PDC with 49 of 130 deputies and 15 of 36 senators, or 64 of 166 national legislative seats; non-PDC forces therefore have 102 of 166, short of a full-attendance two-thirds line of 111 (EU EOM final report, Annex I). The legislature’s most important June action was not to organize a removal path, but to pass a law regulating states of exception and widening Paz’s legal options for restoring transit (Al Jazeera, 7 Jun 2026, EFE, 8 Jun 2026). I found no reliable report through 18 June of a police mutiny, military command asking Paz to resign, or Vice President Edmand Lara openly positioning himself as successor.

The economy keeps the probability below the mid-70s. The latest official CPI release, covering May 2026 and published 3 June, reported monthly CPI inflation of 2.13%, year-to-date inflation of 2.62%, and twelve-month inflation of 12.51% (INE Bolivia, 3 Jun 2026). The IMF’s April 2026 WEO vintage projects Bolivia’s 2026 real GDP growth at -3.3%, average CPI inflation at 20.7%, end-period CPI inflation at 26.1%, and general-government gross debt at 103% of GDP; these are annual projections, not final outcomes (IMF DataMapper, Bolivia). AP reported in May that Bolivia imports 80% of its diesel and 55% of its gasoline, which makes dollar scarcity directly political because fuel scarcity feeds blockades and public anger (AP, 10 May 2026).

The reserve mix is the cleanest macro warning sign. The BCB’s Q1 2026 reserve report gives this full five-point history for its reported reserve table, in millions of U.S. dollars; the latest observation is 31 March 2026, and the report was published in April 2026 (BCB Q1 2026 reserves report).

My model uses three political states for the rest of 2026, plus a small residual tail. I assign a 52% chance that the June crisis de-escalates by July, with an 11% conditional chance that Paz still exits before year-end; a 31% chance that the crisis smolders or returns in waves, with a 29% conditional exit chance; and a 17% chance of lethal escalation, state-of-exception backlash, or security/elite rupture, with an 82% conditional exit chance. I add 1.0% for death, severe incapacity, legal surprise, or a coup path not already captured. The arithmetic is:

$$P(NO)=0.52 \times 0.11 + 0.31 \times 0.29 + 0.17 \times 0.82 + 0.010 = 0.2965$$

So:

$$P(YES)=1-0.2965=0.7035$$

That yields a 70% YES forecast.

What's non-obvious

The obvious read is “Bolivia has mass blockades, so the president may fall.” The better question is whether blockades have merged with an elite or coercive-institution break. In 2003 and 2019, resignation followed not just protests but collapsing support among allies or the security command (Britannica on 2003, Library of Congress on 2019). As of 18 June, the evidence points to a weakened president, not a president already abandoned by the state.

The other missed point cuts against Paz. Falling blockade counts do not solve the fuel-dollar problem. The BCB’s latest reserve table shows only $144.4 million in international monetary reserves on 31 March 2026 while total reserves were mostly gold, and AP’s fuel-import figures show why that can turn quickly into shortages (BCB Q1 2026 reserves report, AP, 10 May 2026). That is why I keep roughly a 30% NO probability despite the mid-June de-escalation signals.

Limitations

The biggest gap is real-time visibility inside the armed forces, police, PDC bloc, Libre bloc, and Vice President Lara’s network. Bolivian presidents usually fall when street pressure meets elite or security-force abandonment; that abandonment can appear late, as it did in 2019 (Library of Congress).

The protest data are also imperfect. The highway authority’s map is dynamic, and the clean press snapshots I found show nearly 100 cuts on 3 June and 52 points on 16 June rather than a full downloadable daily national series (El País, 3 Jun 2026, La Razón, 16 Jun 2026). The macro data lag politics: the BCB reserve table ends on 31 March 2026, the May CPI release was published on 3 June, and IMF 2026 values are projections from the April 2026 WEO vintage rather than final outcomes (BCB Q1 2026 reserves report, INE Bolivia, 3 Jun 2026, IMF DataMapper, Bolivia).