Jorge Quiroga Ramirez

Jorge Fernando Quiroga Ramírez (Cochabamba, May 5, 1960), also known as Tuto Quiroga, is a Bolivian politician. He was the sixty-second president of Bolivia from August 7, 2001 to August 6, 2002.

He was leader of the right-wing Nationalist Democratic Action party (ADN), which he presided over immediately after the death of its founder, General Hugo Banzer. He was a candidate for the presidency of Bolivia for the "Libre21" alliance, made up of the political parties Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) and Movement for Sovereignty (MPS), in the elections generals of 2020 but withdrew from the political race on October 11.

Studies and jobs

After graduating from high school at La Salle School in Santa Cruz, he studied in the United States. He graduated as an Industrial Engineer from Texas A&M University, subsequently completing a Master's Degree in Business Administration at St. Edward's University in Austin.

From 1981 until his return to Bolivia in 1988 he worked for IBM in Texas.

In the private sector he worked developing his specialty in econometrics in the mining company Mintec and in the Banco Mercantil de Bolivia. At the end of the eighties he joined Nationalist Democratic Action. In 1989 he participated in the government of Jaime Paz Zamora as undersecretary of Public Investment and International Cooperation within the Ministry of Planning. In 1990 he was Undersecretary of Public Investment and in 1992 Minister of Finance.

In the political field, in 1993 he directed the ADN electoral campaign and in 1995 he was named National Deputy Head of ADN.

Presidency

In 1997 he was vice president of Hugo Banzer's government at the age of 37, being the youngest in that position in the history of Bolivia. In August 2001 he assumed the presidency of Bolivia after Banzer's resignation due to illness (lung cancer) and completed the five-year presidential term until August 2002.

Before the 2004 municipal elections he resigned from the Adenista leadership, and with the representation of the Alianza Siglo group XXI reached agreements with more than 40 groups. For the electoral competition that would take place in December 2005, with its acronym PODEMOS (Democratic and Social Power).

Presidential candidate in 2005

He launched himself as a candidate for the 2005 General Elections, forming a Citizen Group called PODEMOS (they were the second elections in Bolivia where this type of groups could participate, in addition to political parties) and including some affiliates of the political party that supported him. catapulted Nationalist Democratic Action into the political sphere. He lost, obtaining 28.62% of the votes. He had chosen María René Duchén, a renowned journalist, as his running mate. Before the elections, polls gave him a close second place with his main rival Evo Morales, but the final results gave the latter as the winner by an absolute majority, therefore without the need to resort to Congress.

It should be noted that for the 2005 electoral process, the nickname "Tuto" (with whom he was known in the political life of the country) to his name to be able to appear as & # 34; Tuto Quiroga & # 34; on the ballot.

2014 general election

He was a candidate for the presidency of Bolivia, invited by the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) accompanied by Tomasa Yarhui Jacomé, lawyer and former Minister of Peasant Affairs.