News Release

Bolivia: What a Coup Looks Like

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MARK WEISBROT, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net, @ceprdc
“A military coup” is happening in Bolivia, CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot says. “Nobody voted for Williams Kaliman, the commander of the Bolivian armed forces. Some of the major media are already burying the fact it was he who pushed Evo [Morales] out of the presidency. Bolivia no longer has an elected, legitimate government.”

Weisbrot appeared on the BBC World News Saturday night, where the anchor asked him” “People are using words like ‘coup.’ Are we really there yet?” Weisbrot responded: “I think the opposition, at least, is trying to overthrow the government.”

Weisbrot wrote the article, “Can the Trump Administration and the OAS Overturn Bolivia’s Election Results?” for The Nation, published Friday, November 8.

See accuracy.org news release featuring CEPR’s analysis from Wednesday: “Is the OAS Interfering in the Bolivian Election?” CEPR’s latest work on Bolivia is compiled here.

“This fight is not over yet,” Weisbrot tweeted Sunday. “The right-wing forces who have pulled off this coup with help from Rubio [and] the Trump administration still have to deal with the 47 percent of the country who, despite a media onslaught, voted for Evo. Bolivians may need international support for their safety.

“The latest OAS ‘audit’ repeats a major falsehood from their previous reports, pretending that there was an ‘unusual’ jump in Evo [Morales’s] vote margin towards the end of the quick count. But the change was in fact gradual, as later-reporting areas were more pro-Evo than earlier ones.”

See video of Evo Morales criticizing the U.S. to President Donald Trump at the UN a year ago, saying: “In no way is the United States interested in upholding democracy. If such were the case it would not have financed coups d’état and supported dictators.” See accuracy.org news release from earlier this year summarizing author Bill Blum’s documentation of U.S. interventions.