The October 18th presidential election in Bolivia confirms that leftist candidate Luis Arce won the presidency with a solid majority, which puts yet another nail in the coffin of the OAS's efforts to meddle in Bolivia. CEPR's Jake Johnston, who analyzed the highly questionable OAS audit of last year's election, which justified the coup, discusses how this recent result presents a challenge to US foreign policy towards Bolivia. Transcript Greg Wilpert Hi, I'm Greg Wilpert, guest host for theAnalysis.news podcast. Official results from the presidential election in Bolivia last Sunday largely confirm what the exit polls had indicated on the day of the vote; that the leftist candidate, Luis Arce, won with 54.5% of the vote. Arce represents the party movement towards socialism, or MAS in its Spanish initials, and had previously served under Evo Morales as finance minister. Governments from around the world, including the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, congratulated Arce on his victory. The return of Evo Morales's MAS to power in Bolivia represents a major blow to U.S. foreign policy in the region. The Trump administration had supported last year's coup against Evo Morales, which had received significant support from the OAS in legitimating the false claim that last year's October 20th election had been marred by fraud. OAS audits claimed that when the country's electoral commission halted the publication of the so-called Quick Count, which is not official, it used the opportunity to alter the official results. A detailed analysis though, by the Washington, D.C. Center for Economic and Policy Research, which was later confirmed by researchers from MIT's Election Data and Science Lab, showed that there were no statistical irregularities to suggest fraud. Nonetheless, Bolivian opposition supporters, the police, and the military managed to force Evo Morales to resign on November 10th of last year, which then led to a nearly one year reign of repression and violence under the far-right interim president Jeanine Áñez. And this affected anyone supporting Evo Morales or his party. Two massacres also took place during this time, which killed dozens of indigenous activists. Joining me now from Washington, D.C. is Jake Johnston, who helped conduct the original research into the OAS's audit of the 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. Jake is a senior research associate at CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research). Thanks for joining us at theAnalysis.news podcast today, Jake. Jake Johnston Thanks for having me. Greg Wilpert So, now that we have the more or less official result, I mean, I think the completely final result isn't in yet, but I checked the website for the electoral tribunal, and it seems like almost all of the votes have been counted so far. So, now that we know what the official results by and large are, what do the 2020 results tell us about the OAS allegations of fraud in last year's vote? Jake Johnston Yeah, well, I think for starters, I think what it shows is that the coup and a year of repression were not enough to keep MAS, the most popular political party in the country, from obtaining power. And I think that is the most important lesson from this election. Of course, we did learn a little bit more about exactly what the OAS alleged and how realistic that actually was. And so, one of the major allegations made in that OAS audit last year, and again, that final audit report didn't actually come out until a month after Morales was ousted from power. But when it came out,
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