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More than two weeks after the October 20th general elections, when Bolivians were supposed to elect a new president, VP, and congress, the country has succumbed instead into a social and political crisis of considerable magnitude. What should have been a routine day for Bolivians, who by now are experienced enough, having cast their votes in at least 30 electoral processes since 1983, ended in a series of chaotic days marred by violent confrontations between two opposing sides, the burning of public buildings, many people injured, and the death of two demonstrators.
In light of recent events, many people are asking what happened here. Electoral processes in Bolivia have been in recent history a model of procedural routine. By all accounts, Bolivian elections have been acknowledged by international observers repeatedly as fair, clean, competitive and serious. The fact that the country slipped into such a crisis leaves many wondering, what happened?
This post pretends to provide an explanation by describing, first of all, how the process should have been. After all, there was a lot of thought, planning, and money, invested in making it efficient, transparent and legit. However, despite all those efforts, this time around, the elections were anything but normal. There were procedural, and perhaps political, mistakes made by the officials. Those "mistakes" have resulted in a serious political crisis that threatens to disrupt the political process.
This is how the electoral process should have been conductedAside from all important political considerations about whether the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (
Tribunal Supremo Electoral or TSE) is politically independent or not, it (as an institution) has been working hard to bring efficiency and trust to electoral processes in the country. By now, the TSE has accumulated plenty of experience in organizing and carrying out special, national and sub-national elections as well as a number of referenda.
In order to address some of the deficiencies it might have had in the past, the institution recently implemented a digitized electoral register based on biometric data. In addition to that, the TSE also implemented electronic systems to count the votes and, most recently, a rapid-count system to provide a mechanism of control and, at the same time, provide preliminary and unofficial results to the public, in a matter of hours after the closing of all voting precincts.
The voting process was thought out in the following manner: From the voter point of view, a voter approaches the voting table, presents his or her id card, the ballot is shown to the public and given to the voter, and he or she goes to the voting booth to cast their vote.
From the official point of view, each of the more than 33 thousand polling stations around the country has six electoral officials, three women and three men, randomly selected. There is one president and the rest are electoral juries (
jurados electorales). These people check the name of the voter, give the voter his or her ballot and direct the voter to place the ballot in the box. Aside from that, they are also responsible for opening and closing the stations and publicly tallying the votes. Once the latter happens, they fill the official record (
acta electoral), sign it and place their fingerprint on top of their signature.
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| Source: TSE - Acta Electoral |
At the moment the count is finished, the process splits into two parts, denominated rapid and official count. The rapid-count process begins as one of the officials takes a picture of the tally (the
acta) to electronically send it to the company in charge of publishing the rapid-count results. The picture is forwarded through an app specially created for that purpose. In this case, the company was Neotec. The company then takes that picture, which is, after all, a faithful copy of the results, enters the data into its tallying system and then releases the preliminary results on the TSE's website, under the TREP title.
The official count continues as officials seal the ballots in a plastic bag, the official records in another, and then place all these bags plus the voting material in a carton box (
maleta electoral), which they also seal. The box is then sent to the TSE departmental offices. These offices, having received the boxes from rural and urban areas, proceed with the recount of the results to come up with the official departmental results. After this recount, officials forward the material to the central office in La Paz.
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| Source: UNO Television Network, Maleta Electoral being taken to TSE offices. |
In addition to the group of officials in a station, each party or political organization sends delegates to act as observers as well as controlling that everything goes according to the rules. Many of these people take pictures or make videos throughout the day, but especially of the vote count. Now, it is also true that the further away a polling station is from the large urban areas, the fewer people are present and therefore there are fewer delegates. For example, it is common that in small villages in the Altiplano where MAS has a large support, there are only or mostly MAS delegates. This is simply because all the locals support MAS and, likely, other delegates could not be present because of distance factors.
This is what happenedTo cut a long story short, as the polling stations were finalizing their work towards 6 pm that evening and the results started to slowly show a trend of the vote. At about 7 pm, for unknown reasons, the TREP stopped being updated. The last update showed a lead for Morales over his opponent Mesa, but the difference between the first and the second was less than 5 percent. Now, according to the law, in order for a candidate to win the election without the need for a second round, he needed to have at least 40 percent of the vote (which Morales had reached), and at least 10 percentage points more than the second place. The website was showing a tally of up to 80 percent of the polling stations counted and a difference of less than 5 percent between first and second places. This meant, there was going to inevitably be a second round of elections. Morales and Mesa were to meet in a runoff later this year.
