Celebrities react to the Bolivia election

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Bolivia election didn't cause much repercussion in celebrities "progressive" circles probably because, unlike New Zealand, it's not a white anglo-saxon developed country. Still, some celebs *did* react to it although the only one who O.P. instantly recognized is progressive king Rob Delaney.

First, great election results from NZ, then Bolivia! Hope the trend continues in the US on Nov 3!

(I am of course referring to a resounding defeat of CA prop 22)
- The Blob (1988) Delaney (@robdelaney) October 19, 2020

The comedian, actor and activist also used the opportunity to remind CA voters to vote NO on "prop 22" (other issue CA-based celebrities are suspsciously quiet about).


Activist and director Oge Egbuonu.

The people mobilized and won 🙌🏾✨
- Oge (@OgeTheYogi) October 19, 2020

Comedian and podcast host Lee Camp

What just happened in Bolivia proves how important legitimate elections are.

The CIA didn't want a a government that cares for the needs of people in Bolivia, so they backed a coup.

A majority of Bolivians overturned that coup by voting.
- Lee Camp [Redacted] (@LeeCamp) October 19, 2020

Canadian professional wrestler Sami Zayn

Bolivia. pic.twitter.com/oQh9QIoWNI
- Sami Zayn (@SamiZayn) October 19, 2020

Jane O'Meara Sander, activist and senator Bernie Sanders' wife

This was taken at the Vatican during a small conference on morality where both Evo and Bernie spoke. Glad the Bolivian people prevailed! https://t.co/6QWHyYRR5B
- Jane O'Meara Sanders (@janeosanders) October 19, 2020

Gael Garcia Bernal RT'ed a tweet mocking right-wing Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa who supported the right-wing power grab

Hola, Vargas Llosa del 2019: vengo del futuro a leer tu columna pic.twitter.com/zXem9J1QXR
- Juan Pablo Villalobos (@VillalobosJPe) October 19, 2020

Besides Gael, other Latino celebrities didn't react to the election because, as we all know, there's only two politicial topics they're allowed to talk about (condemnation of Maduro's regimen in Venezuela and half-heartedly asking US-based Latinos to be somewhat excited for Biden).

Notorious adult baby and Grimes' baby daddy Elon Musk also kept quiet. In July, Elon -- who covets Bolivia's lithium resources -- supported the right-wing coup by infamously tweeting: "We [the US] will coup whoever we want! Deal with it". The Tweet has since been deleted.



To the few wondering why the the Bolivian election is important for the progressive left-wing movement and how "respectful" institutions and liberal media vehicles helped fuel a crisis and right-wing take-over, here's a (not so) quick recap:

• Evo Morales, an anti-imperialist socialist leader, was elected in 2005 as the first indigenuous leader of Bolivia, then South America's poorest country. Under him, the country experienced unprecedent economical growth and illiteracy and poverty went down significantly while quality of life increased, as did Bolivia importance in Latin America economy overall. Those stats were backed by institutions that weren't exactly friendly to Morales' anti-capitalism platform such as the IMF, Center for Strategic and International Studies' Americas Program and the World Bank. Morales also assembled a 50-50 male/female cabinet six years before Canada's PM was universally lauded for doing so.

• While the left praised Evo, the right despised him for his "authoritarian tendencies", being anti-USA and anti-capitalism, for his "populist" anti-rich rhetoric and for being close with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Evo also raised criticism because, although he is billed as an "environmentalist" and did enact positive green policies, he also allowed oil drilling in protected land among other controversial moves.

• In 2016, a constitutional referendum was held asking the Bolivian population if they supported constitutional amendments that would have allowed the president and vice president to run for a fourth consecutive term. The vote was very close but 51% voted the ammendement down.

• In 2017, Evo party -- Movement for Socialism -- applied to the Plurinational Constitutional Court to abolish term limits. Using the American Conventions on Human Rights as basis, the court ruled in the party's favor. The move was highly criticized because it ignored the referendum, including by left-wing allies such as Brazilian former president Lula. Making the situation more controversial, he had already used the justice system to allow him to run for a third term. The Supreme Court in Bolivia is democratically elected so while the move did successfully advance the authoritarian tendencies narrative, many argued it wasn't undemocratic per se.

• In 2019, Evo ran for re-election and, according to the early results, he soundedly won the election proving his anti-capitalism anti-imperialism pro-indigenuous policies were highly popular. Quickly, Bolivian corporate media -- which were never sympathetic to Evo -- sounded the alarms on him interferring with the results and the OAS (Organization of American States) released a report on supposed election irregularities, citing concerns and saying interference was a possibility. Maybe he wasn't so popular after all? Was the election a fraud?

• The OAS report led to huge civil unrest in Bolivia, with the Bolivian military taking the side of right-wing protesters. Right-wing protesters, the urban middle class, the military and the media, using the OAS report as basis, demanded Evo to resign.

• After releasing a vague report on supposed irregularities, the OAS was clearer: the election should be annulled. Despite criticisms of the vagueness in OAS assertions from figures on the global left-wing, Evo accepted them and announced a plan to annul the disputed elections he just had won to run a second election with even more international scrutiny. International institutions, including the OAS, ignored his proposition. Right-wing anti-Evo protests in Bolivia grew bigger.

