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[notquitethere]

I think Morales has his heart in the right place, but power corrupts. There's always a temptation to stay on and consolidate. There are currently over a dozen cases of exactly this situation: constitutional reform to dismantle term limits to enable a president-for-life.

[LordBaal]

Evo Morales shut down the electoral system the day of the election when he was losing. Many hours later the system came back and he was the winner. Even the OEA said it and he was willing to make another election. The bolivian people wasn't having any of it, they guy was a criminal the second he tempered the elections. Good for them at least they'll get rid of the fucking socialism and is yet another country that is not getting it's gov funded by our already very impoverished pockets.

[Magistrum]

Careful everyone, we might go possible sham elections to very real military dictatorship, which is pretty harsh independent of what preceded it.

[Doomblade187]

Aye, that's the concerning bit - the military was leaning on him to resign, as well as the police. Implications of them being rather supportive of the next president are worrying, given the potential for a military run (directly or otherwise) government.

[Powder Miner]

Here's two conflicting pieces on the election and whether it was fraudulent:

This CEPR (a think tank organization in Washington DC) document performs a statistical analysis and finds no evidence of statistically improbable changes in the progression of the pre-tally-interruption and post-tally-interruption vote counts, further performs simulations that state that the election results were likely, and accuses the OAS of making politicized statements with no evidence.
http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/bolivia-elections-2019-11.pdf?v=2

The OAS audit document (and this thing took a little effort to actually find) alleges physical manipulation of tally sheets and rerouting of the counting process to external, un-audited servers, and then performs a statistical analysis and finds that the very trends CEPR declared as statistically probable are statistically improbable.
http://www.oas.org/documents/eng/press/Electoral-Integrity-Analysis-Bolivia2019.pdf

These two accounts of things are completely contradictory, and neither of them actually responds to the other -- the OAS audit paper only refers to the results of the audit, and the CEPR paper actually doesn't cite the audit paper in question at all... I can't tell if the OAS analysis paper came after the CEPR paper or not, but that would be a reasonable explanation considering that we're still in a short timeframe afterwards.

[Powder Miner]

well, heh, that's kind of a given

Unfortunately, I don't actually fully understand the statistical analysis that goes on in either of these documents, though I will say that the official vote trend as analyzed by CEPR does have a pretty decent change in trend around the time of the cessation of the vote tallying, though the quick vote trend doesn't (I may want to come back later and take a fresh look at the statistical analyses used once it's not in the middle of researching both documents more heavily, so I can understand what the different methodologies used are.)

When it comes down to how the OAS alleges that the vote manipulation actually went down in terms of data and tally sheets... well, I guess that depends on whether you trust the OAS or the Morales government more.

I do tend to trust these election observers though -- I mean, they're being accused of being US puppets, but without failure whenever there's an election that's being called rigged, the election is taking place in circumstances and in a government that has already stacked the circumstances in some way or another to stay in power; elections don't take place in vacuums. In Morales' case, this came in the form of replacing the judicial branch with a tribunal which, while allegedly elected, has its candidates pre-picked by the legislature (dominated by his party), and then having that tribunal say it's a-ok to go for a fourth term and presumably beyond. For all Morales might have been a genuine champion of a lot of the causes that many people cherish, he put a lot of measures into place to make sure his rule wasn't in trouble, and when THAT starts happening is when it becomes a lot more likely that elections are doctored.

[LordBaal]

You know something is fishy when the useless OEA actually says something, and is confirmed when the guy that "won" says "lets have another election". Well besides the overwhelmingly issue of the system failing for x amount of hours during election day only to come back with him winning.

[Cheesy Honkers]

democracy is sus when bad man win election

democracy is sus when bad man offers a second election

democracy is safe when no election and military rule

democracy is safe when lithium goes north

[MetalSlimeHunt]

hey remember when the OAS certified Ashlord Bolsonaro's election was Extremely Legit after having a pocket judge jail his opponent for no reason

good times

does it smell like smoke in here or is that just me

[Magistrum]

Right-wing repression has started, and there are a few victims before public order is stabilized, even if this isn't a direct military power grab.

Some supporters of the new regime captured the mayor if their city and burned down the town hall.

[Powder Miner]

democracy is sus when bad man win election

democracy is sus when bad man offers a second election

democracy is safe when no election and military rule

democracy is safe when lithium goes north

I tried thinking of a response to this for a few minutes but I did eventually realize that since it's just mockery --and brings nothing new to the table, at that-- there's not actually all that much that can be responded to without simply flailing around.

[LordBaal]

Idle words are always behind void ideologies.
If we talk about "rigth wing" repression what is then what has happened here then? Left wing repression?

[Powder Miner]

I mean, let's not pretend that right-wing ideology is always thought out and well articulated, or even that it's inherently moreso than the left wing -- people, I think, tend to have many of the same behaviors when they feel very strongly about something and are in spaces where they're likely to be validated on these same strongly held beliefs, whether these beliefs are on the left or on the right.

...also, I do hold really strongly to the belief myself that two wrongs don't make a right. No matter what Morales has done and has not done (and his record is one that is checkered rather than explicitly terrible, he's not quite Maduro), it wouldn't actually make that burning and that assault and humiliation right -- and if things do go further there, from people in power, then Bolivia's in a bad place.

[LordBaal]

The extremes touch each other used to say my grandad. Either extremes are just wrong. I don't pretend the extreme rigth wing nutjobs or heartless capitalists that do exploit their workers are rigth. But the communism and socialism just doesn't work. Well it does work for the new elite that comes on top like in any other system, just they are far more hypocrital pretending and preaching is for the good of everyone.

[Cheesy Honkers]

my post is, as PM astutely noted pure mockery devoid of any information scratch that of my opinion towards the coup

there is no point in making a long detailed post if the responses will amount to accusing me of supporting deadly evil communist dictatorships. discussion doesnt work if nobody wants to change their minds

besides, i really do not see what kind of discussion could this become. there's not much to be fucking said about a literal military coup to oust a democratically elected president. to claim that the coup was a good thing for democracy without good reason is the hottest take of the week.

i will not bother to put any effort into debating arguments that do not exist.