6/12/20 Jake Johnston on the Phony Bolivian Election Fraud Narrative

Scott Horton 0:00
For Pacifica radio, June 14 2020. I’m Scott Horton. This is anti war radio.

Alright y’all. Welcome to the show. It is anti war radio. I’m your host, Scott Horton. I’m the editorial director of anti war calm and the author of the book, fool’s errand. Time to end the war in Afghanistan. You’ll find my full interview archive more than 5000 of them now going back to 2003. At ScottHorton.org or youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Jake Johnston. He is a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. That’s CPR dotnet Welcome to the show. How are you doing, Jake?

Jake Johnston 1:03
Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 1:04
Very happy to have you here. So audience, everybody remember that there was a coup d’etat, somewhat sanctioned by the USA last October down in Bolivia. And we all knew that it was a big fake excuse at the time. That was the election, that crooked election was excused for the coup. And one of the reasons that we knew that is because of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, they came out debunking the debunking of the election by the Organization of American States right away. And the big news now, is that now that it’s June of the next year, the New York Times has seen fit to print that bitter election, accusations of fraud, and now second thoughts, not by them and not that they’ll take any responsibility for the lies that they printed at the time at the position Their editorial page took at the time about it. But here they are admitting that the separate guys, were right. All along. So that’s the bottom line here. But, Jake, if you could please go back and take us through the story of the coup d’etat against Avo Morales in Bolivia there last October.

Jake Johnston 2:21
Yeah, sure thing. So I mean, again, as you mentioned, you know, this sort of started in the OAS role, and in our role in this began with the October 20, election 2019. Now, you know, it’s worth pointing out that there was a criticism of evos ability to run in general, there was a lot of, you know, accusations that this election was not going to be fair before a single vote was cast. Right. Many opposition leaders pledge not to respect the results of morality one, and this is a highly polarized environment which this election was taking place right and on the day of the vote, the preliminary vote count was suspended and at that point in time, morale has had a seven and a half percentage point of view. Vantage over his nearest competitor, that would be just short of the 10 percentage point threshold needed to avoid a second round runoff election. The next day, the preliminary count restarted and when those results were processed, Morales had overtaken that 10 percentage point threshold and appeared headed to a first round victory. Now, this is when the actions get really important in terms of this story on the evening of October 21. After that update, the oise put out a press release, then crying in inexplicable and drastic change in the result of the trend of the election that undermines the credibility of the vote. Right. And this was latched on to as proof right as confirmation that fraud had taken place. And you know, of course, they were going to be protesting no matter what many opponents of Morales again pledged not to respect these results. But that the OAS would make this call it certainly gave credence to those calls and gave legitimacy to that movement and help consolidate this narrative that there had been an inexplicable change in trend and that was what was repeated in newspapers all over the world including in the New York Times, right? It took us 24 hours less than 24 hours to realize that they had no reason to make that claim. There was no statistical basis for it. And in fact, I reached out to a high level contact in the electrical department that day and told him as such as the data didn’t seem to back up their statement. And their response was we no enable shouldn’t have been running. Right. And this so to me, right. This is two days after the election.

Scott Horton 4:24
I’m sorry, Your wasn’t that said that to you?

Jake Johnston 4:27
That was a source of mine inside the OAS. Okay.

Scott Horton 4:30
Yep. But that’s important. I mean, a single source but anonymous source, but inside the OAS admitted to you, at the time, that yeah, this is essentially a means to an end here. We know we’re lying.

Jake Johnston 4:44
Right, exactly. And this and yet, despite that, and despite clear evidence, we put out reports to skull analysis, there was a letter from 100 economists and statistical experts, saying that the US had no basis for this. Members of Congress wrote a letter to the OAS asking for their methodology and what led them to do this. There was actually Attention out very little or any of that was actually reported at the time, right. But they knew these things. And yet they continue to repeat this and report after report after report after report. And it’s that initial claim now that the New York Times is reporting on and, you know, setting this new academic study that basically confirms our previous findings, though, the new thing is that they actually had access to the same data set that the OAS did. Now for months and months, the OAS has refused to release their data refused to release any methodology, and they still refuse to release their methodology. But these researchers were able to replicate the findings, but only if they excluded certain tally sheets from their analysis. In other words, they weren’t using the right data set, and they excluded certain pieces of evidence that then resulted in this claim. Clearly not backed up by any statistics.

