The OAS has to answer for its role in the Bolivian coup
The OAS has to answer for its role in the Bolivian coup
We call upon the Organization of American States to retract its misleading statements about the election, which have contributed to the political conflict
Ha-Joon Chang, James K Galbraith, Thea Lee, Mark Weisbrot, Oscar Ugarteche, Jayati Ghosh , Stephanie Kelton and others
Mon 2 Dec 2019 12.57 ESTLast modified on Mon 2 Dec 2019 15.27 EST
We the undersigned call for Bolivia’s democratic institutions and processes to be respected.
The Trump administration has openly and strongly supported the military coup of 10 November that overthrew the government of President Evo Morales. Everyone agrees that Morales was democratically elected in 2014, and that his term does not end until 22 January; yet many outside of the Trump administration seem to accept the Trump-supported military coup.
Many people who supported the coup have claimed that Morales stole the election. This story of fraud was given a very big boost by a statement issued by the Organization of American States the day after the 20 October election, which it subsequently repeated in similar forms. The statement, from the OAS Electoral Observation Mission for Bolivia, announced “deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results after the closing of the polls”. No evidence in support of this statement was included. However, it was widely interpreted as an allegation of fraud, and such allegations became common in the largest media since the election.
In fact, it is easy to show with election data, which is publicly available, that the change in Morales’ lead was neither “drastic” nor “hard to explain”. There was a pause in the “quick count” of the vote results – when 84% of the votes were counted – and Morales’ lead was at 7.9% points. At 95%, his margin had increased to just over 10%, which allowed Morales to win in the first round, without a runoff. By the end, the official count showed a lead of 10.6%.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/02/the-oas-has-to-answer-for-its-role-in-the-bolivian-coup
