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OAS Makes Recommendations after Electoral Observation Mission to Bolivia

The Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) of the Organization of American States (OAS) that traveled to Bolivia for the recent municipal and departmental elections presented today its recommendations before the Permanent Council. The recommendations refer primarily to the funding of political parties, the future reform to the electoral law and the need to increase participation of women in the elections.

The Chief of Mission, Ambassador Arístides Royo, congratulated “the Bolivian citizens on a very wide level of participation and on their new show of democratic conviction.” Furthermore, he acknowledged “the efforts of all political stakeholders to conclude the elections with results that reflect the will of the electorate.”

The OAS Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, noted that the OAS has observed all electoral processes in Bolivia since President Evo Morales rose to power in 2005, and that the Organization also observed the negotiations that lead to the new Constitution in 2009.

“We are very excited to have participated in the entire process,” Secretary General Insulza said. “It is gratifying that, among all discussions and debates this past five years, Bolivia is one of our great achievements. We are thankful to the President, to his Government and to his people, for having allowed us to be part of this transformation process. We will remain by their side in their fight to transform their country, to turn it into a more prosperous, more fair land that serves the needs of its people,” he added.

On Sunday, April 4, elections took place in Bolivia to elect nine governors, 337 city mayors, 1,851 council members and 267 regional parliament members. The EOM was financed by Brazil, Canada, Spain, the United States and Venezuela and deployed observers from 16 Member States in all nine Bolivian departments.

Ambassador Royo, former President of Panama and former Permanent Representative of his country to the OAS, stressed that the April 4 elections were held “with normalcy and witouth any significant incidents.” Participation reached 86.30 percent of the populations, “within the historical average.”

The electoral event, the Panamanian diplomat added, “started to get complicated during the counting of the vote” because some precincts registered “results with very little difference between winners and losers,” and because it was proven that “in some precincts, the number of voters was higher than the number of registered people.”

Following the electoral law, the results in the 167 affected precincts, comprising 34,623 voters in the departments of Oruro, Pando, La Paz and Santa Cruz, were declared void. Ambassador Royo explained the affected precincts represented “a small percentage within the context of the country” and specified that the affected precincts “did not have a particular tendency nor benefited any particular candidate.”

The elections in those 167 precincts were held again on April 18, in an election that took place “normally” but was marked, according to Ambassador Royo, “by low voter participation repeated problems in the attendance of vote checkers.” Furthermore, the results “did not register significant variations compared to those in the previous electoral event, and no incidents were reported.”

Concluding his report, Ambassador Royo highlighted three issues among his recommendations. First, he mentioned “the need to improve the financing system of campaigns and political parties" for which he suggested “establishing formulas for political parties to access a system promoted and controlled by the State.” Second, “it would be important for the new electoral law to analyze, among other elements, the implications of the principle of preclusion, so that departmental courts enjoy better tools to solve eventual problems." And third, the need exists to improve gender parity in the field of elections, because in the last elections “women only represented 20 percent of departmental candidates and 7 percent in gubernatorial ones.”

The Alternate Representative of Bolivia to the OAS, William Torres de Armas, recognized the job of the EOM and its deployment in all nine departments. He said his Government is “aware of the problems, but despite these problems, the final results of the process show exemplary civic and democratic behavior by the Bolivian people and a high degree of political maturity.”

Para más información, visite la Web de la OEA en www.oas.org

Reference: E-174/10