The OAS Lied to the Public About the Bolivian Election and Coup

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Tuesday, November 19, 2019
by Market Watch

Facts show nothing suspicious about the re-election of Evo Morales.

byMark Weisbrot

What is the difference between an outright lie—stating something as a fact while knowing that it is false—and a deliberate material representation that accomplishes the same end? Here is an example that really pushes the boundary between the two, to the point where the distinction practically vanishes.

And the consequences are quite serious; this misrepresentation (or lie) has already played a major role in a military coup in Bolivia last week. This military coup overthrew the government of President Evo Morales before his current term was finished—a term to which nobody disputes that he was democratically elected in 2014.

More violent repression and even a civil war could follow.

The Organization of American States (OAS) sent an Electoral Observation Mission to Bolivia, entrusted with monitoring the Oct. 20 national election there. The day after the election, before all the votes were even counted, the mission put out a press release announcing its “deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results…”

Here is what the OAS was referring to: there is an unofficial “quick count” of the voting results that involves contractors who upload results at intervals, as the tally sheets are available. At 7:40 p.m. on election day, they had reported about 84% of the votes and then stopped reporting for 23 hours (more on that below).

When they resumed reporting results at 95% of votes counted, Morales’s lead had increased from 7.9% before the interruption to just over 10%.

This margin was important because in order to win without a second-round runoff, a candidate needs either an absolute majority, or at least 40% and a 10-point margin over the second-place finisher. This margin — which grew to 10.6% when all the votes were counted in the official count — re-elected Morales without a second round.

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/19/oas-lied-public-about-bolivian-election-and-coup

[BigMin28]

1. Of course they lied

It all comes down to the natural resources of Bolivia and who gets to exploit them.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America by Mark Weisbrot

"Of course Venezuela is facing serious economic problems. But they are not the kind suffered by Greece or Spain, trapped in an arrangement in which macroeconomic policy is determined by people who have objectives that conflict with the country's economic recovery."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/venezuela-not-greece-latin-america-oil-poverty

Whatever happened in Bolivia the world's worst economist and, still to this day, a chavista can't be be believed


Will Venezuela's new floating exchange exchange rate curb inflation?

https://venezuelanalysis.com/video/10581 Go to 2:00 to see Mark's wrong answer.

Will the new exchange have an adverse impact on the poor? See Mark answer incorrectly 6:15

https://fortune.com/2016/02/20/venezuela-oil-bolivar/

Mark Weisbrot, chavista economist: "The fastest and best way to break this cycle is to allow the currency to float. It’s hard to say where it would settle, but it would likely be somewhere between 150 and 200 Bolivares Fuertes to the U.S. Dollar — nowhere near the current black market rate."

The official exchange rate stood at 248,832 VEF/USD as of August 10, 2018, making it the least valued circulating currency in the world based on official exchange rates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_bol%C3%ADvar

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Sorry, this country is not Venezuela. It is Bolivia. . . . nt

[Bacchus4.0]

4. Sorry, its the same Mark Weisbrot though nt