WaPo Prints Study That Found Paper Backed an Undemocratic Bolivia Coup
Published on
Friday, March 06, 2020
by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
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.
by Joe Emersberger
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.
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/06/wapo-prints-study-found-paper-backed-undemocratic-bolivia-coup