From that moment on, it all went down the drain when the TREP site stopped being updated. The result was, not only the opposition but also many Bolivians began to wonder about that unexplained stop. As no explanation from the official side was offered, people began to go out. In a matter of hours, whatever fear was being felt by the population, it soon turned into suspicion of electoral fraud. People then continued to go out on the streets with the purpose of watching out for their votes.
The "suspicious behavior of many election officials made matters worse. For example, many of the electoral juries transported the suitcases in private cars, others kept the material in their private homes and, as the evening progressed and popular fury began to be felt, others just left the boxes on the streets out of fear for the people who were out seeking for scapegoats.
The updating stop of the website lasted 24 hours. At first, there were commentaries from TSE officials that there was a glitch on the system. Days later, the TSE explained there was a "problem" and therefore the count needed to be stopped. A couple of days later, Neotec's director, Marcel Guzman de Rojas, in an
interview with CNN, said the company was ordered to stop the count. The stop order came directly from TSE's president Maria Eugenia Choque.
Where is Bolivia, two weeks after the elections?The crisis has long gone beyond the elections and the political realm. The country is paralyzed and deeply divided among supporters and opponents of Morales and the MAS. While in the beginning, most people around the country just stood outside the TSE's offices to watch out for their vote and observe it was properly counted, today there are two sides entrenched in their positions. One group wants nothing less than Morales' resignation and the other group wants the continuation of the MAS government. Both assure they want to reach their objectives at all costs.
The opposition, defined as the group against the government, is divided into two groups, the political and the civic/civil opposition. The political opposition was obviously the first to be deeply concerned with the irregularities in the counting of votes. After all, they had all the reasons to look at the results with optimism. The trend showed there was going to be a runoff election. Almost as soon as the TREP stopped updating the count, Carlos Mesa began sending tweets expressing serious concern about how the count was developing. Other candidates and politicians followed suit issuing warnings and asking the population to be alert. Today, the political opposition is organized in an institution named
Coordinadora por la defensa de la democracia or Conade (something like an institution to coordinate the defense of democracy). It includes most of the candidates running for office in this elections, as well as former presidents, current politicians, and diverse political leaders. Collectively, they are not willing to recognize the official results, they either want new elections or a runoff election, and they demand new and independent leadership in the TSE.
The civic/civil opposition mostly includes different labor, trade and various interest groups, among them the so-called civic committees. The latter organizations have a long history of representing the interests of the cities. They are most influential in Santa Cruz, La Paz, Potosi, Cochabamba and Sucre. This opposition mostly makes a point of calling themselves a-political, which is what differentiates them from the political opposition. An additional characteristic defining these organizations is their claim to be the voice of the people. These organizations tend to mobilize the most people, supporters of the opposition and other people who for some reason or another are against a continuation of the MAS government. As such, they have staged in recent days so-called
cabildos (town meetings) to formulate demands. Among the most important are:
1. Declare a national duel and homage to the fallen heroes in the fight for freedom and democracy.
2. Fight until Evo Morales resigns from the presidency.
Demand the annulment of these fraudulent elections and call new elections with a new Supreme Electoral Tribunal that respects the popular will and call for new elections without the presence of Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera.
3. Reject the second round and audit the elections for being a distraction maneuver to demobilize the struggle of the Bolivian people and keep Evo Morales in power.
4. Ratify the political independence of civic, workers and popular organizations vis-à-vis this government and say neither Mesa nor Evo Morales.
5. Convene the national police and the armed forces to join their people and not stain their hands with the blood of the Bolivians.
6. Maintain and radicalize the pressure measures that are being carried out by the Civic Committees, trade unions and popular organizations until the goal of the Bolivian people, which is to oust Evo, is achieved.
The interesting thing is that such
cabildos are happening in all the major cities in the country. This has become truly a national protest. Albeit, a protest which comes overwhelmingly from the urban areas and, both the lower and the middle classes. Most rural areas have firmly remained behind Morales. In fact, many of the violent confrontations among Bolivians have been along this divide and not between indigenous and non-indigenous, as many believe. Groups of people from the rural areas have gone to the cities to "brake" the strike, mostly by force. The deaths of two men in Montero (about 50 kilometers north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra) was the sad result of one of those confrontations.
