2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Location
The mine collapse occurred at an illegal communal gold mine in Bakan village, Lolayan subdistrict, Bolaang Mongondow, North Sulawesi. The land where the mine is located is part of a concession belonging to J Resources Asia Pacific, which operates a site in the area. According to the company's management, the illegal mine had only been relatively crowded in the past few months leading to the event. Previously, in June 2018, the same mine had experienced a smaller landslide due to heavy rainfall, which killed 5 miners.


2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Collapse
The collapse occurred around 20:30 WITA (12:30 GMT) on February 26, while tens of locals were actively mining at the site. According to accounts from rescued miners, the collapse happened due to a fracturing of the support structures of the mineshafts.


2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Collapse
The number of people trapped in the mineshafts according to eyewitnesses varied, reaching up to more than 100 miners.


2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Rescue
Around 140 personnel from multiple agencies were involved in the evacuation process. Early in the evacuation process, rescuers reported hearing voices of the miners who were still trapped in the shafts, with pictures of hands reaching out through small gaps in the rocks. Due to fears of triggering further landslides, in addition to the difficult and unstable terrain, rescuers initially opted to not utilize available heavy equipment and delivered drinking water to allow the miners to survive longer. Later, on 1 March, the manual rescue was halted in favor of preparing the use of heavier equipment.


2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Rescue
As of 1 March, 8 miners had been confirmed dead and 20 had been evacuated alive from the collapsed mine. The injured survivors were brought to a hospital at Kotamobagu for treatment. On 2 March, there were believed to be over 30 miners still trapped inside the mines. By 3 March, the death toll was updated to 9 dead, with the still-to-be-found victims' families barred from the mine location to ease the evacuation.


2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Rescue
Further searches found 20 bodies of miners buried within the site.


2019 Bolaang Mongondow mine collapse, Reactions
The provincial government of North Sulawesi remarked that the local governments had made plans to certify the communal mines to ensure compliance with safety regulations, and that the collapsed mine would not be closed, but turned into a legal mine. The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources responded by sending inspectors to the mine, who were also to aid in the evacuations.


2019 Bolivian Primera División season
The 2019 Bolivian Primera División season, known as the 2019 Copa Tigo season for sponsorship reasons, was the 42nd season of Bolivia's top-flight football league and the second season under División de Fútbol Profesional management. San José were the defending champions, having won the 2018 Clausura tournament.


2019 Bolivian Primera División season
In the Torneo Apertura, Bolívar won their twenty-ninth league title and twenty-third in the professional era, with two matches to spare following a 2–1 victory over Oriente Petrolero on 16 May, while in the Torneo Clausura, Jorge Wilstermann won their fifteenth league title and eighth in the professional era following a 3–1 win against Oriente Petrolero on the last matchday of the tournament on 28 December.


2019 Bolivian Primera División season, Format
The season was split into a Torneo Apertura and a Torneo Clausura, played in the first and second half of the year, respectively. Both were played under a double round-robin system, with all teams playing each other twice for a total of 26 matches. The teams placed first at the end of each tournament were the champions and earned qualification for the Copa Libertadores group stage. The remaining two Copa Libertadores berths as well as the four Copa Sudamericana ones were awarded through the aggregate table.


2019 Bolivian Primera División season, Teams
The number of teams for the 2019 season remained the same as the 2018 season. Universitario were relegated to the Copa Simón Bolívar after finishing in last place of the aggregate table in the previous season, and were replaced by Always Ready, the 2018 Copa Simón Bolívar champions, who made their return to the top tier after 28 years.


2019 Bolivian Primera División season, Relegation/promotion playoff
The relegation playoff would have been played by Sport Boys, as the team placed 13th in the 2019 División Profesional aggregate table, and Real Santa Cruz, who were the 2019 Copa Simón Bolívar runners-up, with the winners playing in the top flight for the 2020 season.


2019 Bolivian Primera División season, Relegation/promotion playoff
However, considering Sport Boys's disaffiliation from the league as well as Destroyers's relegation as the bottom-placed team in the aggregate table, and with the late conclusion of the 2019 season which made infeasible playing the playoff in early January 2020, the FBF decided on 5 January 2020 that Real Santa Cruz would be promoted for the next season as Copa Simón Bolívar runners-up.


2019 Bolivian general election
General elections were held in Bolivia on 20 October 2019. Voters elected all 130 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 36 senators and cast ballots for a joint slate of president and vice president.


2019 Bolivian general election
The Bolivian constitution allows the President and Vice-President to put themselves forward for re-election only once, limiting the number of terms to two, and the elections took place after in 2016 a referendum to amend the constitution was rejected, but that the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution and allowing Morales to run for a fourth term.


2019 Bolivian general election
Disputes over the transparency and legitimacy of the elections prompted weeks of widespread protests in Bolivia after incumbent President Evo Morales was declared the winner with 47.08% of the vote; because this was greater than ten-point margin over his nearest competitor, Carlos Mesa, this was enough for Morales to be announced as a winner without a run-off second-round vote.


