A bitter election. Accusations of fraud. And now second thoughts: A close look at Bolivian election
A bitter election. Accusations of fraud. And now second thoughts: A close look at Bolivian election data suggests an initial analysis that raised questions of vote-rigging — and helped force out a president — was flawed
By ANATOLY KURMANAEV AND MARIA SILVIA TRIGO
THE NEW YORK TIMES |
JUN 09, 2020 | 6:24 PM
FILE -- Supporters of Evo Morales, the former Bolivian president, protest the country's new caretaker government in Sacaba, Bolivia, Nov. 14, 2019. A close look at Bolivian election data suggests an initial analysis by the Organization of American States that raised questions of vote-rigging -- and helped force out Morales -- was flawed.
(Victor Moriyama/The New York Times)
As the preliminary vote count began, on Oct. 20, 2019, tensions ran high. When the tallying stopped — suddenly and without explanation — then resumed again a full day later, it showed Morales had just enough votes to eke out a victory.
Amid suspicions of fraud, protests broke out across the country, and the international community turned to the Organization of American States, which had been invited to observe the elections, for its assessment.
The organization’s statement, which cited “an inexplicable change” that “drastically modifies the fate of the election,” heightened doubts about the fairness of the vote and fueled a chain of events that changed the South American nation’s history. The opposition seized on the claim to escalate protests, gather international support, and push Morales from power with military support weeks later.
Now, a study by independent researchers, using data obtained by The New York Times from the Bolivian electoral authorities, has found that the Organization of American States’ statistical analysis was itself flawed.
More:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-bolivian-election-evo-morales-20200609-saed5avz6fh5nlljn72n3co33a-story.html
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One more Bolivia election fraud fraud thing
Posted by Andrew on 9 June 2020, 9:03 pm
Following up on our post on on their article on Bolivia election fraud fraud, Nicolás Idrobo, Dorothy Kronick, Francisco Rodríguez write:
The final OAS report on Bolivia presents a graph even worse than the rdplot you checked out in your post last November (which was from their preliminary report).
In our paper, we replicate this graph using Stata’s lpoly (separately on each side of the cutoff), for which the default is local constant regression. (We don’t know for sure what they did because they won’t share their code.)
But simply switching to local linear regression eliminates the appearance of a jump at 95%:
June 9, 2020 Yanis Iqbal 0 Comments
By Yanis Iqbal
Bolivia's Evo Morales
Ever since the racist right-wing government of Jeanine Anez has assumed power, Bolivia is continuously experiencing politico-economic tumult. Recently, seven legislators of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) filed a complaint against the Ministers of Government and Defense, Arturo Murillo and Luis Fernando López, for misconduct in the purchase of riot gear equipments. As per the complaint, the post-coup Bolivian government unfavorably cancelled its purchase with the Brazilian corporation Condor. Thereafter, the Bolivian government signed an agreement with an American company named Bravo Tactical Solutions. The Shifting of purchase to Bravo Tactical Solution has allegedly cost the Bolivian government a surcharge of $2 million. This recent incident of dishonest dealing is one among the 35 cases of corruption which have occurred since Evo Morales, the radical Aymara socialist president of Bolivia, was illegally overthrown with the help of US support. Prominent among these cases was the ventilator scandal in which the governmental coup-plotters purchased 170 unusable ventilators worth $1.2 million for $4.7 million. Due to the public outrage which this corruption scandal generated, the health minister Marcelo Navajas had to be suspended.
The increasing numbers of corruption scandals are highlighting a fundamental feature of the new post-coup government: the new government does not care for the well-being of the Bolivian populace. The historical conditions in which it emerged shaped it as an authoritarian administration which had to act as the handmaiden of US imperialism and neoliberalism. To better understand these structural features of the post-coup government which are going to play out importantly in the future, we need to examine the circumstances in which it rose to power.
In November 2019, the democratically elected socialist president of Evo Morales was ousted through a US-orchestrated coup. This coup was initially spawned by the Organization of American States (OSA) which published a report falsely claiming that the 2019 Bolivian elections were rigged. In the report, OAS expressed “its deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results revealed after the closing of the polls”. Despite being “long on accusations and short on facts”, this report was uncritically absorbed and iterated by major publishing outlets without any qualms. Later on, OAS’s audacious prevarications were disproved by MIT in an article published by Washington Post in which it said that “As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election”. Moreover, an independent verification carried out by The Center for Economic and Policy Research also found that there wasn’t any “quantitative evidence of an irregular trend as claimed by the OAS”.
In spite of subsequent refutations, OAS had already done much damage through its strategically organized falsification campaign. Using the utterly spurious OAS report on October elections, the far-right of Bolivia started to conflagrate the political environment. On November 4 2019, Luis Fernando Camacho, a multi-millionaire businessman from separatist Santa Cruz, promised to “bring the Bible back to the palace of government”. Furthermore, he told Morales to resign within 24 hours and pompously said to a crowd of supporters: “I’m not going with weapons, I’m going with my faith and my hope; with a Bible in my right hand and a resignation letter [for Morales] in my left hand.” Camacho somehow managed to enter the main hall of the presidential palace and placed the bible on a Bolivian flag. After the turmoil of Bolivian coup had settled, Fernando Camacho met Luis Almagro, head of the OAS, in Washington DC who praised Camacho’s “commitment to democracy”. In addition, Camacho was also a guest speaker at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington DC-based think tank, whose shadowy aim is to “foster democratic governance, prosperity, and social equity in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
The symbolic act of placing the bible on a Bolivian flag defines the core anti-indigenist ideology of Fernando Camacho. This ideology wants to relegate the indigenous people to a position of secondary citizens and aspires to ruthlessly subjugate them. The burning of Wiphala flags by Camacho’s supporters highlights the hatred for a plurinational state which is not coerced by Catholicism into mistreating the 36 indigenous groups of Bolivia. But despite its toxic features, the coup plotters garnered backing from USA which, through its conspicuous silence, gave tacit consent to the ongoing violence. Right-wing gangs ransacked the home of Evo Morales, assaulted MAS officials and publicly tortured a female socialist mayor. The final blow came with the November 8-10, 2019 mutinies of the military and police when top Army General Williams Kaliman asked Morales to leave. It is pertinent to remember that Williams Kaliman was trained at the School of Americas which, through its engagement in the dirty wars of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, El Salvador, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and Nicaragua, has acquired a variety of names such as School of Assassins, School of Coups and School of Dictators.
More:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09062020-the-aftermath-of-2019-bolivian-coup-oped/
