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Audit of elections in Bolivia by the OAS begins this Thursday

2019-10-30T14:49:44.237Z


Bolivia's Foreign Minister Diego Pary said the results of the OAS audit will be binding.


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(CNN Spanish) - A team from the Organization of American States, OAS, will begin an audit on Thursday of the results of the general elections held in Bolivia on October 20, Bolivian Foreign Minister Diego Pary announced in a press conference.

Pary explained that on Wednesday an agreement is signed between the Government of Bolivia and the OAS General Secretariat to formalize said audit.

As part of the agreement, the OAS team will audit the official vote count, the verification of the minutes, the processes and chain of custody.

Pary added that the audit will focus on the election day and the previous phases.

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The Bolivian Foreign Minister said that the Government promised to give access to its facilities and equipment that the OAS considers relevant.

Pary also said the audit results will be binding.

Upon completion of the audit, the experts will deliver a report to the OAS General Secretariat and then communicate to the government of Bolivia.

The foreign minister stressed that the audit will be carried out with complete independence and autonomy of the electoral authorities and that any of the parties may terminate the agreement without justification.

According to the calculations of the Plurinational Electoral Body, Evo Morales was the winner of the presidential elections, but his container, Carlos Mesa has denounced electoral fraud.

The OAS denounced irregularities in vote counting in Bolivia and recommended a second round. Morales requested an audit by the agency. Luis Almagro, OAS Secretary General, said they accepted and would do a mission to verify the transparency and legitimacy of the electoral process.

The preliminary results of the elections published hours after the polls closed on Sunday showed a narrow margin between President Evo Morales and former President Carlos Mesa, which would have caused a second round in December. To avoid another round of voting, a candidate needs a 10-point advantage.

But opposition groups and international observers began to suspect after election officials halted the count for 24 hours on Sunday without any explanation. When the count resumed, Morales' leadership had jumped, making sure he was an absolute winner.

The president of the TSE, María Eugenia Choque, announced that it was decided to suspend the transmission of preliminary results to avoid confusion, since the final computation had begun.

The electoral authorities then explained that the transmission of results was suspended because the TREP system managed to compute 80% of the votes, which they would have said was the initial goal of the TSE.

A third explanation of why the count was suspended was that it was related to technical problems.

Source: cnnespanol

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