National Unity Front

The National Unity Front (Spanish: Frente de Unidad Nacional) is a political party in Bolivia. It was founded in late 2003 by Samuel Jorge Doria Medina Auza, who had broken with the Revolutionary Left Movement earlier that year. It has 36 members of the Chamber of Deputies in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly. Despite its substantial share of the urban vote, and 16 former mayors, it does not control any city halls or governorships. The party is closely identified with Doria Medina's cement company Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento (Soboce). In describing itself, National Unity emphasizes pro-development economic policies and support for democratic governance. Its mission statement calls for "a democratic Bolivia with solidarity, in full development, respectful of human rights, conscious of its diversity, and forging its own destiny". In founding the party, cement magnate Doria Medina called for policies to favor "those entrepreneurs who generate employment and are absent from national decisionmaking". The party seeks to position itself as a moderate third force in Bolivian politics. Despite its membership in the generally centre-left Socialist International, the party is usually described as centrist or centre-right in orientation. Its electoral base is the urban middle class. At the legislative elections in 2005, the party won 7.8% of the popular vote and 8 out of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one out of 27 seats in the Senate. Its candidate at the presidential elections, Doria Medina, won 7.8% of the popular vote. In the 2009 elections, Medina ran again and won 5.65% of the vote. The party won three seats in the Chamber of Deputies but none in the Senate. As of 2013, Bolivia's Supreme Electoral Tribunal certified a list of 69,844 members, although the party claims to have 120,000 on its rolls. In the 2010 regional elections, UN formed alliances with Popular Consensus in Cochabamba and Chuquisaca departments (All for Cochabamba (TPC) and We Are All Chuquisaca, respectively), becoming the largest opposition grouping. Running independently, it was the third-largest party in La Paz and Oruro departments. At the municipal level, the party did not win any mayors' races, after gaining control of 16 in 2004. It obtained municipal council representation in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba (where candidate Arturo Murillo narrowly failed to win the mayorship but TPC won five of the eleven seats equaling the governing party's share), and Oruro. In El Alto, Soledad Chapetón was narrowly defeated by MAS-IPSP candidate Edgar Patana, while the party won 3 of 11 council seats. As of 2013, Chapetón is the vice president of the party. In the 2014 general election, the presidential candidate was its party leader Medina, who in this election was the second-most voted with 24.23% and the party won 9 senators and 36 deputies, becoming the main opposition party to Evo Morales' government. In March 2017 National Unity Front was accepted as a member in the Socialist International. The National Unity Front contested the 2025 Bolivian general election as part of the Unity bloc.

Political party in Bolivia

This article is about the Bolivian political party. For the Polish communist political organization, see Front of National Unity. For the Burmese political alliance, see National United Front.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "National Unity Front" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

National Unity Front Frente de Unidad Nacional
Leader	Samuel Doria Medina
Founded	12 December 2003; 22 years ago (2003-12-12)
Split from	Revolutionary Left Movement
Membership (2025)	75,765[1]
Ideology	Social democracy[2][3] Social liberalism[2][4]
Political position	Centre[5][6][7] to centre-right[8]
National affiliation	Unity Bloc (since 2024)
International affiliation	Socialist International[9]
Colors	white, blue, yellow
Chamber of Deputies	16 / 130
Senate	4 / 36
Politics of Bolivia Political parties Elections

The National Unity Front (Spanish: Frente de Unidad Nacional) is a political party in Bolivia. It was founded in late 2003 by Samuel Jorge Doria Medina Auza, who had broken with the Revolutionary Left Movement earlier that year.^[10] It has 36 members of the Chamber of Deputies in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly. Despite its substantial share of the urban vote, and 16 former mayors, it does not control any city halls or governorships. The party is closely identified with Doria Medina's cement company Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento (Soboce).^[2]

In describing itself, National Unity emphasizes pro-development economic policies and support for democratic governance. Its mission statement calls for "a democratic Bolivia with solidarity, in full development, respectful of human rights, conscious of its diversity, and forging its own destiny".^[11] In founding the party, cement magnate Doria Medina called for policies to favor "those entrepreneurs who generate employment and are absent from national decisionmaking".^[10] The party seeks to position itself as a moderate third force in Bolivian politics.^[12] Despite its membership in the generally centre-left Socialist International, the party is usually described as centrist or centre-right in orientation. Its electoral base is the urban middle class.^[13]