Scott Horton 5:47
And now as I understand it, basically what happened here was they counted all the city votes first, where the Indian President obviously has less of a lead the 7% you’re talking about? And then all the returns started coming in from the countryside where all the Indians live, where he has a much higher margin of victory. And then they say, Oh, no, something, you know, irregular must be taking place here when it’s perfectly regular.

Jake Johnston 6:14
Yeah, that’s right. So when we started looking at the data, right, it actually, you know, it wasn’t even, you know, early returns all one thing late returns all the other there was a steady progression as the votes were tallied, right, that’s slowly and moralities lead slowly built, as more and more votes were tallied, because of that dynamic, as you mentioned, were

Scott Horton 6:32
more so it wasn’t even a big shift. It was like it was a kind of curve on the chart as the rural votes came in interest.

Jake Johnston 6:39
Right, exactly. These updates were provided every three minutes. Right. And so we you know, you can look at the data it was publicly available and look at these updates every three minutes right over time. And you can see the leap slowly building slowly building slowly building from morning till evening, right. And so again, you know, this is really simple. But I mean, if you’re the OAS, right, I mean, I think anyone who’s who’s witnessed an election just from seeing sitting at home and watching CNN or something, you know, is aware that, you know, you zoom in on a little rural county and say, oh, there’s zero percent reporting here, right? how might that impact the results? Right. And this is this is pretty basic stuff here, right that the OAS didn’t even consider these geographical explanations, you know, is a real sin of omission.

Scott Horton 7:18
And again, because they had an agenda here any excuse to get rid of this guy, and so about that, just how badly was he abusing his power attempting to stay in office here, do you think?

Jake Johnston 7:30
Well, look, I mean, I think there are legitimate critiques of morality on many issues. Right. But that doesn’t really change the fact that, you know, the OAS, right, this is a regional organization. This is a regional institution, right? Nothing allows them to simply lie about the facts. And especially when the end result of that is a coup government using those OAS flies right to justify their actions. Right. And so, you know, I think you can have a much broader conversation around you know, the local dynamics in Bolivia. criticisms of a vo etc, etc. but that’s really not what this conversation has to be about. Right. This is about what the OAS did, specifically what the OAS did, and that has impacts for Bolivia. But it has impacts for the entire region. Right. The OAS observes elections in every country in the hemisphere, basically. Right? And so, can we trust them to be credible? Can we trust them to be neutral, and we trust them not to intervene in political affairs of sovereign nations, right, when it suits their interests? Right. And that, I think, is what’s most important today

Scott Horton 8:27
that said that, you know, the problem, of course, is that the American government’s position, is it? No, it’s democracy, that’s more important, and that’s why we have to save it, when people are abusing it. And this kind of they’re invoking a higher morality in order to justify this kind of thing. They constantly do. And so, you know, I thought it was important to note as Glenn Greenwald did, that Jesus Netanyahu has been in power since 2009. And Angela Merkel has been in power are great ally in Germany for whatever, 16 years or whatever it is over there, and you don’t hear the Americans crying that that’s the end of democracy there. She keeps getting reelected. And so what’s the problem as long as they’re friends of ours, even look at all this strife going on in the electoral system in Israel, Netanyahu comes up comes out on top after for elections or whatever it is fine, whatever, he’s our guy. Our guys are his guys, whatever it is, it’s fine. But in this case, oh, this guy, you know, he’s trying to finagle himself an extra term in office. And and and that gets to our highest and most deepest sense of commitment and obligation to our principle of regular democratic turnover and power. And so even though we have no legal right to do so, it’s right for us to stop these, you know, leftist tyrants from seizing power away illegally from their people and all these things. Which is after all the argument. Right. And, and not just from right wingers this was the argument from the Hillary Clinton night, you know, center left liberals last October.

