The Washington Post editorial board (11/11/19) stated as fact that Bolivian President Evo Morales “moved to falsify the results of the October 20 vote so as to hand him a first-round victory.”
President Evo Morales won re-election in Bolivia’s presidential election last October 20, as pre-election polls predicted. He received 47% of the vote in an election with 88% turnout. He beat his nearest rival by just over 10 percentage points, which meant a second round was not required.
But the day after the election, the Organization of American states (OAS), whom Morales had allowed to monitor the election, put out a press release claiming there had been a “drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” It was an obviously false claim (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).
Even though the Washington, DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) immediately put out a statement (10/22/19) pointing out the basic flaw in the OAS’s analysis—it overlooks that precincts that report early can be different from ones that report late—the OAS continued to claim that the change in trend was evidence of fraud. CEPR persisted in exposing the OAS deception—for example, in a paper the think tank published on November 8 and an op-ed in MarketWatch (11/19/19) by CEPR co-founder Mark Weisbrot. On December 12, at a permanent council meeting, the OAS—which gets 60% of its funding from the US government—refused to allow Jake Johnston to present CEPR’s preliminary response to the OAS’s final report on the election.
In the meantime, the OAS’s disparagement of the election ignited violent protests that (combined with the treasonous behavior of Bolivia’s military and police) forced Morales to flee Bolivia on November 10 to avoid being lynched. Bolivia’s security forces “suggested” Morales resign, allowing him to be run out of the country (with his house ransacked), but then sprung murderously into action to consolidate the coup. Within two weeks, 32 people were killed protesting against the dictatorship that took over after he fled. The dictatorship openly says it will arrest Morales if he returns to Bolivia.
The Washington Post (2/27/20) published the findings of MIT researchers that indicated that the Bolivian government whose ouster the paper’s editorial board had celebrated had actually been legitimately reelected.
Late last month, MIT Election Data and ScienceLab researchers John Curiel and Jack R. Williams published an analysis of the election results in the Washington Post (2/27/20). The study was commissioned by CEPR to show that its analysis could be independently verified. The MIT researchers concluded that there “is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find,” and that “the OAS’s statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.”
That’s a scholarly but overly polite way to put it. The OAS repeatedly made statistical claims about Bolivia’s election that were clearly false. In layperson terms, that’s called lying.
The OAS’s lies proved lethal to Bolivians and devastating to their democracy, but the OAS evaded all accountability because, when it mattered most, corporate media shielded it from scrutiny. Between the October election and December 26, Reuters published 128 articles about the political situation in Bolivia that all failed to mention the efforts to get the OAS to retract its bogus statistical claim. Instead, Reuters regurgitated that claim many times without a trace of skepticism (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).
Days after the election, the Washington Post editorial board (10/24/19) uncritically quoted the OAS expressing “worry and surprise about the drastic and hard-to-justify change in the tendency of the preliminary results.” The editorial added that “the [US] State Department issued a similar message,” as if that boosted OAS credibility. The day after Morales fled, the Post (11/11/19) followed up with another editorial headlined “Bolivia Is in Danger of Slipping Into Anarchy. It’s Evo Morales’s Fault.”
If the Post editorial board knew anything at all about the scathing criticism the OAS had received, it kept completely quiet about it. And it’s actually quite possible the editorial board members knew nothing, if they relied on their paper’s own reporting. The Post’s search engine turns up only ten articles since the October 20 election that contain the terms “Bolivia,” “Morales” and “OAS.” Only two of those mention any criticism of the OAS: One is a November 19 op-ed by Gabriel Hetland (11/19/19), the other is the piece the Post just published by the MIT researchers (2/27/20).
Economists and statisticians (Guardian, 12/2/19) called on the Organization of American States to retract its discredited study — but the US-funded institution stuck to its guns.
On December 2, the Guardian published a letter signed by 98 economists and statisticians asking the OAS to retract its false statistical claims. Such breaks with the silence over the CEPR’s efforts to hold the OAS accountable were all too rare. Even a Guardian oped by Hetland that opposed the coup (11/13/19) mentioned OAS claims about the election without saying anything about the criticism they had received from CEPR.
