{"id":104793,"date":"2020-07-23T16:08:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T23:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=104793"},"modified":"2020-07-23T16:08:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T23:08:52","slug":"how-canada-the-us-and-oas-allied-to-overthrow-morales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/07\/23\/how-canada-the-us-and-oas-allied-to-overthrow-morales\/","title":{"rendered":"How Canada, the US, and OAS allied to overthrow Morales"},"content":{"rendered":"

World News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

On Nov. 29, 2017, Indigenous socialist president\nEvo Morales won a legal challenge<\/a> to modify the Bolivian constitution, to allow\nMorales to run for a fourth term as the Bolivian president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years later, on Oct. 25, 2019, the winner of Bolivia\u2019s presidential election was\nannounced<\/a>. Evo Morales won 47\nper cent of the vote, while the main US-backed candidate, Carlos Mesa, won 36\nper cent of the vote. Morales narrowly cleared the 10-point margin of victory\nrequired to avoid a second-round runoff election, and it seemed as if Morales\nwas set to serve his fourth term in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the OAS would have a key role in ensuring\nthis did not happen. The OAS, described as the U.S\nMinistry of the Colonies<\/a>\u201d\nby former Cuban president Fidel Castro, is supposed to represent the 35\ncountries in the Western Hemisphere in defence of peace, equality and national\nsovereignty.\u201d However, the organization has a long history of openly backing\nthe United States\u2019 imperialist agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In particular, during the US-led 2019 coup attempt\nagainst Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, false claims of election fraud\nwere utilised to try to push the US puppet<\/a>\u201d Juan Guaido into power. The (leader), Luis\nAlmagro praised the protests repeatedly, and allowed Canada to set up the Lima Group<\/a>, an alliance of countries wishing to overthrow the\nVenezuelan government, without any punishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OAS electoral mission to Bolivia soon claimed\nthat they had found evidence of election fraud in Morales\u2019 victory. Based on\nthe claims of the electoral mission, Canada called for a run-off election<\/a> to occur. On Oct. 31, the OAS began an audit of the Bolivian election<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Canadian and United States government ignored a\nNov. 8 report from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a US-based\nthink tank, who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia\u2019s publicly available\nvoting data which found no evidence of irregularities or fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Canada refused to condemn the vicious attacks committed by opposition forces<\/a> against Morales supporters and leftist\npoliticians, <\/strong>led by Luis Camacho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Nov. 10, the Bolivian election audit report was released by the OAS<\/a>, in which they claimed that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the four factors reviewed (technology, chain of\ncustody, integrity of the tally sheets, and statistical projections),\nirregularities were detected, ranging from very serious to indicative of\nsomething wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audit team [could not] validate the results of\nthis election and therefore recommends another electoral process.\u201d They argued\nthat Any future process should be overseen by new electoral authorities to\nensure the conduct of credible elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the very day, Canada, declared its support for the electoral audit<\/a>, stating that It is clear that the will of the\nBolivian people and the democratic process were not respected.\u201d A day later,\nMorales resigned the presidency<\/a> after pressure was mounted by military chief,\nGen. Williams Kaliman, calling for him to immediately quit and permit the\nrestoration of peace and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a press release, Morales said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to resign from my position so that Carlos\nMesa and Luis Camacho stop abusing and harming thousands of brothers \u2026 I have\nthe obligation to seek peace and it hurts a lot that we face Bolivians, for\nthis reason, so I will send my letter of resignation to the Plurinational\nAssembly of Bolivia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under severe pressure, Bolivian Vice President\nAlvaro Garcia Linera, the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra of the\nMAS party, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies all resigned. As a\nresult, the line of succession to the Bolivian presidency was broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Nov. 12, a Bolivian senator, Jeanine \u00c1\u00f1ez, declared herself the interim president of Bolivia<\/a> in Congress, vowing to promptly hold new elections<\/a>. Aljazeera reported that this was done despite a\nlack of a quorum to appoint her in a legislative session that was boycotted by\nlegislators from former President Evo Morales<\/a>\u2018 left-wing party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo applauded the interim president<\/a> in a statement on Nov. 13, saying that the\nU.S. looks forward to working with the OAS to stage free and fair elections\u201d\nby the end of 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, Canada announced its support for \u00c1\u00f1ez<\/a>, and laughably called for a democratic elections\nas soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolivia in shambles without Morales, as elections\nare delayed until September 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2020, a now-deleted racist tweet<\/a> from interim president\u201d \u00c1\u00f1ez was caught, in\nwhich she reportedly wrote: I want a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous\nrituals. The city is not for the indigenous. They should go to the mountains or\nplains.