The Mexican mission to the Organization of American States (OAS) has requested the agency a new report on the presidential elections of Bolivia in 2019. The petition intends to add a new document, the third in discord, after it was published by the OAS in December , which concluded a "malicious manipulation" of the elections, and the one prepared by MIT investigators and published this week in The Monkey Cage, on the Washington Post website , who found no evidence of fraud. The request is further evidence of the distance between Mexican diplomacy and the current secretary general, Luis Almagro.
MORE INFORMATION
An MIT study finds no evidence of fraud in Bolivia's elections- The OAS report confirms the "malicious manipulation" of the elections in Bolivia
Mexico asks “independent specialized researchers to prepare a comparative analysis of the conclusions” of both versions, according to a diplomatic note sent to the OAS on Thursday night. Mexico intends that the new document "clarify the discrepancies" and contradictions between the analyzes performed. In addition, the mission requests that the new report collect, if necessary, the “effects on human rights derived from errors in the OAS analysis”. On December 4, the organization published a list of irregularities, among them the alleged alteration of the minutes and the falsification of signatures of representatives at the tables, which made it “impossible” to validate the elections that won the then president Evo Morales. The political crisis resulting from these elections led the former president to resign from office after losing the confidence of the Army, exile in Mexico and then fly to Argentina, where he now lives waiting for the new Bolivian elections on May 3.
That single version documenting the "malicious" actions was questioned this week. Investigators Jack Williams and John Curiel, specialists in electoral integrity at MIT, concluded in an article that there was no "statistically significant" difference in the margin between the start of the count and after the vote count was suspended in the System of Transmission of Preliminary Results (TREP). Williams and Curiel also took advantage of the space in the Post to rate the "profoundly flawed" conclusions of the OAS report.
The OAS has not remained silent before the statements of the academics of the electoral laboratory of the MIT. "The article contains countless falsehoods, inaccuracies and omissions," says the organization in a letter addressed to the editors of The Monkey Cage, a section dedicated to political science. The agency, led by Luis Almagro, complains that the paper ignores many of the findings that "unequivocally prove intentional manipulation" of the elections.
Mexico's request delves into the discrepancies maintained by the current Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, who opts for reelection in office in the coming weeks, an option of which Mexico is not a participant .