Equipo Nizkor - Electoral fraud and misinformation.

On a visit to Madrid I read a summary of statements by Spanish political figures such as Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Juan Carlos Monedero and Pablo Iglesias, among other illustrious personages who, in their unconditional and totally uncritical defence of Evo Morales and his government rely on a report by MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to validate the latter's electoral "victory" in Bolivia.

Unfortunately for them, the MIT, in a letter to the Bolivian Embassy in the United States, officially denied that such a report was from the academic institution. In fact, the report so assiduously defended by the aforementioned politicians had been promoted by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), an institution where the authors of the report - John Curiel and Jack Williams - are professors.

The Washington Post also intentionally disseminated the information in the said report [purported MIT's "validation" of Evo Morale's electoral victory], in what is more a phenomenon of "misinformation" than "information". Something perfectly in line with the dalliances to which we have lately become accustomed in the Washington Post.

However, although this matter is serious, it is consistent with the lack of intellectual and moral integrity of Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, Juan Carlos Monedero and Pablo Iglesias, who, among other things, claim to defend the communitarian theories which are in fact the root cause of the implosion of the party and the government of Evo Morales. This communitarianism, which was promoted in Bolivia by the now leaders of Podemos, is per se an anti-republican doctrine. In this particular case, it is a doctrinal construction contrary to the republican doctrine that emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Latin America and it is simultaneously both profoundly reactionary and a denial of the equality of citizens before the law, or, even worse a denial of the concept of citizen.

The Republic of Bolivia is a child of the republican doctrines that arose from the French Revolution and has its own doctrinal parents in Francisco de Miranda, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and especially Simon Bolivar, to whom it owes its republican foundation and its name.

The support of indigenous minorities for the communitarianism that was supposed to foster them failed to such an extent that not a single one of the original indigenous nations adopted these ideas for their organization and it is unlikely that they will survive a likely reform of the constitution.

The importance of this issue for the above-mentioned politicians of the Spanish Socialist Party and Podemos is that they resort to what they call the "Bolivian model" to promote a similar structure in Spain under the name of "plurinational".

This model is perfectly adaptable to the thinking of Catalan nationalism insofar as it recognises "community" and "race" as organic supports of the model. In Europe, this model is closer to the agrarian communitarian thought defended at the time by Walter Darre and which is intrinsically contrary to the political and legal model that emerged from the French and American Revolutions and from post-World War II Europe.

This philosophy has even been supported by the current President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, albeit not publicly.

Context of the fraud in Bolivia.

The fact that these three politicians defended Evo Morales and his party is integral to their own legitimacy and to the free speech which is their right simply because they are Spanish and European citizens.

The problem is that what they propose as a defence is false, it has no basis in reality, nor in Bolivian history. What is more, it demonstrates a profound ignorance of the reality of the Bolivian indigenous situation.

Since to believe that such illustrious individuals speak/act out of ignorance would be an underestimation of their political representation, there is no other possible interpretation than that they use this "anti-fraud" discourse deliberately and in the knowledge that it is false.

Electoral fraud in the form reported by the OAS, that is to say, by way of manipulation of electoral records has been in practice since the Republican period, and is well known to the indigenous communities. It can be achieved by, and is a direct consequence of, exploiting the subjugation and segregation of the indigenous peoples.

The method used by Evo Morales in the TIPNIS crisis was a direct application of this type of policy by his government.

In indigenous communities this method is widely known and therefore what the OAS states in its preliminary report regarding "falsification of signatures and alteration of minutes" is absolutely true. What is relevant about the audit is that this statement is made after having resorted to handwriting experts.

The method was extensively used by MAS [Evo Morales' Political party] in the February 2016 referendum and in the 2014 elections.

Indigenous communities under surveillance and political and social control.

Before the 20 October 2019 elections, some indigenous leaders were visited by members of the military on behalf of the Government to inform them that they were being monitored and that they should not even consider obstructing the elections because they would be punished.

To understand these threats, it is significant that thousands of indigenous leaders are being prosecuted by the Government of Evo Morales without any right of legal defence and with the arbitrary actions of judges and prosecutors. The vast majority of these judges and prosecutors follow direct instructions from the government or from local MAS leaders, to which must be added the profound corruption within the judiciary.

By way of an example: the vice-president of MAS, Gerardo Garcia, after undertaking on his own initiative a mediation before the indigenous affairs Chamber of the Plurinational Constitutional Court, had to inform the indigenous people affected by the proceedings that the Court required $50,000 to "publish" the judgment. This was one year before the elections. The conclusion reached by this senior MAS leader at that time and which he asserted in front of indigenous leaders, was premonitory: "they are going to kick us out of the government". That is exactly what happened.

In Bolivia, we all knew that the TIPNIS crisis marked the demise of MAS, especially considering that its top leadership (Evo Morales, Alvaro Garcia Linera, Juan Ramon Quintana, Carlos Romero, Sacha Llorenti - the former Bolivian ambassador to the UN - among the most important) had definitively broken its ties with the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, ordering their repression. Juan Ramon Quintana received the green light to further his counter-intelligence campaign against the indigenous communities. The promotion of chuto indigenous governing bodies, that is to say, of false indigenous leaders, was (and probably still is) among his most important weapons. The CIDOB [Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia] was directly led by former minister Carlos Romero and Evo Morales, and all its leaders were and are chutos.

