Bolivia elections - 2019-2020 - Arce Victory

[CumbrianLeftie]

A coup by any other name is still a coup.

Morales will be judged well by history, despite his failings in more recent years.

[Umengus]

A coup by any other name is still a coup.

Morales will be judged well by history, despite his failings in more recent years.

the coup was made by Morales and his refusal to respect the constitution (and the referendum)

[StateBoiler]

Argie from another board I'm on describing this:

Bolivian Constitution precluded him to run for a 4th consecutive mandate.

Tried to reform the Constitution, didn't get enough votes.

Tried to have a referendum in order to get "popular support" to run for office again anyway: lost it.

Then claimed the results were "inconclusive enough" and decided to run for office again anyway.

At election day, all indications were that he wouldn't have enough votes to win in the first round. Then the vote counting got "suspended" for 24 hours. At the end of that period the had just gotten enough votes to avoid the 2nd round, by less than half a percentage point.

The protesters started to take the streets.

OEA's (American States' Organization) international overseeing commission emmited a report calling the election process "riddled by corruption, vote rigging and inconsistencies".

Protest increased. Paramilitary groups backing Morales started attacking the protests - while the Police just vanished -, ending with several injured and killed.

Several of his Ministers resigned, the Parliament tried to vote him off but the majority blocked the vote, and consecuently the President of the Senate resigned.

Up to this point, nothing seemed to be wrong for most of our Latin American "leaders".   

Finally, COB (the Union's Central Organization), the Head of the Police and the Head of the Army, all called for him to resign, while Morales was blabbering about a CIA plot. Morales finally resigned, while claiming there are assasins looking for him. And all of the sudden, to all the leftist parties in South America, it's a "coup d'État". 

Today, in Argentina, there's a standard 10.000 strong march in support of Morales, claiming president Macri "organized" the coup against Morales, and therefore he has to leave office NOW!!!! (instead of on December 10th, when his mandate ends).

[Bidenworth2020]

Pretty much out of the cards now, but Morales even win a new election?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Pretty much out of the cards now, but Morales even win a new election?

Of course not. They made it clear that they aren't going to allow an indigenous President ever again.

[Alex]

Morales will soon be traveling to Mexico, the country that offered him political asylum, in a Mexican military plane

He said in Twitter that he'll soon be back to Bolivia and he'll be stronger than ever, but in cases like this who knows what will happen

[Unbeatable Titan Luis Arce]

Pretty much out of the cards now, but Morales even win a new election?

Of course not. They made it clear that they aren't going to allow an indigenous President ever again.

“They” weren’t able to stop him the first three times, so clearly “they” can’t be too influential. The only thing that’s changed here is the referendum and everything that came after that.

[Unbeatable Titan Luis Arce]

Áñez officially confirmed as acting president (by the constitutional court), new elections must be within 90 days.

[Away, haul away, we'll haul away, Joe!]

Áñez officially confirmed as acting president (by the constitutional court), new elections must be within 90 days.

Is the constitutional court a relatively impartial institution in Bolivia or is it a de facto third chamber of Congress like the SCOTUS?

[Unbeatable Titan Luis Arce]

Áñez officially confirmed as acting president (by the constitutional court), new elections must be within 90 days.

Is the constitutional court a relatively impartial institution in Bolivia or is it a de facto third chamber of Congress like the SCOTUS?

This is the same court that allowed Evo to run in the first place by overturning the 21F referendum, which brought (naturally) many accusations of politicization from the opposition. This feels to me like something of a John Roberts type situation, trying to avoid the appearance of just being another branch of masismo, but I think someone else could answer that better than I could.

[rob in cal]

  Wonder how Putin feels about this, as he has been fairly pro-Morales I believe.  I saw an article recently about alleged Russian pro-Morales election interference fwtw.

[bigic]

  Wonder how Putin feels about this, as he has been fairly pro-Morales I believe.  I saw an article recently about alleged Russian pro-Morales election interference fwtw.

AFAIK they now recognize the new temporary government, but some Latin American countries still don't.

[Intell]

A coup by any other name is still a coup.

Morales will be judged well by history, despite his failings in more recent years.

the coup was made by Morales and his refusal to respect the constitution (and the referendum)

People could have shown that they disliked that by not voting for him in the Bolivian election.

[bigic]

A coup by any other name is still a coup.

Morales will be judged well by history, despite his failings in more recent years.

the coup was made by Morales and his refusal to respect the constitution (and the referendum)

People could have shown that they disliked that by not voting for him in the Bolivian election.

Which they did! And the early counts and numbers from independent election observers have shown that Morales would face an opponent in the second round. The later count was rigged (after no results being counted for 24 hours, which is suspicious) so that the difference between Morales and his main opponent exceeds 10% - which is according to the Bolivian electoral law enough for avoiding the second round.

[Walmart_shopper]

A coup by any other name is still a coup.

