BOLIVIA: REFERENDUM OBSERVERS UNDER OBSERVATION

C O N F I D E N T I A L LA PAZ 000103 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/15/2019 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KDEM BL SUBJECT: BOLIVIA: REFERENDUM OBSERVERS UNDER OBSERVATION Classified By: A/EcoPol Chief Joe Relk for reasons 1.4 (b)(d) ¶1. (C) Summary: President of the National Electoral Court Jose Luis Exeni has confirmed that 11 international observer missions are expected to observe the January 25 constitutional referendum, including most prominently the European Union, OAS, Carter Center, the CAN, and Unasur. OAS Mission Representative Raul Lago told us he's received complaints from both ruling party MAS and opposition leaders about the August 10 recall referendum, which have helped improve the OAS' constitutional referendum observation mission. Press reports are daily highlighting large numbers of false ID carnets and errors on the voter rolls, although the government continues to claim that the voter rolls are clean and that fraud is not possible. End summary. Observer Missions Large and Small Flock to Bolivia -------------- -------------- ¶2. (U) According to the National Electoral Court (CNE),there will be a total of eleven international groups observing the January 25 referendum, including observer teams from the EU, the OAS, the Carter Center, Mercosur, CAN, Unasur, the Central American Parliament, the European Parliament, the Andean Parliament, members of the Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America (CEELA),and members of the Andean Electoral Council (CEA). ¶3. (U) The EU delegation is headed by Renate Weber and consists of 30 observers. The delegation began arriving on December 14. Weber will head two groups, a five-member primary team and a second team of 24 observers to be posted across the country, including observers in all nine departments. According to leading local daily La Razon, up to 20 more people may arrive to supplement these two teams. Some members of the team will stay up to six months to better understand and contextualize the process. ¶4. (C) The OAS team of observers, led by Mission Chief Raul Lago, was invited by the Bolivian government and contains more than 65 people from 16 countries. Lago, from Uruguay, is the Secretary for Political Affairs of the OAS. After signing the agreement to observe the referendum, Lago said that his &first impression (regarding the referendum process) is very positive.8 He added that the OAS, presence is &a guarantee and adds more tranquillity for those who conduct the electoral process.8 The OAS team will be dispatched across a large part of the country, to better understand the administration's electoral organization and development, as well as the political campaign. With the exception of the EU Mission, Lago discounted the other missions to Charge as "too small to be able to conduct a serious investigation," explaining the Carter Center and Unasur sent largely "symbolic" missions of five and 10 observers respectively. Opposition Questions International Observation -------------- - ¶5. (C) The opposition is largely skeptical about the impartiality of election observers in general and somewhat hostile in the specific case of the OAS. Executive Board Members Fernanda San Martin and Julio Alvarado of the anti-Morales Plaza Abaroa Alliance group harshly criticized the OAS' report on the August recall referendum for excusing the OAS estimate of nine percent of the vote held publicly as a traditional form of "communitarian voting" and thus a "cultural thing." San Martin said this was a gross misinterpretation of the tendency of indigenous groups to agree to vote as a block and essentially a racist perspective that demeans the indigenous community as "not being smart enough to vote for themselves." She said although indigenous groups do meet to decide on a common voting strategy ahead of time in traditional meetings, they have always "had the right to vote separately. This idea that they cannot caste their vote in private is new." ¶6. (C) Alvarado told PolOff the OAS was "controlled by the Secretary General, who is controlled by (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez and (Bolivian President Evo) Morales. The report is already written to endorse the results." He challenged the United States to "do something. Are you a member of the OAS or aren't you?" ¶7. (C) Members of the opposition-aligned Santa Cruz civic committee told Emboff that they have no faith in international observers. The committee has met with the OAS team already and "told our side of the story," describing the discoveries of tens of thousands of false voter cards and the statistical signs of fraud in areas that managed to vote 100 percent for President Morales in the August 10 recall referendum. However, the civic committee said that the fact that international observers blessed the August 10 referendum (which the opposition views as significantly impacted by fraud) means they do not expect an honest review of the constitutional referendum. Civic committee members also noted that small numbers of observers, generally based in the city, will not be able to stop widespread fraud in the countryside, which is where they believe most of the August 10 fraud took place. OAS Defines Expectations; Learns from August 10 -------------- -- ¶8. (C) OAS Observer Mission Chief Raul Lago told Charge January 23 that he was well aware of the criticisms of the August 10 recall referendum, which he has heard from both pro-government and opposition supporters, and would work to assuage opposition concerns about an OAS rubber stamp. Lago said his mission would focus on rural voting stations. For example in Cochabamba Department (state) there would be only one observer in the capital city and eight dispatched to the countryside. Although he conceded the issue of public voting was a problem in August in the altiplano region, adding that he had heard the same concern about rural voting stations in the Chapare, he said he had spoken frankly about the issue with CNE President Jose Luis Exeni and Exeni had responded with public promises that any votes casted publicly would be annulled. ¶9. (C) Lago said he was working to make sure the same atmosphere of uncertainty and conflict that permeated the August referendum "does not reoccur." Lago claimed Exeni promised him that the police would ensure domestic political observers would be allowed access. Lago emphasized that although the opposition complains more about their observers being locked out of altiplano polling stations and sometimes attacked