The New Republican Force (Spanish: Nueva Fuerza Republicana, NFR) is a center-right political party in Bolivia. It is mainly based in the department of Cochabamba.[1][2]

New Republican Force
Nueva Fuerza Republicana
LeaderManfred Reyes Villa
Founded1995
HeadquartersLa Paz, Bolivia
IdeologyPopulism[1][2]
Conservatism[3]
Political positionCentre-right[4][5]
National affiliationPlan Progress for Bolivia – National Convergence

History

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The NFR was founded in 1995.[2] After the Assembly for the Sovereignty of the Peoples' (ASP) success in the 1999 municipal elections in Cochabamba, the NFR offered ASP leader Alejo Véliz and other peasant activists top candidate positions and won them over.[1]

At the legislative elections in 2002, the party won 26.5% of the popular vote and 27 out of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and two out of 27 seats in the Senate. Its candidate at the presidential elections, Manfred Reyes Villa, won 20.9% of the popular vote. After the election, the party joined the multiparty coalition of president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR). In October 2003, the NFR decided to leave the coalition and Reyes Villa and the other three NFR ministers resigned. This deprived the president of his congressional majority and forced him to resign.[4][5]

In the 2005 general elections the party received 0.7% of the popular vote and failed to win a seat. Its presidential candidate was Gildo Angulo Cabrera. In September 2009, the NFR participated in the formation of a broad oppositional coalition called Plan Progress for Bolivia – National Convergence (PPB-CN). The coalition's candidate in the 2009 presidential election was NFR's leader Reyes Villa.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Van Cott, Donna Lee (2006), "Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Achievements of Excluded Groups in the Andes", State and Society in Conflict: Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises, University of Pittsburgh Press, p. 176, ISBN 9780822972990
  2. ^ a b c Mayorga, René Antonio (2006), "Outsiders and Neopopulism: The Road to Plepiscitary Democracy", The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes, Stanford University Press, p. 164, ISBN 9780804767910
  3. ^ Centellas, Miguel (Fall 2011), "Beyond Caudillos: The Need to Create a Strong Multiparty System", ReVista — Harvard Review of Latin America, archived from the original on 2012-09-23
  4. ^ a b O'Toole, Gavin (2007), Politics Latin America, Pearson Education, p. 167, ISBN 9781405821292
  5. ^ a b "Bolivian president resigns amid chaos", The Guardian, 18 October 2003
  6. ^ "Nuevo frente amplio se denomina Convergencia Nacional PPB-CN Archived 2012-05-18 at the Wayback Machine," fmBolivia, 5 September 2009.