Morales will be judged well by history, despite his failings in more recent years.

the coup was made by Morales and his refusal to respect the constitution (and the referendum)

People could have shown that they disliked that by not voting for him in the Bolivian election.

If right wingers supported coups when leaders contravene their country's constitutional norms there would hardly be any right wing governments.

[Intell]

A coup by any other name is still a coup.

Morales will be judged well by history, despite his failings in more recent years.

the coup was made by Morales and his refusal to respect the constitution (and the referendum)

People could have shown that they disliked that by not voting for him in the Bolivian election.

Which they did! And the early counts and numbers from independent election observers have shown that Morales would face an opponent in the second round. The later count was rigged (after no results being counted for 24 hours, which is suspicious) so that the difference between Morales and his main opponent exceeds 10% - which is according to the Bolivian electoral law enough for avoiding the second round.

Later votes were from rural areas that overwhelmingly favour morales anyway.

Also morales offered to have another election, but the coup happened nonetheless to benefit the interests of Bolivia.

This is by far less worse than what happened in 2000 that got Bush elected in which he refused a recount.

[Alex]

The Senate and the House have both unanimously passed a law calling for new elections under an exceptional one-time-only rules, neither Evo not his VP Álvaro García Linera will be allowed to run. No official date has been set AFAIK, but the new elections will take place somewhere in the next 120 days (and it has to be in 2020)

The results of the October elections are now officially void

Camacho said he may run for president

[God-Empress Stacey I of House Abrams]

The Senate and the House have both unanimously passed a law calling for new elections under an exceptional one-time-only rules, neither Evo not his VP Álvaro García Linera will be allowed to run. No official date has been set AFAIK, but the new elections will take place somewhere in the next 120 days (and it has to be in 2020)

The results of the October elections are now officially void

Camacho said he may run for president

Calling it now, these elections are going to be rigged in favor of the right. And the OAS will have nothing to say about it.

[Helsinkian]

The Senate and the House have both unanimously passed a law calling for new elections under an exceptional one-time-only rules, neither Evo not his VP Álvaro García Linera will be allowed to run.

So Morales's party threw him under the bus?

[Alex]

The Senate and the House have both unanimously passed a law calling for new elections under an exceptional one-time-only rules, neither Evo not his VP Álvaro García Linera will be allowed to run.

So Morales's party threw him under the bus?

Evo himself said that he wouldn't run for president this time many days before anyone else in the party said anything about his candidacy

[Alex]

The Senate and the House have both unanimously passed a law calling for new elections under an exceptional one-time-only rules, neither Evo not his VP Álvaro García Linera will be allowed to run. No official date has been set AFAIK, but the new elections will take place somewhere in the next 120 days (and it has to be in 2020)

The results of the October elections are now officially void

Mini update, Jeanine Añez has signed this bill, new elections will take place sometime between January [not very likely due to summer holidays] and May 2020. If there's a second round it will be less than 45 days after the first round

No official date has yet been established

[Alex]

The provisional government wants the first round of the elections to take place in March

Confirmed candidates:

Carlos Mesa - Gustavo Pedraza (same ticket as in the October elections)

Chi Hyung Chung, now without the support of the parties which were backing him that are now supporting newcomer Camacho

Luis Fernando Camacho, probably with Potosí (a southwestern and generally more pro-Evo department) protest leader Marco Pumari as VP candidate

Probable MAS candidates:

Andrónico Rodríguez, coca-leaf trade unionist

Adriana Salvatierra, provisional president for a couple of hours and former senator (she resigned to avoid being president during the hardest moment of the resignation/coup protests)

David Choquehuanca (trade unionist, Minister for International Relations 2006-2007, since then General Secretary of the ALBA [the Venezuela-led anti NAFTA/FTAA project])-Luis Arce (Economy Minister 2006-2017)

[God-Empress Stacey I of House Abrams]

(she resigned to avoid being president during the hardest moment of the resignation/coup protests)

What a polite way to put it.

[emotional hardcore]

I'm kind of a bit torn on who I'd support, I actually was kind of rooting for Mesa last time just because Morales was in office for too long and had turned authoritarian though he did accomplish a lot of good early in his tenure. However since it won't be Morales on the ballot and the circumstances since then...it's kind of hard to root against MAS. I don't think Mesa is a terrible guy even though he's not a great fit ideologically for me (and honestly if he wins he'd probably still be the best South American President even if merely by default), but under these circumstances he could be indebted to terrible people.

[Alex]

I'm kind of a bit torn on who I'd support, I actually was kind of rooting for Mesa last time just because Morales was in office for too long and had turned authoritarian though he did accomplish a lot of good early in his tenure. However since it won't be Morales on the ballot and the circumstances since then...it's kind of hard to root against MAS. I don't think Mesa is a terrible guy even though he's not a great fit ideologically for me (and honestly if he wins he'd probably still be the best South American President even if merely by default), but under these circumstances he could be indebted to terrible people.

I pretty much agree with this (even though my opinion of Mesa wasn't as positive as yours)