Jake Johnston 10:09
Certainly there was widespread sort of acceptance of, you know, these claims of fraud at the time, you know, across the political spectrum where there were very few voices of dissent at the time, I think, you know, and notably,

Scott Horton 10:20
this wasn’t a Barack Obama era coup, right. This is a Trump era coup, and you still have liberals going along with it.

Jake Johnston 10:27
Yeah, I think, you know, this gets to sort of a bigger and more systemic problem, right, which is that there’s a willingness from foreign policy elites, from political elites, and from many in the media to simply accept powerful institutions comments at face value, right. And that’s the case here. The boss said something and so in the minds of many it would be a became fact. But nobody was willing to actually look critically at what what they were saying and what the basis of those statements were right. And I think, again, that’s what’s so key and in all of this right is, you can’t simply accept these things at face value. You You have to do your own research. And that’s what we did. And that’s what led to our findings. Right. And I think, you know, going back to your point around, you know, Morales, his reelection and the controversy over that, you know, I think it is worth noting, right that that was the highest court in Bolivia did rule that that was constitutional. Now, many, you know, argued at the time that this was a court packed with Morales supporters, and it was just doing his bidding, right. And so it wasn’t legitimate. Nevermind, this is a sovereign process. It’s their court, you know, it’s not really up for us to make that decision. But fast forward to after the coup and the swearing in of an opposition senator Jeanine on Yes, who was not actually in the constitutional line of succession, and that same High Court in Bolivia issued a constitutional ruling, providing legitimacy for that process. Right. And it was cited by everyone who had been spending years criticizing Morales for for his running in the first place. All of a sudden, that same port was perfectly legitimate and reasonable to give the constitutionality to the government. Right. And so, again, this is not going to come as a surprise to I’m sure Many of your listeners but there’s a deep hypocrisy you know in so much of this and so much of US foreign policy right and and I think it’s really just on display situation with Bolivia.

Scott Horton 12:08
Can you give us exact numbers or real close ballpark as to what the real vote totals were? And just how badly he would have won on that first round? If the head just let the election take place, according to the law?

Jake Johnston 13:21
Yeah, well, it’s an interesting question, right. I mean, you know, on one hand, you know, we aren’t, we aren’t the ones who give legitimacy or provide final results to elections. Right. So what we are analyzing is what the OAS has done. And now, the official results of the election, announced by the Bolivian electoral Council was that April morale is one by about 10.5 percentage points, right. And so often, this is like, you know, it’s it’s a razor thin margin, he barely secured this victory, right. But to be clear, nobody’s questioning that he received far and away the most votes. The real controversy becomes was he just under or just over that 10 percentage point threshold? And again, this is where the OAS says It only could have been possible with fraud. And whatever study that looked at this closely since says, Well, actually, it was totally explainable by already released electors.

Scott Horton 14:10
Now, medically speaking, if it had gone to the second round. Were there enough other opponents that if they had started dropping out that their numbers could have added up to enough to beat him? Or he already had enough that it’s virtually certain that he would have won on the second or the third, whichever, then?

Jake Johnston 14:27
No, I mean, certainly, there was an impression that it would have been much closer in a second round, there was a number of opposition candidates who would split their vote. Right. And so, you know, there in theory would be some coalescing around one candidate for a second round. But it is, you know, worth pointing out, you know, his official Morales, his official results, you know, in the first round, were him receiving about 47% of the vote, right. So, it wouldn’t be that difficult to imagine him also picking up some level of votes from other candidates. Not all of them were, you know, categorical A representative of opposition factions. Right. Yeah. So again, you know, I think, obviously would have been close to, you know, but it was never allowed to happen. And I think you know, this is important, right? Because after the election, the initial call is there needs to be a second round. Right. That’s what the OAS said that the men in the opposition said, and as things develop over time, those calls turned into Morales must go right. And so on November 10, the morning that he was eventually ousted evil actually agreed to hold new elections with a new electoral council as a bid to try and avoid the worst right and and satisfy these plans and comply with the OAS audit which had recommended as such, right. But but it was clear that’s not what this was about. It was not about a fair election or having a fair election. It was about getting rid of Avo Morales. And that’s certainly what ended up being accomplished.

