2025 was an election year in which three municipal figures of weight – the mayors of Cochabamba, El Alto and Santa Cruz de la Sierra – tried to project towards the presidency of Bolivia. Manfred Reyes Villa, Eva Cup and Jhonny Fernández, each with different trajectories and regional backups, threw themselves into the national sand with the expectation of transforming their local leadership into national political capital. However, the results of the presidential elections were adverse, and today their future appears surrounded by uncertainty.
In the case of Manfred Reyes Villawho resumed a few days ago the mayor of Cochabamba after a three -month license dedicated to the campaign, the electoral balance is bittersweet. His party, autonomy for Bolivia-Súmate (APB-Súmate), He achieved some deputies, but remained far from the presidential objectives.
Reyes Villa already advanced that will not apply for mayor Cochabambina again: “It’s time for another mayor to come,” he said. However, he left the door open for another stage: “I do not rule out the governorate”His group has initiated an internal reorganization process to face the 2026 subnational elections with candidates in mayors and governments.
Eva Cup, Mayor of El Alto and presidential candidate for the National Renewal Movement (Morena), It has also marked distance from a new local postulation. With a speech focused on generational renewal, he ruled in search of re -election: “I do not believe in re -election. There is a new generation of leaders that are on their way and you have to give them a chance,” he said.
Morena, by the hand of its directive, prepares to initiate regional congresses that will define the applicants in 2026, although the signs of a weakened and circumscribed leadership to the Alteño field are clear.
More complex is the scenario of Jhonny Fernándezmayor of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and leader of Civic Unit Solidaridad (UCS). To the electoral defeat of his candidacy, a real possibility is added: losing legal status of his party.
Fernández expressed his confidence that the group may appeal any sanction of the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE): “We have to participate. Do not forget what happened to Pan-Bol. Pan-Bol lost in the national election, with less than 3%, but participated in the subnational elections. There is a jurisprudence also of that,” he said.
However, so much Reyes Villa as Fernández are prevented from looking for a re -election to its current municipal positions. The Plurinational Constitutional Judgment 1010/2023, ratified by the constitutional order 0083/2024, established that in Bolivia the indefinite re -election does not exist and that the elected authorities, at any level of the State, can only exercise two periods, are continuous or discontinuous. The measure puts a brake on the continuity aspirations of both mayor.
The reasons
For analysts, this outcome reflects the limits of municipal policy as presidential springboard.
The political scientist José Orlando Peralta stressed that one cannot speak of a unique pattern in these cases: “What has happened with Manfred, with Jhonny, and with Eva Cup, could not be attributed to an equal pattern for the three, because they are different cities, with different problems and different efforts. The only one who has achieved something (some deputies) is Manfred, but not what he expected. In the case of Jhonny it has been a total failure, because he has lost the acronym of his party. Meanwhile, Eva Cup has been relegated to a purely regional space, where it has no greater impact. ”
The Coca analyst went further and recalled that “in Bolivia’s democratic history there was never a president who has previously been mayor.”
According to Coca, the incompatibility between governing and campaigning generates inevitable wear: “The mayor who wants to be a candidate yes or does end up leaving his functions. A good vote for the position of mayor, does not mean automatic electors support If he wants to be president. If people choose mayor, it is to have works, not to use the position as a springboard. ”
The future of the three, beyond their continuity or renewal speeches, is conditioned by this legal reality, the political wear of their failed campaigns and the doubts of their own voters.
