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OAS and Bolivia Sign Agreement for Mission to Observe Elections on March 29

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, and the Permanent Representative of Bolivia, Ambassador Diego Pary, today signed the agreement establishing the deployment by the OAS of an Observation Mission to the regional elections on March 29, in a ceremony at the headquarters of the institution in Washington, DC.

It will be the sixteenth Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) that the Organization has sent to Bolivia, since the first that took place in 1966. On this occasion, Secretary General Insulza appointed as Chief of the EOM the former President of Guatemala Alvaro Colom, who led the mission which observed the general elections of 2014 in the South American country.

Following the signing of the documents necessary to ensure the conditions for the Observation Mission to attend the elections for departmental, regional and municipal political authorities, Secretary General Insulza stressed that "in Bolivia the issue of regionalization is very central; local government is becoming increasingly important, and this is therefore an important election to observe."

The OAS leader added that, due to its nature, the election will require significant work of those responsible for its organization, and that therefore ¡the OAS comes with the intention, more than ever, "to collaborate with electoral and governmental authorities and to contribute to the integrity, transparency, and reliability of the electoral process and then to make the recommendations they deem relevant to the mission, always with the most constructive spirit."

For his part, Ambassador Pary recalled that "Bolivia is one of the countries of the Hemisphere which has made significant progress in its democracy. As the electoral mission that was present in the general election of 2014 pointed out, the level of participation of the population is high, around 90 percent in the different elections."

The Bolivian diplomat added that the process of local elections has special significance for his country, "considering that about 4,975 authorities are elected, including governors, provincial assembly members, mayors and councilors. Moreover, a significant number of indigenous and rural authorities and representatives of indigenous peoples are chosen, through their own procedures."

The signing ceremony was attended by the Bolivian ministers of Justice, Veronica Velasco and of Institutional Transparency and Anti-Corruption, Lenny Valdivia; the Permanent Representatives to the OAS of Chile, Juan Pablo Lira, representing the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI), and Guatemala, Jose Maria Argueta, for the Central American Integration System (SICA); the Director of the Department for Electoral Cooperation and Observation of the OAS, Gerardo de Icaza; and the Chief of Staff of the Secretary General of the OAS, Ambassador Hugo de Zela, among others.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

The video news of the event will be available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-094/15