Scott Horton 15:48
Yeah. Now, talk to us a little bit about the method of the coup and exactly how that played out because it actually broke into violence where they burned his sister’s house down. I don’t know if Many people were killed, but he was chased out of the country, you know, seemingly at the threat of his life, right?

Jake Johnston 16:06
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And this is something that’s been, you know, systematically sort of avoided in coverage of this whole situation. Right. It’s treated as though it was simply resigned right. Now, I think that totally ignores the sort of broader context which is happening, you know, the police had been muting for multiple days. There were certainly protests happening, turning on him, and in the day, critical 2448 hours before his resignation. The homes and family members of both Morales and his allies were ransacked, you know, members of family members were kidnapped, beaten, threatened. Right. And that was the greater context of what happened and it wasn’t just morality resigned right. key to this is that not only did they ever resign, but so did his vice president and the constitutional line of succession which were part of his political party, right. And in that absence is what called This sort of power vacuum that could be seized upon by the sort of most retrograde right wing forces in Bolivia.

Scott Horton 17:08
Yeah. And so talk a bit about them. I heard Morales himself say, yeah, this was a lithium coup, which, on the face of it, it sounds a lot more plausible than this is a dispute about electoral totals.

Jake Johnston 17:23
Yeah. Well, I think this is, you know, it’s a dispute around control, right. It’s a dispute around power. You know, there are many factions in Bolivia that have never recognized the legitimacy. They have a morality and in fact, the indigenous majority of the country, which has been systematically excluded from the political process for centuries in Bolivia. And so that is a huge dynamic and one of the first things that happened after the coup was you know, had this again a far right senator opposition senator Regina Janine. Anya is, was sworn in as president, you know, by the military, the military put this presidential shaft sash over your shoulder. So you get the militarization but then on the other side, it was also proclaimed as we are returning the Bible to the National Palace, right? I mean, this was a Christian fundamentalist takeover and directly sort of criticizing the indigenous majority in the country, not yet

Scott Horton 18:10
Spanish Catholics.

Jake Johnston 18:13
Yeah, the genius genius has has, in the past referred to the country’s indigenous majority as savages, right. And there’s been this the desecration of the indigenous flag, which was, you know, elevated under the Morales government, and was seen ripped down from from militaries uniforms burned in the streets. So there was a tremendous amount of this sort of anti indigenous racism that was also at the core of much of this.

Scott Horton 18:37
Yeah, well, you know, it’s an American backed democracy when it’s the tiny European minority that rule over the majority. I was just thinking, I mean, usually when you say fundamentalist, that means Protestant, but in this case, you’re saying far right Catholic forces, I guess. Yeah, that’s right, meaning the Spanish. And now can you tell us what’s the 60/40 on the population split between The European elite and the Indians.

Jake Johnston 19:03
Yeah, well, it’s it’s, you know, it’s obviously difficult to know precisely, you know, it’s a lot of self identification. I think it’s not with not. It’s not questionable that there is a majority indigenous population in Bolivia, however,

Scott Horton 19:17
yeah, well, so they must be kept out of power at all costs so that democracy can be maintained. And by the way, for people who, you know, listeners who are interested in how this works, I’d ask you to look at this old Justin Raimondo article from 2004, called the Ukrainian template. And this is exactly how, you know it’s not really the CIA as much anymore as the National Endowment for Democracy and their allied institutions. But what they do this is how they do the color coded revolution most of the time is wait till they lose an election, and then just dispute it and refuse to concede and get out in the street and do everything they can to destabilize the place. Force concessions, figure out a way to give the military an excuse to do a coup in this kind of thing. So for those of us who’ve seen this kind of thing before, we’ve seen this kind of thing before, there’s no fool and a lot of people who got this right last October, because of their familiarity with the way that this kind of deal plays out. And it’s just like the Orange Revolution and that kind of thing.

