Analysis of the Final OAS Report on Bolivia’s Elections
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The Organization of American States (OAS) again issues a report with clear intentional bias. The document clearly aims to certify its own preliminary version and, with it, the argumentative basis for the coup d’etat in Bolivia. However, the reading of this report, like that of its preliminary version, yields simple conclusions about the intent – intent to manipulate – with which they were prepared. For the Spanish PDF version click here.
By: CELAG
General analysis
The OAS report focuses on arguing alleged irregularities in two phases of the electoral process. On the one hand, the TREP (preliminary election results transmission system), and on the other an alleged fraud by forgery of signatures.
The OAS divides its report into “evidence” of three types: those in which there is intentionality or intent (deliberate actions), serious non-malicious irregularities, and errors and findings. Attachments to the report are done detailing the work carried out.
To facilitate the understanding of this counter-report, we will largely follow the sections of the document issued by the OAS.
The OAS focuses the report on the suggestion of fraud in the TREP system:
It is necessary to indicate, in addition, that the bulk of the arguments contained in these elements refers, on the other hand, to the events that occurred after the end of the TREP count with 83.7% of the recorded voting ballots.
However, even if irregularities are admitted or, in the extreme, deliberate actions in the TREP, the OAS omits the central facts about this system and that is that, according to Bolivian electoral regulations, the TREP is not the system of official counting, and therefore not a binding counting system.
It does not seem reasonable to base an accusation of fraud on an unofficial counting system, but it is also that the OAS – the main promoter of the introduction of this counting system in Bolivia in this electoral process – omits crucial information about it, namely:
OMISSION 1st: The TREP was designed to deliver data up to 80% to 90%, and no more. The Bolivian TSE delivered data up to 83.76%, therefore attending to its commitment. The OAS, by deliberately omitting this information on the limited role of the TREP in the design of the electoral structure, promotes the erroneous conclusion that the TREP was the counting system that should yield a definitive result in the elections counting up to 100%.
OMISSION 2nd: According to the TSE, a total of 34,558 voting tables worked in the country and abroad during the day of the general elections. The TREP was designed in such a way that it would NEVER count 4,558 tables. Nothing is said about the criteria that defined which tables were counted and which were not, much less the probable political orientation of these according to their rural or urban location, with their consequent bias.
OMISSION 3rd: That, as indicated by the member Costas, it was the first time that this technology was used and that, therefore, inexperience could be behind the imprudence detected. The OAS recognizes it on page 46 of its report, but deliberately omits it from the conclusions or executive summary section: “There was a lack of maturity of the process in relation to software, on the one hand, due to the absence of cases of use and several software tests (unit test, integration test and regression test) and, on the other, because the tests performed lacked a formal software acceptance process with formal test cases”. (2)
OMISSION 4th: That Neotec was primarily responsible for the computer configuration reported by the OAS. Again, the declarations on dates prior to the election of the opposition witness itself, proves it: “the TSE made a great investment in hiring a company to have the results of the elections as soon as possible and thus provide certainty to the population. It is the system of Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results (TREP), with programmatic technology that had not been used before in Bolivia”.
OMISSION 5th: Finally, the OAS obviates that Neotec’s manager, Marcel Guzmán de Rojas, had expressed his preference for Carlos Mesa, with whom he is known to have a close relationship. This fact does constitute a serious violation of the appearance of impartiality by the principal manager of the counting system.
Conclusion: The OAS bases its conclusions on the alleged finding of 12 malicious (intentional) irregularities. Of the 12 irregularities listed by the OAS, 10 refer to the TREP, an auxiliary system, a non-binding system and a system that, as the OAS itself and the parties participating in the electoral process recognize, could NOT determine the electoral result since NONE of them were designed to count more than 34,000 records.
2) On the irregularities in the official count
Regarding the incidents in the official count – remember, the only valid procedure because it scrutinizes 100% of the voting records and, therefore, the only one that could reveal any evidence of real fraud, is to suppose that the OAS – the agency – should have been especially cautious in its conclusions. However, what does the OAS say about the official count? Let’s look at it point by point:
2.1) On deliberate actions
This point is especially serious, since it constitutes the only argument to justify that fraud was done in the system of the official count, the manual one. However, the OAS omits in its initial relationship crucial information that it later reveals in the report itself, namely:
These and no others are the only two arguments the OAS makes to announce fraud in Bolivia. Clearly, the OAS incurs, in manifest incapacity and in serious intentional interference, in the process since neither argument sustains an accusation of such magnitude.
Let’s look at them in detail:
2.2) About the statistical “findings”
Conclusions
The OAS directs all its analyses and conclusions to support an alleged fraud in the Bolivian elections. To do so, it omits crucial legal-normative and technical-analytical information. Indeed, its construed argument on the alleged irregularities in the TREP omits three transcendental facts: 1) this is not the official counting system, 2) the TREP was not designed to yield data above 90% in any case and 3) that the alleged irregularities in the data loading procedure, if true, would justify a procedural irregularity, since nothing is proven about how and why the alleged additional servers would have been used.
With regard to the technical-analytical issue, the OAS bases its entire argumentation of fraud on the existence of 226 records of 4,692 ballots (4.8% of this universe) in which supposedly there could be irregularities (although it confesses not be able to access the original records). These questioned records, which did not go through the TREP and correspond to the final 5% of the scrutiny questioned by the OAS, represent 0.24% of the total of the recorded ballots.
Finally, in regards to finding 5, in which the OAS speculates about a usual or unusual result in which the last 9% votes counted clearly favors MAS, you must perform the following considerations:
In short, the OAS report, whether due to technical disability or intent, incurs manifest weaknesses. Taking into account its importance, it is at least questionable that such conclusions issue from it, such as those repeatedly made by the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, and even much less to question, giving wings to the subsequent actions of the armed forces, the general integrity of the electoral process in Bolivia.
Notes:
Translated by JRE/EF