Just like the Post, the day after Morales fled Bolivia, the New York Times editorial board (11/11/19) described the coup as a risky but necessary step towards restoring democracy:
The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done, and what remains is to hope that Mr. Morales goes peacefully into exile in Mexico and to help Bolivia restore its wounded democracy.
Like the Post, the Times editorial board members were breezily ignorant (or unconcerned) about the OAS repeatedly lying about the election. The Times recently published a news article (2/28/20) about the MIT researchers who rejected the OAS lies. The article said that the researchers “waded into a fierce domestic and international debate over Mr. Morales’s legitimacy.” That “fierce” debate was essentially buried by the corporate media when it might have prevented a coup. Incidentally, now even Reuters (3/1/20) has prominently reported the MIT study.
Stung by its lies belatedly getting some high-profile criticism, the OAS responded angrily to the study. The researchers looked at only one of the allegations it made, the OAS complained, saying other “irregularities” validated its assessment of the election. Amazingly, the OAS also said it continues to “stand by” its bogus statistical analysis.
All elections have some “irregularities” and “vulnerabilities,” as any US voter should be well aware. That does not automatically justify throwing the results in the garbage. If it did, any election could be unjustly discredited by unscrupulous monitors. Moreover, CEPR did address other allegations, in the presentation the OAS refused to allow it to make (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).
At this point, the OAS report on Bolivia’s election should be discarded, except for the purpose of a credible investigation into how such appalling work ever came to be done—and promulgated uncritically, and turned to such devastating effect. In a just world, jobs would be lost, and OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro would resign. But when you have election monitors beholden to the US government, and a corporate media willing to cover for them, it is only duly elected officials in poor countries that need fear those kinds of consequences—and much worse.
I just finished reading ” All the Presidents Men”, which showed real journalism, the way it’s supposed to be —- as it was at the previously awesome Washington Post. Sadly, Washington Post, you have been regulated to a kind of gossip rag, or an excuse for a Jeff Bezos tax write off. WHERE are the journalists in this year of 2020? The First Amendment was seen weeping and ignored in the corridors of power.
Jeff Bezos tax writeoff, LOL. I’m going to start using that when referring to Jeff Bezos’ CIA Funded WaPo.
Let’s not forget that this popular uprising against his fraud took place after fourteen years of autocratic rule, during which he acted against the Constitution in several instances, as in running for a third term when the law allows only for two, then pushing a referendum asking the population if they would accept his running for a fourth term, and when the answer was “no”, replacing all the Supreme Tribunal members with his own loyal lackeys who had orders to grant him permission to run for president again and be instituted as a president for life.
Hi BolivianCitizenWithoutaName
Bolivia’s Supreme Court is ELECTED to a six year term. The six year term alone is a major improvement over the systems used in Canada and the US.
I don’t agree with the Bolivian Supreme Court ruling that nullified the very narrow 2016 vote to keep term limits. But it was absolutely nothing like the insane rulings that have been handed down by the US Supreme Court – most recently saying US border guards cannot be held legally accountable for murdering children.
Still, people who don’t like Supreme Court rulings in the US are not entitled to run the president out of the country. Same in Bolivia
It’s not really an ELECTION when all the candidates are hand-picked by one central ruler with absolute powers and the population is forced to vote randomly since there was no campaigning or debates where citizens could hear if at least one of them would defend the people instead of the iron-fisted central ruler who appointed him as candidate. Bolivians do not mind if somebody from another country considers this system an “improvement” over the system that some other country out there is using. After fourteen years of having one dude vortexing all the power around his own personal whims, people were not thinking “Hey, at least those Canadians are not going through all of this.” I voted for him the first two times. When he ran a third term, people protested, but he found a technicality and promised it would be his last. Then he decided he wanted a fourth term, made us vote, we said no, and he kicked our faces in order to stay in power anyways. He announced he had decided to be president for life. When people found out they were being cheated in the elections, the police was sent to crush the protests. When the police refused to fight against the population, the militias were deployed. When the general strike continued despite militia incursions, the military was commanded against the civillians. When military refused to attack civillians, the OAS reported what everyone had already known for weeks, and all of the president’s henchmen started to resign and flee the country. When he found himself exposed as a cheat and without his power structure around him, he also fled. You might empathize with the Bolivian population if you imagine the same scenario happening in your country rebelling against a two-decade regime that wants to last forever.
