Bolivians woke up Monday to the news that centrist Rodrigo Paz will be the country's next president, paving the way for a major political transformation, after almost 20 years of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party and during the nation’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Paz and his popular running mate, ex-police Capt. Edman Lara, galvanized working-class and rural voters outraged over record inflation and an acute dollar shortage that has sapped food and fuel supplies.

Paz won 54.5% of the votes, early results showed, versus his rival, former right-wing President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga's 45.5%.

Riven by internal divisions and battered by public anger over the economic crisis, MAS suffered a historic defeat in the August 17 elections that propelled Quiroga and Paz to the runoff.

For all their disillusionment with MAS, Bolivian voters seemed sceptical of Quiroga’s radical 180-degree turn away from the MAS-style social protections and toward an International Monetary Fund bailout.

“At the center of all this, we have a new president. Many Bolivians are hopeful that Bolivia's economy will return to what it was before," said Mario Heredia, a local resident.

Claudio Gonzales, a newspaper vendor, said he hoped the country could rebound with Paz and his running mate at the helm.

"We don't want to suffer; we don't want to be down,” Gonzales said.

Paz’s victory sets this South American nation of 12 million on a sharply uncertain path as he seeks to enact major change for the first time since the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the founder of MAS and Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.

Although Paz’s Christian Democratic Party has the cushion of a slight majority in Congress, he’ll still need to compromise to push through an ambitious overhaul.

Behind the celebrations, Bolivia faces an uphill battle. To make it through even his first months, Paz must replenish the country’s meager foreign currency reserves and get fuel imports flowing.

AP video by Carlos Guerrero