Jake Johnston 20:25
Yeah, you know, I think one thing that’s important to add to right is that this isn’t a unique event, even in terms of just the OAS role and an electoral crisis. Right. So you go back to 2010. In Haiti, there was a disputed election, the OAS was called into, you know, adjudicate solve this process, look at the election. And what they ended up doing was based on no statistical analysis whatsoever, any sort of consistent methodology, they removed tally sheets that predominately benefited one candidate and change the results of that election, all during the course of 80s. Politics, right, today. And so we’ve seen the OAS Do these sorts of improper interventions around elections before? Right? This isn’t new behavior from the OAS. And I think, again, it’s why calling them out on this and having some accountability for what their actions were is so important, because if they aren’t held accountable, and the OAS very rarely is ever held accountable for their actions, it’s only more likely that they will do it again. Right. And then the next electoral crisis can do is actually be trusted to be a credible actor in that process. And you know, I think the answer at this point is clear that No, they are not credible.

Scott Horton 21:29
Yeah. Hey, speaking of which, is there been any good reporting about the process at the OAS, when they decided to go this way? In other words, the amount of American influence at play?

Jake Johnston 21:42
Yeah, you know, I think this is this is a key aspect of this that really hasn’t gotten the investigative, you know, focus that it deserves, right. So what we do know is the LA Times reported in January that the US representative to the Organization of American States Carlos Trujillo. He is a far right Latin America Hawk and an acolyte of Marco Rubio. And the LA Times reported that he quote unquote, steered the OAS observation mission to reach a determination of fraud. Right. I think that’s a key aspect here. Right. And again, goes back to this initial press release on October 21. That’s what this, you know, that’s where the clear is lie first occurred. And we have to know what actually caused that to happen. Right, who pressured them to make that statement? Why did they make that statement? Those are the questions that need to be answered if we want to get to the bottom of what really happened here in Bolivia. Yeah.

Scott Horton 22:33
All right. Well, and and by the way, was there anything really notable about that New York Times story, other than how hilarious it was that they refuse to give credit to anyone who got it right before their final admission here?

Jake Johnston 22:46
Yeah, you know, of course. I mean, I think, you know, this has been the sort of response in the New York Times sort of does its job carrying water for this response, which is, you know, the statistics are basically moot because we found all this time other evidence of irregularities. Now a few points on that as the oil audit, which does include, you know, a number of other irregularities that they allege was released a preliminary report in November it was then the findings altered significantly in a final report released in December, a month after the coup and handed over to the KU government. Right. And in that report, you know, we have gone through in detail that is 800 pages with appendix the OAS report, we went through it in detail. And what we found was that it wasn’t just the statistics that were faulty from the OAS. In fact, they miss represented key pieces of evidence, they excluded key facts that ran counter to their narrative, and actually just grossly misrepresent some of their findings in that audit. Right. And so it’s not just that their initial claim was bogus, but in fact, they’ve consistently manipulated the public record since.

Scott Horton 23:45
Yeah. Well, just, you know, zoom out of this, you know, from the story a little bit and look at it, and see, what would it take to really justify an American supported intervention. You know, like this against the government in Bolivia there? You know, I mean, most of the time they try to invoke some impending massacre, some fake massacre or some stock weapons or some kind of thing here. But what could possibly be the justification for this sort of intervention? There’s not one there simply hooking up their business cronies, is all it is.