• While Evo's abolishment of term limits was criticized and controversial, it was done in an institutional way. The methods chosen by right-wing protesters however were a bit more controversial: burning down the house of Evo's party members, kidnapping their family members and brutalizing them on the streets. In one of the most notarious scenes of the right-wing protests, Vino mayor and Evo ally Patricia Arce was captured, beaten, had paint thrown on her and her hair cut by right-wing protesters in the middle of the street. Right-wing protesters preferred method of protests made their previous claims of being concerned with  Evo's "authoritarian tendencies" sound very hallow. Anti-Evo protesters were  quick to point out Evo's supporters were also using violence although there were no reports of them torturing or beating opposition politicians.

• Pressured by the military and citing concerns for his and his family security (his house was ransacked), Evo Morales resigned the presidency and was offered political asylum in Mexico. After the victory of a left-wing party in Argentina, Morales went to Buenos Aires, which is geographically and geopolitically closer to his home country.

• In a move against Evo's supposed power grab, the second vice president of the Senate, Jeanine Añez assumed the role of president with the support of the military in what many pointed out was an actual power grab since there was no actual proof the election was stolen and not even the OAS had claimed that. A fundamentalist right-wing politician, she caused uproar in social media with her racist far-right views and statements. A scene of Bolivian military men cutting off the indigienous flag (the Wiphala) from their uniform in celebration of Evo being overthrown also went viral, giving notoriety to the racist aspect of this "political crisis". Unlike MAS, an indigineous socialist party, Añez's right-wing fundamentalist party was almost entirely white.

• While scenes from the right-wing takeover in Bolivia went viral on social media, institutitons around the world assured it was not a "coup" and everything happening in Bolivia was constitutional. After years of supposed concern with Evo's "authoritarian tendencies", Añez's own controversial methods and statements were ignored. Press outlets, including liberal ones like The Guardian and The New York Times, echoed OAS vague report on supposed irregularities while ignoring the criticism of it. Both the Republican and the Democratic Party of the US also accepted Jeanine Añez as the new interim president, as did most of the Western world while serious allegations of US interference were met with shrugs (ironic considering the Democratic Party supposed concern with "foreign meddling" in US elections). Some of the very few Western politicians that opposed the right-wing power grab were Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and AOC. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, criticized the "political violence" whil e generally supporting the narrative it wasn't a coup. AOC later attracted criticism for  meeting with right-wing Bolivians in her constituency to supposedly hear the other side.

• A part of Bolivian white population and its urban middle and upper class also broadly supported the right-wing takeover, as did most Bolivian immigrants in the US, claiming it was completely constitutional. The Western media mostly echoed their views and the OAS vague report gave some legitimacy to it. OAS, who has so much power over Latin American elections, is based in Washington D.C. and receives 60% of its funding from the US government, raising concerns as to whose interests it really backs.

• Making clear Evo's "authoritarian tendencies" were never a legitmate concern, anti-Evo state forces carried out operations that killed 23 civilians and injured over 230 in November, making it one of the deadliest months since Bolivia became a democracy 40 years ago. To protect the police, Añez passed a law that gave immunity to security forces. Meanwhile, Western press kept the narrative it was not a coup.

• Per FAIR, "on October 23, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) issued a press release asking that the OAS retract its comments about the election. On November 8, the think tank published a paper rebutting the OAS. Mark Weisbrot, co-founder of CEPR, followed up with an op-ed in MarketWatch (11/19/19) that said the OAS “lied at least three times: in the first press release, the preliminary report and the preliminary audit.”"

• On November 25, 4 members of the US Congress (Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), and Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) l)) asked the OES to respond to the very specific question CEPR raised. They were ignored. A few days later, The Guardian ( whose diplomatic editor supported the coup) published a letter signed by 98 economists asking the OAS "to retract its misleading statements about the election".

• Mexico allowed the CEPR to respond to OAS mistakes on the permant council meeting. The OAS, however, blocked them of doing so.

• In February 2020, the Washington Post -- which gave credence to OAS' early claims -- concluded a research into the October 2019 election and found there was no reason to suspect electoral fraud.

• In June 2020, the New York Times -- which also helped incite the Bolivian crisis and gave credence to the OAS report that led to the killing of civilians and the right-wing interim government takeover -- published an article claiming the OAS audit was "marred by grave irregularities", basically admitting key falsehoods that were behind the Añez's powergrab and the annulation of the 2019 election.

• In September 2020, Human Rights Watch releasef a report claiming  Bolivia's interim government is "abusing the justice system against Morales and allies".

• On 18 October 2020, after two postponements and under the threat of a civil war, Bolivia finally held a new election. Evo Morale's party, now led by Luis Arce, won an overwhelming victory. Although official results aren't out yet, Añez conceded defeat and the exit polls -- which were released much later than usual -- indicate Arce got 52% of the vote, one of the biggest MAS victories ever, as well as the most seats in the senate.

• While some political pundits and journalists claim the election is a "comeback for MAS", other claim it isn't a comeback at all, just democracy being restored after a failed coup attempt. To those, MAS overwhelming victory was just a repeat of the 2019 elections that were wrongly billed as "fraudulent" and, had the international community not supported the far-right power grab, some civilians would still be alive and Bolivia wouldn't have plunged into one of the worst political crisis in its history (it also probably wouldn't take a $327 million loan from the US-based IMF)

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Thanks mods for the help 💖. I know this isn't a topic that'll interest many here in ONTD but it's worth sharing all the same imo 😊.