At the legislative elections in 2005, the party won 7.8% of the popular vote and 8 out of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one out of 27 seats in the Senate. Its candidate at the presidential elections, Doria Medina, won 7.8% of the popular vote. In the 2009 elections, Medina ran again and won 5.65% of the vote. The party won three seats in the Chamber of Deputies but none in the Senate. As of 2013, Bolivia's Supreme Electoral Tribunal certified a list of 69,844 members, although the party claims to have 120,000 on its rolls.^[2]

In the 2010 regional elections, UN formed alliances with Popular Consensus in Cochabamba and Chuquisaca departments (All for Cochabamba (TPC) and We Are All Chuquisaca, respectively), becoming the largest opposition grouping. Running independently, it was the third-largest party in La Paz and Oruro departments. At the municipal level, the party did not win any mayors' races, after gaining control of 16 in 2004.^[14] It obtained municipal council representation in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba (where candidate Arturo Murillo narrowly failed to win the mayorship but TPC won five of the eleven seats equaling the governing party's share^[15]), and Oruro. In El Alto, Soledad Chapetón was narrowly defeated by MAS-IPSP candidate Edgar Patana, while the party won 3 of 11 council seats.^[16] As of 2013, Chapetón is the vice president of the party.^[2]

In the 2014 general election, the presidential candidate was its party leader Medina, who in this election was the second-most voted with 24.23% and the party won 9 senators and 36 deputies, becoming the main opposition party to Evo Morales' government. In March 2017 National Unity Front was accepted as a member in the Socialist International.^[17]

The National Unity Front contested the 2025 Bolivian general election as part of the Unity bloc.^[18]

Election results

[edit]

Presidential elections

[edit]

Election	Presidential nominee	Votes	%	Votes	%	Result
		First round		Second round
2005	Samuel Doria Medina	224,090	7.80%			Lost N
2009		258,971	5.65%			Lost N
2014		1,253,288	24.23%			Lost N
2019	Supported Carlos Mesa (FRI)	2,240,920	36.51%			Lost N
2020	Did not contest
2025	Samuel Doria Medina	1,054,568	19.69%			Lost N

Chamber of Deputies and Senate elections

[edit]

Election	Party leader	Votes	%	Chamber seats	+/-	Position	Senate seats	+/-	Position	Status
2005	Samuel Doria Medina	224,090	7.80%	8 / 130	New	3rd	1 / 27	New	3rd	Opposition
2009		255,299	5.72%	3 / 130	5	3rd	0 / 36	1	3rd	Opposition
2014		As part of UD		32 / 130	29	2nd	9 / 36	9	2nd	Opposition
2019	Did not contest			0 / 130	32	—N/a	0 / 36	9	—N/a	Annulled
2020	Did not contest			0 / 130	0	—N/a	0 / 36	0	—N/a	Extra-parliamentary
2025	Samuel Doria Medina	As part of Unity		26 / 130	26	3rd	7 / 36	7	3rd	Government

References

[edit]