Hi Joe, You (and everyone) are confusing Bolivia’s Supreme Court with Bolivia’s Constitutional Court and Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Court.
The Supreme Court members are publicly elected from a list of hand-selected candidates. If Trump gave you a list of Supreme Court judges to choose from, all of them hard-right Republicans, would you still think it’s so great? Bolivians did not think so, and most people (60% of voters) chose to spoil their ballots rather than make a fake choice.
BUT… The Supreme Court of Bolivia actually doesn’t have anything to do with any of this story, it’s the other 2 courts.
The Constitutional Court (with members elected the same way as the Supreme Court – so with 60% intentionally spoiling their ballots) is the one that allowed Evo to bypass the Constitution. But they did NOT nullify the 2016 vote to keep term limits (that’s not within their power). They accepted a legal challenge to the Constitution (presented by Evo’s lawyers) that argued that the OAS treaty protected the right to reelection – making term limits a human rights violation. Because the OAS treaty is binding on all member states, it supersedes the constitutions of member states. The Constitutional Court declared that provisionally, based on the OAS treaty, term limits in the Bolivian Constitution were overridden. Colombia then took up the challenge to the OAS treaty court, who scheduled a hearing… for over a year later.
In the meantime, Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Court accepted Evo’s application to run based on the provisional premise that term limits are a human rights violation. (THIS is the court that is hand selected by the president – no public voting, and which he completely changed, that BolivianCitizen is talking about)
Now, you say US citizens do not have the right to run out a president. But if Trump was making this argument to get himself a fourth term in office, would you still be defending this? Please, be honest.
And since we are thinking about Trump’s fourth term in office…
I would like to point out the thing that most people seem to miss.
===>>> The United States is a member of the OAS Treaty. <<<===
If Bolivia had been successful in having term limits declared a human rights violation, it would have applied to ALL member countries.
Including the United States (and Canada)
And the treaty overrides member state constitutions, so there would be no way to keep term limits.
(well, Trump could leave the treaty, but he wants to get rid of term limits, so why would he?)
Still think it's a great idea?
Do you think you would enjoy FOUR + + + terms of President Trump ?
If you don't think it's a good idea for Trump to be president forever, why do we have to put up with it?
At what point do YOU think it is it ok for people to rise up and overthrow a president who has overstayed?
Bolivia’s Constitutional Court members are elected to a six year term at the same time as all the other highest court members. The six year time alone makes it vastly more directly accountable to voters than the US system of LIFETIME appointments. ZERO percent of US voters can spoil ballots for federal Supreme Court judges because they don’t get to vote for them at all! As for presidential terms limits, they did absolutely nothing to make the USA more democratic. They were introduced as part of the elite backlash against the progressive achievements of FDR. And most of us should be old enough to recall the US Supreme Court gifting the US presidency to George W Bush in 2000. That would not have justified armed vigilantes working with security forces to run Bush out of the country – even though legally reforming the Supreme Court or reversing its bad (often savage) decisions is way harder for voters to do in the USA than in Bolivia.
None of that is an excuse for saying that we have to put up with fraud.
You think your country sucks?
change it!
DON’T say “You have to put up with an illegal government, because my country is worse” – that’s not even an argument.
No, our way of electing courts is NOT better – you have lifetime appointments. That’s terrible, but it usually keeps one party from dominating the court.
In Bolivia, the ruling party picks 100% of the candidates for the court. The we “vote” on which sham candidates will be on the court. This gives us with a court that is 100% sworn fidelity to the ruling party. Over-concentration of power which allows them to remake the laws to stay in power. This couldn’t happen with a court that is balanced.
Yes, your 2000 election gave Bush the presidency ONE TIME. There is a limit to the damage done in 4 years. Evo was going to be in power for TWENTY years. (at least, because really, he wouldn’t have left after the next term either)
There is a HUGE difference.
And you didn’t answer me – are you sure you want to defend infinite reelections if it means Trump gets to be president forever too?
FYI – armed vigilantes didn’t run Evo out of the country – stop the fantasy Hollywood movie that’s playing in your head. Reality is very different than your romanticized version.