\u201d \u00c1\u00f1ez also called Morales a poor Indian\u201d in another tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canadian mining companies have swiftly exploited\nthe coup government\u2019s pro-business stance to resume lithium mining projects,\nafter Morales nationalized South American Silver Corp. lithium\nmining operation in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A first-of-its kind deal was struck that month\nbetween Bolivia\u2019s state mining company Comibol and\nVancouver-based explorer New Pacific Metals<\/a>, which allowed the company to begin mining for\nlithium and showed that Bolivia is open to foreign investment,\u201d according to\nNPM\u2019s President, Gordon Neal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadia Cruz, Bolivia\u2019s ombudsman, said<\/a> that charges of sedition\u201d and terrorism\u201d\nare being brought for simply disagreeing with or questioning the \u00c1\u00f1ez\nadministration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Shifter, the president of the\nWashington-based Inter-American Dialogue said<\/a>, There is unwillingness on the level of the Trump\nadministration to hold \u00c1\u00f1ez to account, so she has a lot of room to do what she\nwants, including what seems to be the carrying out of vendettas.\u201d Journalists have been arrested and intimidated<\/a>, while Indigenous activists have been severely\nrepressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The promise of quick elections proved to be a lie,\ntwo months after the coup, that the Bolivian Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which was filled with Anez allies, and purged of\nformer officials<\/a>, determined the presidential election would occur on\nMay 3<\/a>. However, the\nBolivian electoral court used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to delay the elections<\/a> until September 6. Now that Luis Camacho is\nurging the OAS to interfere in Bolivia\u2019s elections yet again, the stage may be\nset for a second coup against a Movement for Socialism party\u2019s presidential\ncandidate within the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the narrative of flawed elections has fallen\napart, as the New York Times<\/em> and\nothers have reported<\/a> that\nthe there was no election fraud, in the 2019 election that delivered Morales\nhis fourth term as Bolivia\u2019s president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as in the US-backed coup against Evo Morales\nand the 2004 US-led coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand\nAristide<\/a>, Canada is almost\ncertain to play a key role in the destruction of Bolivian democracy, staying\ntrue to its imperialist foreign policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook<\/a>Twitter<\/a>Reddit<\/a>Email<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aidan\nJonah is the Editor-in-Chief of <\/em>The\nCanada Files<\/a>,\na socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about\nCanadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism\nacross the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson\nUniversity, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for\nEtobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election. <\/em>Read\nother articles by Aidan<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2020\nat 10:29am and is filed under Bolivia<\/a>, Canada<\/a>, Democracy<\/a>, Elections<\/a>, Evo Morales<\/a>, Imperialism<\/a>, Mining<\/a>, Racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

All content \u00a9\n2007-2020 Dissident Voice and respective authors | Subscribe to the DV\nRSS feed<\/strong><\/a> | Top<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Canada, the US, and OAS allied to overthrow\nMorales<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Nov. 29, 2017, Indigenous socialist president\nEvo Morales won a legal challenge<\/a> to modify the Bolivian constitution, to allow\nMorales to run for a fourth term as the Bolivian president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years later, on Oct. 25, 2019, the winner of Bolivia\u2019s presidential election was\nannounced<\/a>. Evo Morales won 47\nper cent of the vote, while the main US-backed candidate, Carlos Mesa, won 36\nper cent of the vote. Morales narrowly cleared the 10-point margin of victory\nrequired to avoid a second-round runoff election, and it seemed as if Morales\nwas set to serve his fourth term in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the OAS would have a key role in ensuring\nthis did not happen. The OAS, described as the U.S\nMinistry of the Colonies<\/a>\u201d\nby former Cuban president Fidel Castro, is supposed to represent the 35\ncountries in the Western Hemisphere in defence of peace, equality and national\nsovereignty.\u201d However, the organization has a long history of openly backing\nthe United States\u2019 imperialist agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In particular, during the US-led 2019 coup attempt\nagainst Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, false claims of election fraud\nwere utilised to try to push the US puppet<\/a>\u201d Juan Guaido into power. The (leader), Luis\nAlmagro praised the protests repeatedly, and allowed Canada to set up the Lima Group<\/a>, an alliance of countries wishing to overthrow the\nVenezuelan government, without any punishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OAS electoral mission to Bolivia soon claimed\nthat they had found evidence of election fraud in Morales\u2019 victory. Based on\nthe claims of the electoral mission, Canada called for a run-off election<\/a> to occur. On Oct. 31, the OAS began an audit of the Bolivian election<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Canadian and United States government ignored a\nNov. 8 report from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a US-based\nthink tank, who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia\u2019s publicly available\nvoting data which found no evidence of irregularities or fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Canada refused to condemn the vicious attacks committed by opposition forces<\/a> against Morales supporters and leftist\npoliticians, <\/strong>led by Luis Camacho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Nov. 10, the Bolivian election audit report was released by the OAS<\/a>, in which they claimed that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the four factors reviewed (technology, chain of\ncustody, integrity of the tally sheets, and statistical projections),\nirregularities were detected, ranging from very serious to indicative of\nsomething wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audit team [could not] validate the results of\nthis election and therefore recommends another electoral process.