Parallel to the town meetings, the civic committees are also coordinating other measures of opposition. The Santa Cruz civic committee has taken the lead in these efforts and, its president, Luis Fernando Camacho, has become the most active figure. Camacho has gone as far as issuing on Saturday the 2nd a 48 hours ultimatum calling for Morales to resign. As time passes on, the demands tend to become more radical, albeit more coordinated.
As for the government, one of its first moves was to ask the population to wait for the official results. However, as things turned more chaotic, it reacted in several ways. At one point, Morales declared himself the winner, even after having asked people to wait for the official results. At the same time, several members of Morales' team began blaming the opposition for the vandalism and disturbances while others struggled to present explanations for the procedural mishaps. Most recently, Morales himself asked his supporters to go out to defend the results. Morales' latest moves were, on the one side, to accuse the opposition of carrying out a coup d'etat, and on the other side, to invite the OAS to audit the official results. The audit is in process and if it finds fraud, Morales said he will be willing to call for a runoff election.
The TSE assured the results were valid as they tried to diminish the meaning of the rapid count TREP qualifying it as unofficial. Eventually, the TSE issued a final report declaring Evo Morales the winner as they assured there was no need for a runoff election.
Where is Bolivia headed?To me, this latest crisis in Bolivia will be resolved in one of several ways.
The first solution that comes to mind is Morales stepping down. He and his team could work out an excuse for him to leave office, that way contributing to the rapid normalization of the country. The opposition is bound to accept this solution and lift all measures it has planned and plans to implement in the next days to pressure Morales out of office. However, that is at the moment unthinkable. I do not think Morales would be willing to take responsibility for the problem and just pack his things and go. That would be the first time for such an outcome.
Alternatively, Morales could wait and see. This, however, would depend on the resolve and resilience of both sides. On the one side, if Morales can keep cool and avoid making more mistakes that incite more ire among the public, he could wait for the OAS audit to confirm his win. This, of course, would depend on whether the audit confirms the official results.
On the other side, this would also depend on whether the opposition is willing and able to carry out the demonstrations as long as is necessary. At the moment, this does seem to be the case. If the opposition (both political and civic/social) keeps up the pressure on the government, and if it even is able to increase that pressure, then it will be a matter of time for the government to have to react to that pressure.
The reality with this second alternative is that the MAS and Morales keep on making mistakes. It seems as though Morales and the MAS have decided to take the confrontational path. Morales has just issued a call for his supporters in La Paz and El Alto to go out on the streets to defend his government. He spoke to them through Radio San Gabriel, known to reach mainly the rural areas. His interior minister, Carlos Romero, keeps on accusing Carlos Mesa. He recently gave a press conference where he showed "evidence" of Mesa's responsibility in the deaths of many people in October 2003. Lastly, Gustavo Torrico, a former interior ministry official and current member in a regional assembly, expressed his determination to defend this "revolution" with any means. His words seemed to threaten the lives of the many young people demonstrating on the streets. These words were interpreted by the parents of those students as a death threat and, so now, they are also joining their sons and daughters on the streets.
Added to that, the opposition does not accept the OAS auditing the electoral process. The distrust is too deep against the agreement between the government and the international organization. Many leaders have said, to accept the audit would mean to legalize what in their eyes is already illegal. In addition, as time goes on, and more organizations get involved, more things happen (i.e. confrontations with police and MAS supporters), and more threats are issued by members of the government (in whatever capacity they serve), the more radical the protests will get. By now, there are many decisions taken by the many actors in the opposition, and slowly but surely, they will end up in a coherent group of demands. Right now, it seems the ultimate demand will be to ask Morales to resign.
Other alternative solutions can involve new elections, with a renewed and independent TSE, assisted by international actors. In fact, this would be the latest demand coming from Carlos Mesa and his political organization, CC.
Whatever the solution will be, it has to come sooner than later. The confrontations between the two main groups have been violent, but have not reached yet dramatic proportions (aside from the deaths of those two demonstrators in Montero).
