Election fraud was Morales’ downfall

The presidents of Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, plus the president-elect of Argentina, all of whom congratulated former Bolivian President Evo Morales for his fraudulent Oct. 20 election, now are denouncing what they call a “coup” in Bolivia.

But was Morales’ forced resignation really a “coup?” Or was it a legitimate restoration of the rule of law after an unconstitutional president rigged an election?

These are important questions for reasons that go way beyond Bolivia’s political crisis. They raise the issue of whether an armed forces’ potential demand for free elections in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba or Honduras would be a coup, or just the opposite — a justified move to restore constitutional order.

To be clear, contrary to what admirers of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet believe, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “good” coup or a “good” dictator. Whenever the military breaks constitutional order, it should be denounced as a coup and be subjected to international sanctions.

That’s why over the years I have criticized both rightist and leftist coups, including those of Pinochet, Argentina’s dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and, yes, the 2002 coup against Venezuela’s late strongman Hugo Chavez.

In all of those cases, the military toppled or forced the resignations of democratically elected presidents.

Bolivia’s Morales, by comparison, was an unconstitutional president clinging to power way beyond his constitutional term limits and who blatantly rigged his latest election. It’s hard to argue that there can be a “coup” against an unconstitutional president.

Here are the facts: First, Morales, who took office in 2006, was only allowed under the constitution to serve two consecutive terms. He but he co-opted his country’s justice system to change the rules and run for a third term. That was his first major violation of constitutional rule.

Second, in 2016, he held a referendum to be able to run for a fourth consecutive term and stay in power indefinitely. Morales lost the referendum but ignored the results. That was his second major violation of the will of the people.

Third, having lost the referendum, Morales came up with the ridiculous claim that preventing him from running for a fourth term in 2019 would violate his human rights. He got the government-controlled justice system to validate his bizarre argument. That was his third major rupture of the rule of law .

Fourth, and most important, Morales rigged the Oct. 20 elections, according to his own government-invited foreign election observers and the private firm contracted by the Morales regime to audit the election results.

At 8 p.m. on election night, the Morales-controlled electoral tribunal mysteriously stopped announcing the election results when it was becoming clear that Morales would not win the election in the first round. The electoral tribunal went silent for the next 23 hours. When the official election result announcements were resumed on the next day, Morales had reversed the previous voting trends and now appeared poised to win in the first round. That was his most recent violation of constitutional rule, which drove Bolivians to take to the streets in protest.

A 92-member electoral observation mission from 24 countries of the Organization of American States — that Morales himself had invited to observe the vote — later determined that the official election results were highly questionable and that a second round vote was needed.

Morales disputed the OAS observation mission’s ruling and agreed to allow a new 30-member OAS auditing mission, which Bolivia’s opposition denounced as biased in Morales’ favor. But the new OAS auditing mission also concluded that the elections had been a sham.

Summing up, if the military, which recommended Morales’ resignation to avoid further bloodshed, stays in power, it will be a coup. But if the constitution’s line of succession is respected and an interim president calls for a new election within 90 days, it will constitutional move to invalidate Morales’ illegal power grab.