Jorge Quiroga

Jorge Quiroga    (Industrial engineer)
Born	1960-05-05 Cochabamba, Bolivia
Alma mater	Texas A&M University, St. Edward's University
Children	• Vanessa Cristina • Adriana Cristian
Spouse	Virginia Gillum de Quiroga
Member of	Club de Madrid
Party	ADN, PODEMOS, PDC
Bolivian President close to all aspects of United States regional power, including coca policies, water privatization, World Bank and IMF  President of Bolivia  In office 7 August 2001 - 6 August 2002 Preceded by Hugo Banzer Succeeded by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada  Vice President of Bolivia  In office 6 August 1997 - 7 August 2001 Boss Hugo Banzer

Jorge Fernando Quiroga Ramírez is a Bolivian politician who served as the 62nd President of Bolivia from 2001 to 2002, previously serving as the 36th Vice President of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001 under President Hugo Banzer, assuming the presidency following Banzer's resignation due to terminal illness,

Quiroga was a candidate in the 2005 and 2014 presidential elections, in which President Evo Morales was successfully elected for a first and third term respectively. In both elections, Quiroga for the Christian Democratic Party. In the 2020 presidential election, Quiroga ran as a candidate for the Libre21 coalition, but withdrew his candidacy on October 11, 2020 (seven days prior to the election) along with two other candidates in an unsuccessful attempt to unify the Bolivian opposition and prevent the socialist MAS-IPSP candidate Luis Arce from emerging victorious.

Background and early life

Quiroga was born in Cochabamba. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1981 with a degree in industrial engineering. He went on to work for IBM in Austin, Texas while earning a master's degree in business administration from St. Edward's University. He and his American wife Virginia then moved back to Bolivia.

Vice President of Bolivia (1997–2001)

Quiroga was Minister of Finance from 1992 to 1993. He was elected as Vice President of Bolivia in 1997 running on the Nationalist Democratic Action ticket with former dictator Hugo Banzer. At 37, he was the youngest vice president in Bolivia's history.

President of Bolivia (2001–2002)

He became President when Banzer resigned because of aggravated health problems (he died a year following his resignation). Quiroga assumed office as acting president on July 1, 2001 and was sworn-in on August 7, to complete Banzer's five-year mandate.

Soon after becoming President he told a reporter from the New Yorker "We [Bolivia] will be the vital heart of South America.." believing that gas exports would lift the economy, that a long-anticipated transcontinental highway connecting Brazil to Chile would be built passing through the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, and that fibre-optic cables would soon be laid. He blamed Bolivia’s lack of economic progress on hypocrisy on free trade in the United States and Europe, saying "Bolivia is the most open economy in Latin America. Meanwhile, American and European farm subsidies, along with tariffs on textiles and agricultural products, make it impossible for Bolivia to sell its exports in the Global North. They tell us to be competitive while tying our arms behind our backs."

When asked about the Bolivian Water Wars of 2000, he said “A lot of things certainly could have been different along the way, from a lot of different actors. The net effect is that we have a city today with no resolution to the water problem. In the end it will be necessary to bring in private investment to develop the water."

Later life

Quiroga ran for President in his own right in the 2005 election, as the candidate for a new right-of-center coalition known as Social and Democratic Power (PODEMOS), which included the bulk of Banzer's former ADN organization. His main opponent was the leftist Evo Morales of the Movement Towards Socialism. Morales won the election and Quiroga finished a distant second place, receiving 28.6% of the vote.

He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He is, as of November 2016, active in the private sector and many international organizations, among them: as Vice-President of Club de Madrid with almost 100 former heads of state and government; on the board of Results for Development-R4D in Washington D.C.; as a member of the Inter-American Dialogue and the International Advisory Council of the China Economic Club; and in different capacities on the Global Adaptation Institute, the Foro Iberoamericano and many others.

He has presided FUNDEMOS since 2002, a Bolivian public policy foundation. His stated areas of expertise are: management of international aid and cooperation for developing countries; macroeconomic policy; constitutional, legal and institutional reforms; private and official external debt restructuring and relief; programs to reduce drug trafficking and cocaine production; and broadly in Latin American public policy, trade, economics, finance and banking, integration, politics and development issues.

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