OAS Criticized after Further Evidence of Alleged Bolivian Coup

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The expert criticism of the Bolivia file of the Organization of American States (OAS) by two specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has triggered new fierce criticism of the regional organization throughout Latin America.

The OAS had described the re-election of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales last October as ‘electoral fraud‘, thereby fueling riots in the South American country, which eventually led to a movement that forced South America’s first indigenous president into exile and led to a far-right ‘interim government‘ to power.

A document from the Argentinean embassy in Bolivia has been released into the ongoing debate, suggesting some planning involving US officials three months before the elections in Bolivia. A communication between the Embassy and Kevin Michael O’Reilly, Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere in the US State Department, published on Twitter by Argentinean trade unionist Juan Grabois, is currently being analyzed in this respect.

The Mexican government made an official request to the OAS immediately after the publication of the MIT study in the Washington Post and demanded a further investigation of its assessment of the Bolivian elections “by a third party”.

Alberto Fernández, the President of Argentina, also criticized the OAS’ election assessment and once again advocated the legitimacy of Morales’ re-election. “As I have repeatedly stressed, the rule of law in Bolivia has been violated by the actions of the armed forces and sections of the opposition and with the OAS’ express complicity,” said Fernández.

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro made similar remarks. The new reports confirmed Morales’ election victory. It is a further proof that “the OAS, the US colonial department, is influencing election results against the will of the free peoples of the continent”.

In a hastily drafted statement, the OAS insisted on the legitimacy of its allegations of “electoral fraud” and challenged the expertise of the MIT researchers. The Bolivian de facto president, Jeanine Áñez, who took power, has reacted to Mexico’s request to have the OAS report examined by a third party with harsh words of protest.

She called on the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, “not to react to the outrageous request of the Mexican Permanent Mission [to the OAS]”. Mexico’s request was “a blatant act of direct interference in Bolivian affairs,” said Áñez.

Instead of an open investigation, the Bolivian judiciary initiated proceedings for electoral fraud against Morales and his former vice president Álvaro García Linera one day after the publications in the Washington Post.

Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, sided with the Bolivian interim government in several public statements. He said that the OAS role was an “attempt to destabilize the democratic transition process in order to favor those who engaged in fraud”.

Brazil continued to “advocate and promote democracy and freedom in Latin America”, said President Jair Bolsonaro’s Minister.

The German Federal Government, which after the USA and the European Union had also declared that it did not recognize Morales’ re-election, has not yet commented on the new circumstances.

Meanwhile, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentinean Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1980, has called for this award to be bestowed on Evo Morales in 2020. “Evo’s model of a country with equality, social justice, and sovereignty must be internationally recognized,” he explained in his proposal.