When Evo Morales became the first indigenous president in Latin America in 2005, I applauded his victory, but by the time he resigned on 10 November amid widespread protests, he had lost all my respect. Here was a politician of whom much was expected and he did lift many out of poverty, but absent from his democratic personality were the two central ingredients of democratic living: forbearance and restraint.
Bolivia’s constitution afforded the president a single term of 5 years but in 2008 he changed the constitution to allow a two-term limit; argued that he should be allowed to run for two terms under the new constitution, and the constitutional court allowed him to do so. Then in 2016, claiming that term limits violated his human rights to run for office, he held a referendum to abolish them. He lost, but the result was overturned by the constitutional court stacked with his appointees. Matters deteriorated to a point where Colombia stated its intention to take the term limits issue to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for it to determine whether they indeed violated human rights.
Had the army and the police not deserted him, Morales would still have been there fighting for a fourth term, and as Guyana proceeds towards regional and national elections in March 2020, his demise contains many of the themes this column has been considering in relation to free and fair elections: government control of elections management bodies, observer mission usefulness and context, the complicated nature of the elections process and accountability.
I have argued in this column that the control of the elections commission has become vital for elections manipulators and Morales’ demise supports this contention. At about 7.30 pm on 20th October, Bolivia’s elections day, the elections management authority provided data that showed that with 83.85% of the count completed, Morales was in first place with 45.71% versus 37.84% for his rival Carlos Mesa. The difference between the first and second places was 7.87% but it needed to be 10% if the president was to avoid a second round of voting. Without proper explanation, the count was suddenly suspended for almost 24 hours, during which mass protests began. At 6:30 p.m. on Monday the 21st, the process resumed and updates showed Morales with 46.87%, compared to Mesa’s 36.73%: a difference of 10.14%. The street violence escalated and resulted in Morales’ ouster.
I have also argued that it is important that foreign observer missions be more comprehensive in terms of their pre- and post-elections coverage of the process and forthright in condemning elections violations. President Morales’ demise came after the Organisation of American States (OAS) issued a statement suggesting that the first round in his bid for reelection was rigged. In its preliminary report, the OAS team, which was led by a former minister of foreign affairs of Costa Rica and comprised 92 experts and observers from 24 different countries, said that ‘All elections need to be governed by the principles of certainty, legality, transparency, equity, independence, and impartiality’ and that ‘The Mission ascertained that several of those principles were violated for a variety of reasons throughout this electoral process. …. Given the context and the … problematic issues revealed in this electoral process, the best option would still be to convene a second round.’
We find here too the conflicting accounts that usually weaken observer accounts and suggest the need for united reporting as far as possible. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Latin American think tank that has on board the likes of Nobel laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz, called on the OAS to retract its preliminary statement. ‘As can be seen from the data, the change in the vote margin in the later-reporting voting centers is a result of geography — i.e., pro-government areas, on average, reported later than those that have a higher proportion of voters who are against the government’ (http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/oas-should-retract-its-press-release-on-bolivian-election-cepr-co-director-says).
Of course, even after the audit was completed, Latin American leaders, following the usual left/right ideological divide, chimed in with their own accounts. Our neighbour Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro condemned what he described as a “coup” against Morales, adding that rallies would be held to defend “the life of the Bolivian native people, victims of racism”. President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil tweeted that Morales’ resignation resulted from denunciations of fraud allegations and ‘The lesson for us is the need, in the name of democracy and transparency, to count votes that can be audited.’
With turmoil on the streets, the government agreed that the OAS would conduct an electoral integrity analysis, the conclusions of which it would abide. Although globally more elections are being held democracy is in decline partly because more are also being rigged and in the digital age, the Bolivian audit provides a bird’s eye view of the complicated nature of the electoral process and the kind of scrutiny that is required if fraudulent outcomes are to be prevented.
The auditing team consisted of 36 specialists including electoral attorneys, statisticians, IT experts, document specialists, handwriting experts, experts in chain of custody and experts in electoral organization. Its purpose was ‘to acquire detailed insight into the processes involved in the vote count, the transmission of preliminary results, the official tally, and the chain of custody of electoral materials, so as to verify, on the basis of that information, the integrity and reliability of the electoral results of October 20, 2019.’
The audit team found fault in all four areas. On the issue of elections result transmission, not all of the data flows were monitored, infrastructure was not overseen or familiar to the technician in charge, key infrastructure components were not specified, a server was used that was not part of the specified infrastructure, traffic was re-directed to a network of extraneous servers and perimeter servers were not properly used because they were side-stepped. As such, the conclusion was that it was not possible to certify the accuracy of the elections results transmission.
The official count was contrary to best practices and failed to abide by security standards. The audit company publicly acknowledged the weaknesses and irregularities but failed to describe the redirecting of the server in the cloud. Given all the irregularities observed, it was concluded that ‘it was impossible to guarantee the integrity of the data and certify the accuracy of the results.’
On the issue of forged signatures and alteration of tally sheets, the team found that irregularities observed were those seen in a short period of time and that in all likelihood, given more time, even more irregularities would have surfaced. Finally, the controls required in respect of the chain of custody of sensitive electoral material did not exist. ‘The electoral authority needs to keep records so that documents can be traced and this did not happen in these elections.’
Many factors contributed to the downfall of Morales but it was mainly the many deficiencies in the electoral processes that led the audit team to state that it ‘cannot validate the results of this election and therefore recommends another electoral process. Any future process should be overseen by new electoral authorities to ensure the conduct of credible elections.’
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