Jake Johnston 24:25
Yeah. And I think, you know, again, you look back to some of the the motivations around here. And I think a key factor to in all of this is the Secretary General vs Luis Almagro, right? Again, he has become a close ally of the sort of Latin America hawks in the US, including Marco Rubio. Now, he was running for his own reelection, as Secretary General, the OAS, while this was happening, and it was certainly seen, you know, his hard stance against Morales and against this quote unquote, electoral fraud right after the election was seen by the region’s right wing governments and sort of a good indication that they could trust Almagro, right This was key to him sort of gathering and getting that base of support because he did face some opposition internally. Now, it will come as no surprise that the, you know, de facto government resulting from this coup and Bolivia was a vocal supporter of Ahmad rose reelection. You know, that’s obviously not a surprise and elbow did indeed win reelection within the OAS for another five year mandate. And I think looking at his role specifically in this is extremely important. You know, he has been the, you know, at the forefront of this effort to politicize the OAS and turned into an institution that does intervene into the sovereign affairs, whereas the OAS is, in theory made up of the member countries in the hemisphere itself, right. And so I think that’s really important to sort of hold these individual actors in the OAS accountable for their role. Almagro should resign, and this is there’s no question, right? I mean, this is the clear lie from the OAS. And, you know, Almagro, even at the time, went to the OAS and said there was no coup. The only coup was able was fraud on October 20. Right now, we know that the OAS claim That was bogus from the beginning.

Scott Horton 26:02
Yeah. Well, isn’t that something about, you know, the internal politics at the OAS? I mean, you could be describing how Mohammed bin Salman started the war in Yemen, because of the internal politics in Saudi Arabia, or for that matter how Samantha Power started the war in Libya, so that she could get a promotion from Deputy Assistant something on the National Security Council. That’s how this kind of thing works often, right, is the individual political interest of the people involved in carrying out the policy ends up with these massive consequences for other people?

Jake Johnston 26:39
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think that’s why it’s, you know, you really do have to look at all of those different motivations and factors that go into these things, right. And then often it is, you know, that not related to the actual sort of overall picture, but these various sort of petty personal issues or interests, right, that lead to these tremendous implications in terms of human life, right. I think That’s, you know, an extremely important part of any analysis of this.

Scott Horton 27:03
Absolutely. And now, so where’s Morales now?

Jake Johnston 27:07
So Avo accepted political asylum in Mexico. He has been prevented from running in the next election. He personally said he would not run for president the electoral Council has since. I think it is still ongoing, but it’s trying to prevent him from running as a senator and those elections. They are currently scheduled for September 6, though there is obviously concern that the government in power now will not allow those to take place or will further militarized the country and you know, again, the amount of repression and violence that we’ve seen in the aftermath of that coup has been extremely distressing. And the further militarization, you know, would only sort of erode the credibility of that election further, right. And again, I think, you know, you look back to the sort of motivations, right, and again, beginning this was this was an illegitimate election, right. But now we’re going forward to this new election under this cool government. And it seems like there are very less voices in the international community worried about the legitimacy of that election. Yeah, again, you have to look at the selective enforcement of these principles.

Scott Horton 28:09
Absolutely. Right. Well, and I was gonna ask you, are there any obvious successors to Morales there on his side?

Jake Johnston 28:17
So there’s a number so Lewis RC was a former finance minister is currently the mosque candidate for president. And David Toko, honka, longtime indigenous leader and member of Morales is mosque party is running for vice president. You know, and I look, I mean, I think there, there has been sort of this rejuvenation of the mass movement, right as its look to other leaders and look to build its own movement, sort of, as in in this context, right. And I think, you know, the moss has made some really interesting decisions in that regard, right to try and at least, you know, they’ve maintained a power in the legislature, right, the mass had a majority in the legislature and maintain that and they tried to use that to you know, at least maintain Some influence or some control over what is happening, going forward with elections. And again, I mean, you know, I think it deserves close attention from actors all over the world. And I think, you know, key we need different observers in the OAS to be on the ground in September, that’s for sure.

Scott Horton 29:15
Yeah, I know where they can find some. Alright guys, that is Jake Johnston, senior research associate at the CPR, that is the Center for Economic and Policy Research CPR.net. And check out their study observing the observers, the OAS in the 2019 Bolivian elections again, that’s at cpr.net. Thank you again, Jake.

Jake Johnston 29:45
Thanks so much for having me, Scott.