1. ^ eju.tv (25 February 2025). "Ranking: ¿Qué partido tiene más militantes en Bolivia?". eju! (in Spanish). Retrieved 3 August 2025.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Unidad Nacional, el desafío de ser o no un partido-empresa". La Razón. 28 July 2013. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
3. ^ "Doria Medina señala que desde la IS 'crearán redes de intercambio y lucharán por la democracia y libertad'". Brújula Noticias (in Spanish). 7 April 2023. Retrieved 18 September 2025.
4. ^ "Samuel Doria Medina rumbo a las elecciones 2025: 'El país necesita un capitalismo con rostro humano'" (in Spanish). Agencia de Noticia Fides (ANF). 27 November 2024. Retrieved 18 September 2025.
5. ^ Nugent, Ciara (15 November 2019). "Bolivia's Evo Morales Was Brought Down With the Help of an Obscure Conservative With a Bible". TIME. Retrieved 13 August 2025.
6. ^ Cyr, Jennifer. 2017. "The Difficulties of Survival and Revival in a Hyper-Fluid Party System: Bolivia after 2005." In The Fates of Political Parties: Institutional Crisis, Continuity, and Change in Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. chapter, 176–200. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/fates-of-political-parties/difficulties-of-survival-and-revival-in-a-hyperfluid-party-system/C9089C7423BAFB4BA3F4B4752FD2FFA6.
7. ^ Bonifaz Moreno, Gustavo; Faguet, Jean-Paul (2022) : Political cleavages in motion: Bolivia in 2021, Working Paper Series, No. 22-207, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Department of International Development, London. https://hdl.handle.net/10419/284263.
8. ^
   • Luna, Juan Pablo; Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira (September 2014). The Resilience of the Latin American Right. JHU Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-1390-7. Most recently, the Unidad Nacional (National Unity) party has made important inroads in the MAS stronghold of El Alto, a heavily populated (and predominantly indigenous) area overlooking La Paz. The party's leader, Samuel Doria Medina, is a prominent La Paz businessman and has built what is to date the most effective right-of-center political party in the country.
   • Pineo, Ronn (1 December 2016). "Progress in Bolivia: Declining the United States Influence and the Victories of Evo Morales". Journal of Developing Societies. 32 (4): 421–453. doi:10.1177/0169796X16667170. ISSN 0169-796X. The leading opposition candidate, conservative businessman Samuel Doria Medina, of the center-right Unidad Nacional [...]
   • Seelke, C. (29 August 2006). "Bolivia: Political and Economic Developments and Relations with the United States". U.S. Congressional Research Service (RL32580). S2CID 150609141. Evo Morales won a convincing victory in the presidential election with 54% of the votes cast as compared to 29% for former president Jorge Quiroga, representing the Social and Democratic Power Party (PODEMOS), a new center-right political party, and 8% for Samuel Doria Medina, a cement magnate standing for the center-right National Unity Front (UN).
   • Sullivan, Mark P. (21 December 2006). Latin America and the Caribbean: Issues for the 109th Congress (Report). U.S. Congressional Research Service. Evo Morales, an indigenous leader of the leftist Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, won a convincing victory in the presidential election with 54% of the votes as compared to 29% for former president Jorge Quiroga of the rightist Social and Democratic Power Party, and 8%for cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina of the center-right National Unity Front(UN).
   • "BOLIVIA: Morales Calls for Unity after Landslide Victory". Inter Press Service. 7 December 2009. Retrieved 21 February 2025. Morales' closest rival, the right-wing former Cochabamba governor Manfred Reyes Villa, took 27 percent of the vote, while cement industry tycoon Samuel Doria Medina, of the centre-right National Unity party, won just six percent.
   • "Court allows Bolivia's Morales to seek second re-election". Reuters. 29 April 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2025. 'If Evo Morales wants a second re-election he should have to change the constitution again,' said Samuel Doria Medina, leader of the center-right National Unity Party.
   • "Peru guerrillas seen regrouping in neighboring nations". The Washington Times. 9 December 2006. Retrieved 21 February 2025. Miss Ochoa had been imprisoned in Bolivia for her role the 1996 kidnapping of businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who currently heads the center-right National Unity party. She was released in 2005.
9. ^ "Full list of member parties and organisations". Socialist International. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
10. ^ ^{a b} Lansford, Tom (2012). Political Handbook of the World 2012. SAGE. p. 155. ISBN 9781608719952.
11. ^ "Sostenemos el ideal de una Bolivia democrática y solidaria, en pleno desarrollo, respetuosa de los derechos humanos, consciente de su diversidad y forjadora de su propio destino." Unidad Nacional. "Organización". Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
12. ^ "Bolivia: Opposition acknowledges Evo Morales' victory". M24 Digital. 7 December 2009. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
13. ^ Bustillos Zamorano, Iván (17 November 2013). "Democracia interna en los partidos, la cuenta pendiente". La Razón. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
14. ^ "MAS ganó en 231 alcaldías". Los Tiempos. 16 May 2010. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 21 May 2010.
15. ^ "MAS gana alcaldía de Cochabamba y Baldivieso tiene el voto de oro". Los Tiempos. 6 April 2010. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
16. ^ Corte Nacional Electoral, Acto de Computo Nacional Archived 16 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
17. ^ "Resolutions and Decisions of the XXV Congress of the Socialist International" (PDF). Cartagena, Colombia. 2–4 March 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
18. ^ "Samuel Doria Medina inscribe la alianza 'Unidad' ante el TSE". Urgentebo (in Spanish). 18 April 2025. Archived from the original on 12 May 2025. Retrieved 28 April 2025.