After Bolivians voted in 2019, the Organisation of American States (OAS) issued a report in which it pointed out flaws in the vote count and suggested the possibility of fraud in favour of Evo Morales. And although this report was based on incomplete data, it served as a pretext for a coup d’état.
The Bolivian political right, without verifying the information, viralised the hoax narrative and with the support of influential media, the military, rioting police and clash groups, gave the green light to the uprising that ended with the president’s resignation and his departure from the country in the face of threats to his life.
Since then, demonstrating that the fraud never existed has been the aim of the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism), former officials of the ousted government and defenders of democracy and human rights. They have done so because there is a lack of evidence to prove the fraud and that is why they classify the events as a coup d’état.
So far, seven studies by renowned research centres deny the fraud narrative and the OAS report (never published in full) that the flaws detected in the vote count were intended to give the advantage to Morales, who was then re-elected for a fourth consecutive presidential term.
Studies by the Latin American Strategic Geopolitics Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and analyses published in The New York Times and The Washington Post refuted the OAS report, and demonstrated that the voting behaviour confirmed Morales’ victory in the first round with 47.08% of the valid ballots.
This trend, which scientifically demonstrated the trend in the polls and the absence of manipulation in the results, was joined by an investigation by the University of Salamanca, Spain, whose conclusions coincide with those of the aforementioned studies. The study was commissioned by the government of President Luis Arce. The experts from BISITE’s Deep Tech Lab Research Group presented a report of more than 200 pages after three months of investigation, and although they identified negligence and failures, they confirmed that the automated systems fulfilled their tasks within the expected parameters.
The analysis of the Preliminary Electoral Results Transmission system and the official count of the Plurinational Electoral Body demonstrated independence, each with its own information flow system, hence the impossibility of manipulating data and influencing the final result of the elections.
However, the OAS insists on the veracity of its report, which is incomplete and non-binding, so its results and suggestions should not be followed, and disregards what happened in Bolivia from 20 October to 10 November as a coup d’état.
But it should not be forgotten that the OAS immediately recognised the unconstitutional government of Jeanine Áñez and remained complicitly silent in the face of the repeated acts of repression against supporters of Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo, defenders of Bolivian democracy and institutionality. (PL)
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