The genuine leaders of the native peoples, supported by their communities, were persecuted without mercy, prosecuted in false proceedings by prosecutors and judges who acted and continue to act in an arbitrary and clearly racist manner. It will take years for indigenous communities to regain control of national organizations.

In this structure organized from the Government, the infamous Juan Ramon Quintana deserves special attention, for obvious reasons. A graduate of the infamous School of the Americas and creator and Head of the Unit for the Analysis of Defence Strategies (UDAPDE) under the second government of the putschist general Hugo Banzer Suarez, he also studied counterintelligence at Fort Bragg, the largest U.S. military base in the world specializing in this type of operations.

Juan Ramón Quintana survived the campaign against those responsible for crimes against humanity in Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. When the Banzer government ended, he was accepted by the new democracy and Evo Morales appointed him minister with and without portfolio to use these techniques to control social movements and, in particular, indigenous peoples and communities.

It should be added that no cases of disappearances during the Banzer dictatorship were investigated in Bolivia and that the government of Evo Morales deliberately prevented any investigation, condemning to ostracism and inaction the human rights groups connected to the victims.

It was not until March 4, 2020 that the "Truth Commission" was able to deliver its report to the Ombudsman's Office. This commission, created on August 21, 2017, has no legal powers to prosecute those responsible and, of course, the current state of justice in Bolivia cannot even guarantee an independent investigation of the events that occurred at that time. It must be taken into account that Banzer's party (Acción Democrática Nacionalista - ADN) joined MAS after the Media Luna crisis. In some regions, the leaders of former National Socialist affiliations took up leadership positions in MAS until after the implosion on November 11, 2019, when they resigned their positions en masse. The best known example of this is that of Roberto Ruiz Bass Werner, known to have been the leader of the National Socialist Youth in La Paz.

Mechanics of fraud in indigenous areas

We can describe here the modus operandi of this type of fraud based on direct oral testimonies from indigenous communities and their leaders in the lowlands; in any case, it is consistent with what happened in the highlands according to indirect sources originating from indigenous authorities:

Polling stations in indigenous communities are normally presided over by MAS representatives. The other parties either abstain from participating or have no representatives. This allows, in the first phase, that the electoral minutes are signed only by the returning officer (of the polling station).

Once the ballot boxes and the minutes have been collected, they are taken to the headquarters of the corresponding Departmental Electoral Tribunal without either a chain of custody or any police or electoral authority custody. Although in the indigenous regions, police corruption is such that even this custody would not be a guarantee.

The journey of these ballot boxes has always an intermediate stop at one of the many government agencies controlled by the MAS.

There, the minutes are re-made by falsifying them. In many cases, to perfect this falsification, the returning officer or polling officers are transferred to the place where the fraud is being executed where they sign the minutes again in exchange for payment of small amounts (usually 100 bolivianos). When this is not feasible, the signatures are directly forged.

This laborious work is done at night and with specialists brought in for these genuinely undercover operations.

From there, the minutes and ballot boxes are transported, "in compliance with protocol", to the Departmental Electoral Courts, the board members of which are mostly appointed by the MAS or fully-corrupted officials. This fact is well known to the leaders of all political parties and to the governors, deputy governors and other authorities involved in the electoral process in Bolivia.

These facts were revealed in the OAS audit, in part and superficially, albeit sufficiently for the purposes of the audit.

It was this widespread knowledge of the existence of electoral fraud which led to the attack and burning of several departmental electoral headquarters.

In the days that followed and until after November 11, 2019, the fear of the lowland indigenous peoples was that the threats of reprisals and to take over the communities made by the military and Masista leaders would be carried out. Of particular concern was the information coming from the leaders of the coca growers stating that they would take the cities, something they attempted in Cochabamba and which did not materialize elsewhere simply because the Kapangas [their henchmen] did not accept the orders.

In those dark days, this author was compelled to obey the indigenous authorities and leave Bolivia. They were convinced of my imminent arrest and that the situation was hopeless as the coca growers were armed and would come from the Chapare to take over the communities, knowing that the Chapare is a liberated zone for these armed groups where neither the police nor the army can enter.

Thereafter, the resignation of all the regional leaders of MAS and the flight of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera brought a sense of relief to the indigenous communities. As a member of one of the historical indigenous authorities, who participated in the indigenous conflicts of the last thirty years, told me: "For the first time in many years I slept peacefully. Evo had us against the wall with a knife in his hand".

The elections were followed by a spontaneous and independent popular reaction and whoever witnessed it would know that no conspiracy took place. Not even the reaction of the provincial police - who did not respond by repressing the civilian population - was due to any conspiracy.

Since the events of the TIPNIS, it was clear that Bolivian civil society was living in a pressure cooker that could explode violently, as has been the case so often in the history of Bolivia.

What Evo Morales scornfully described as protestas de las pititas" [so-called because the protestors would run tapes or cords (pititas) across the streets with placards in order to block the traffic] is precisely what stopped the pressure from exploding and allowed it to go off without violence.

To expect Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, Juan Carlos Monedero and Pablo Iglesias to understand these facts is not realistic. The world in which they act has nothing to do with the reality of the Bolivian people and even less with the reality of the indigenous peoples.

As a colleague said years ago: "ignorance and lies are not a political category"... but these men are convinced that they are.

08Mar20

Electoral fraud and misinformation

[Source: By Irandey Tupapire, Radio Nizkor, Madrid, 08Mar20]

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