\u201d They argued\nthat Any future process should be overseen by new electoral authorities to\nensure the conduct of credible elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the very day, Canada, declared its support for the electoral audit<\/a>, stating that It is clear that the will of the\nBolivian people and the democratic process were not respected.\u201d A day later,\nMorales resigned the presidency<\/a> after pressure was mounted by military chief,\nGen. Williams Kaliman, calling for him to immediately quit and permit the\nrestoration of peace and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a press release, Morales said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided to resign from my position so that Carlos\nMesa and Luis Camacho stop abusing and harming thousands of brothers \u2026 I have\nthe obligation to seek peace and it hurts a lot that we face Bolivians, for\nthis reason, so I will send my letter of resignation to the Plurinational\nAssembly of Bolivia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under severe pressure, Bolivian Vice President\nAlvaro Garcia Linera, the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra of the\nMAS party, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies all resigned. As a\nresult, the line of succession to the Bolivian presidency was broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Nov. 12, a Bolivian senator, Jeanine \u00c1\u00f1ez, declared herself the interim president of Bolivia<\/a> in Congress, vowing to promptly hold new elections<\/a>. Aljazeera reported that this was done despite a\nlack of a quorum to appoint her in a legislative session that was boycotted by\nlegislators from former President Evo Morales<\/a>\u2018 left-wing party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo applauded the interim president<\/a> in a statement on Nov. 13, saying that the\nU.S. looks forward to working with the OAS to stage free and fair elections\u201d\nby the end of 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, Canada announced its support for \u00c1\u00f1ez<\/a>, and laughably called for a democratic elections\nas soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolivia in shambles without Morales, as elections\nare delayed until September 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2020, a now-deleted racist tweet<\/a> from interim president\u201d \u00c1\u00f1ez was caught, in\nwhich she reportedly wrote: I want a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous\nrituals. The city is not for the indigenous. They should go to the mountains or\nplains.\u201d \u00c1\u00f1ez also called Morales a poor Indian\u201d in another tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canadian mining companies have swiftly exploited\nthe coup government\u2019s pro-business stance to resume lithium mining projects,\nafter Morales nationalized South American Silver Corp. lithium\nmining operation in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A first-of-its kind deal was struck that month\nbetween Bolivia\u2019s state mining company Comibol and\nVancouver-based explorer New Pacific Metals<\/a>, which allowed the company to begin mining for\nlithium and showed that Bolivia is open to foreign investment,\u201d according to NPM\u2019s\nPresident, Gordon Neal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadia Cruz, Bolivia\u2019s ombudsman, said<\/a> that charges of sedition\u201d and terrorism\u201d\nare being brought for simply disagreeing with or questioning the \u00c1\u00f1ez\nadministration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Shifter, the president of the\nWashington-based Inter-American Dialogue said<\/a>, There is unwillingness on the level of the Trump\nadministration to hold \u00c1\u00f1ez to account, so she has a lot of room to do what she\nwants, including what seems to be the carrying out of vendettas.\u201d Journalists have been arrested and intimidated<\/a>, while Indigenous activists have been severely\nrepressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The promise of quick elections proved to be a lie,\ntwo months after the coup, that the Bolivian Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which was filled with Anez allies, and purged of\nformer officials<\/a>, determined the presidential election would occur on\nMay 3<\/a>. However, the\nBolivian electoral court used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to delay the elections<\/a> until September 6. Now that Luis Camacho is\nurging the OAS to interfere in Bolivia\u2019s elections yet again, the stage may be\nset for a second coup against a Movement for Socialism party\u2019s presidential\ncandidate within the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the narrative of flawed elections has fallen\napart, as the New York Times<\/em> and\nothers have reported<\/a> that\nthe there was no election fraud, in the 2019 election that delivered Morales\nhis fourth term as Bolivia\u2019s president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as in the US-backed coup against Evo Morales\nand the 2004 US-led coup against Haitian President\nJean-Bertrand Aristide<\/a>,\nCanada is almost certain to play a key role in the destruction of Bolivian\ndemocracy, staying true to its imperialist foreign policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook<\/a>Twitter<\/a>Reddit<\/a>Email<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aidan\nJonah is the Editor-in-Chief of <\/em>The\nCanada Files<\/a>,\na socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about\nCanadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism\nacross the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson\nUniversity, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for\nEtobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election. <\/em>Read\nother articles by Aidan<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2020\nat 10:29am and is filed under Bolivia<\/a>, Canada<\/a>, Democracy<\/a>, Elections<\/a>, Evo Morales<\/a>, Imperialism<\/a>, Mining<\/a>, Racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World News On Nov. 29, 2017, Indigenous socialist president Evo Morales won a legal challenge to modify the Bolivian constitution, to allow Morales to run for a fourth term as the Bolivian president. Two years later, on Oct. 25, 2019, the winner of Bolivia\u2019s presidential election was announced. Evo Morales won 47 per cent of the vote, while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}