Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09LAPAZ103
2009-01-23 22:37:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy La Paz
Cable title:  

BOLIVIA: REFERENDUM OBSERVERS UNDER OBSERVATION

Tags:  PGOV PREL PINR KDEM BL 
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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)

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