during the August referendum, the same phenomena existed in opposition-led departments, such as Santa Cruz, with respect to pro-government observers. Ultimately Lago predicted little if any election-related violence beyond "an insult thrown back and forth here and there." He noted the EU Mission was effectively cutting its observation ability to about 25 teams by doubling-up observers out of security concerns, which the OAS' 75 observers would not do. ¶10. (C) Lago discounted, however, myriad other opposition claims of fraud as "isolated incidents that do not rise to anything significant" at the national level. Lago said that if the level of fraud did not "impact the result of the vote" he was not inclined to discount the official outcome. "Both sides claim fraud ... there is really no way we can scientifically guarantee there will be no fraud out there (at the voting stations)." Lago continued that "there will always be a percentage of errors," but that his team had found no evidence of deliberate or wide-spread fraud and did not expect to encounter the same during the election. Lago defended Bolivia's electoral rolls as 95 percent valid (using an OAS review of a 2,050 person sample) and said the rolls would be even more trustworthy in time for general elections he expects will occur in December, 2009. ¶11. (C) An OAS Mission observer and long-time Embassy contact told us he had doubts about the mission's partiality. From his experience as an observer for a UN investigative team that visited before the August referendum and from contacts at the OAS, he concluded that OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza had pressured the August referendum team to issue a "weak" August referendum report due to his close relationship with Bolivian President Evo Morales. He said that Morales used to hate the OAS and "wouldn't meet with them because the old Secretary General would not give him the time of day," but "now that he has a political ally leading it," Morales uses it to his advantage. Despite Lago's description of a diverse and representative observer mission, the OAS observer asserted there are a disproportionate number of Chileans in the mission and that the head of the OAS elections section is also a Chilean, and was Insulza's chief of staff during his tenure as Chile's interior minister. The observer gave Lago credit for meeting with a broad range of actors, from Presidency Minister Juan Ramon Quintana to former President Carlos Mesa, but said frankly that the EU mission "is more professional." EU Mission Chief Trying to Keep it Real; Slighted by GOB -------------- -------------- ¶12. (C) EU Mission Chief Renate Weber told Charge and DCM January 9 that although the EU mission was having difficulty obtaining meetings with pro-government forces, she had met with a wide variety of opposition leaders and judicial officials, including the lone Constitutional Tribunal Justice, who has threatened to step down due to disagreements with the government's adherence to legal process. Weber seemed well-aware of a wide range of legal-procedural criticism of the CNE and the referendum's long and complicated background. She asked us if "we should even be here" considering the disputed legality of the referendum and noted that she would include the "whole story of how we got to this referendum" in her final report. Weber explained that EU fears of involving itself in an illegal process kept it from sending observation missions to the August referendum or the four departmental autonomy referendums in May and June (Note: Our OAS observer contact told us the UN passed on observation out of similar concerns. End Note.) ¶13. (C) Weber said she was also concerned about including in her analysis what happens after the referendum and feared the government might use the results, depending on the margin of an expected government victory, to sanction extra-legal behavior. "We are concerned that this government is very near to a dictatorship and do not want to do anything that would make that tendency worse." For that reason, she explained a core group of the EU mission would stay until February 6 (Note: The OAS team plans to wrap up its observation by January 28. End Note.) Weber emphasized that her commission was entirely independent of the EU and her report, which would likely be submitted in early March, did not have to be sanctioned by any EU institutions. Weber added that the EU would send an observer mission for expected national elections in 2009. EU Observers Question Legal Environment - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ¶14. (U) In an extensive interview in leading daily La Prensa, Weber, who is also a EU parliamentarian from Romania, noted that Bolivia has no functioning constitutional court: "In a state of law, you have a constitution elaborated by a constituent assembly, an executive branch that implements and of course a judicial branch that can sanction if the laws are not followed. And judicial branch means that there is a constitutional court, that is the way the models function in the world ... the Constitutional Tribunal in Bolivia isn't functioning." Weber also noted that the designation of the National Electoral court's third member and the allotment of electoral officials took place over the holidays, when "normally everyone is on vacation." She said that her team was interested in "whether the campaign is transparent and open ... if it is possible to campaign for the Yes or for the No in all corners of the country" and "the transparency of the financial resources that are used in the campaign." Noting that the EU observers would be checking both the electoral process and the electoral rolls, Weber added that "the more we learn, the more doubts are raised." Comment -------------- ¶15. (C) We have made an conscious effort to reach out to the OAS and EU observer missions to ensure they are fully aware of referendum process criticisms. We are pleased the OAS seems to listening to the criticisms and, in the case of "communitarian voting," trying to improve upon their August referendum observation performance. Nevertheless, like our OAS observer contact, we have more confidence in the EU Mission and its plain-talking Mission Chief than in the OAS. Having the international community in country seems to ensure better behavior from both the government and opposition, but, ultimately, any irregularities will likely occur away from their "observation." We are planing a small reception for the OAS mission leadership and AmCit observers on January 26 to hear about their referendum experiences. End Comment. URS