2019 Bolivian general election
The Organization of American States (OAS) conducted an audit claiming "clear manipulation" and significant irregularities, releasing a full report afterwards. Observers from the European Union released a report with similar findings and conclusions as the OAS. Several reports, from and commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a think tank, alleged that OAS conclusions about irregularities in the late vote count were incorrect. A later report by CEPR alleged that OAS's findings of electoral irregularities were primarily due to an OAS programming error during analysis.


2019 Bolivian general election
Following protests, as well as calls for a second-round election from several foreign countries, Morales, who had pledged to respect the OAS audit, agreed on 10 November to hold new elections, at a date to be determined. On the same day, Morales and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, was forced to resign from office after losing support from the police and military. Furthermore, the President of the Senate and the President of the Chamber of Deputies – both party allies of Morales, also resigned on the same day, thus exhausting the constitutional line of succession.


2019 Bolivian general election
As a result, the second vice president of the Senate, Jeanine Áñez of the opposition Democrat Social Movement, assumed the interim presidency of Bolivia on 12 November 2019. Due to the annulment of the 2019 elections, MAS retained their supermajority of more than two-thirds in both chambers in opposition to the government, although they would lose this in the 2020 elections.


2019 Bolivian general election
The 2019 elections were to be rerun in May 2020, but were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 22 June 2020, Áñez approved a law passed by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to set a date for the election for 6 September 2020 and the elected authorities in place by mid to late November 2020.


2019 Bolivian general election, Background
Article 168 of the 2009 constitution allows the President and Vice-President to put themselves forward for re-election only once, limiting the number of terms to two. The governing party, the Movement Towards Socialism–Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS–IPSP) sponsored an effort to amend this article. The referendum was authorized by a joint session of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly on 26 September 2015, by a vote of 112 to 41.


2019 Bolivian general election, Background
The referendum was held on 21 February 2016 and the proposed amendment was narrowly rejected by 51.3% to 48.7%. A successful 'yes' vote would have allowed President Evo Morales and Vice President Álvaro García Linera to run for another term in office in 2019. Morales had already been elected three times. The first time, in 2006, is not counted as it was before the two term limit was introduced by the 2009 constitution.


2019 Bolivian general election, Background
Despite the referendum result, the Supreme Court of Justice – referring to Art. 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights – ruled a little over one year later in December 2017 that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution, thus allowing Morales to run for a fourth term.


2019 Bolivian general election, Electoral system
The President of Bolivia is elected using a modified two-round system; a candidate wins outright if they receive more than 50% of the vote, or between 40% and 50% of the vote and are at least 10 percentage points ahead of their closest rival. If neither condition is met, a run-off election is held between the two top candidates.


2019 Bolivian general election, Primary elections
Primary elections were held on 27 January 2019. María Eugenia Choque, President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), stated that international observers had worked with the TSE to monitor the primary election results. She also stated that they had been given an "information seminar" about all the logistic, legal and communications issues related to the primary and had even visited polling stations to make assessments and recommendations. By the time [sic] the primary was held, however, only one candidate had been registered for each of the nine parties or alliances participating in the general elections. Morales received 36.54% of the total primary votes. Revolutionary Nationalist Movement candidate Virginio Lema was his closest challenger, receiving 7.10% of the total primary votes.


2019 Bolivian general election, Presidential candidates
On 27 January 2019, the TSE announced that nine candidates would contest the presidential elections.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
Two independent vote count processes were used for the elections. The first one, Transmisión de Resultados Electorales Preliminares (TREP), is a quick count process based on photographs that is meant to provide a preliminary result on election day. The second process is the traditional physical count that takes more time to complete.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
With a preliminary vote count of 45% for incumbent president Evo Morales and 38% for his leading challenger, former president Carlos Mesa, after 83% of votes were counted, neither of the conditions for a first-round win appeared likely to be met. A second-round runoff vote between those two candidates would therefore be held on 15 December.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
However, no further updates to the preliminary results were made after 19:40 hours local time on election day, which caused consternation among opposition politicians and election monitors deployed by the Organization of American States (OAS); Mesa described the suspension as "extremely serious" and spoke of manipulation; the OAS requested an explanation for the pause in the publication of the vote tally. But while the vote tally was not being publicized, election staff were still observed counting votes overnight.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
After the publication of the count resumed, the OAS said it observed a "drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend", and recommended a runoff election due to what the OAS viewed as manipulation.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), stated that updates to the preliminary count had been halted because the official results were starting to be released. The TSE also stated the vote had taken place normally and with relatively few incidents.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
On 24 October 2019, Morales officially declared outright victory following a counting process which gave him 46.83% of the vote against Mesa's 36.7%, with only few votes remaining to be counted. Though the process was deemed controversial, Morales stated that he was still open to a second round runoff if the process later determined that he did not receive the required 10 percentage point victory margin needed in order to avoid a runoff. Cómputo Electoral concluded its counting that very same day, with final results showing Morales with 47.07% of the vote and Mesa with 36.51%. This gave Morales a victory margin of more than 10 percentage points and thus prevented a second round runoff. This was the first election since his first win in which Morales obtained less than 50% of the vote. On the morning of 25 October, the election results were made official.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results
Some ballots, accounting for 0.01% of the electorate, were voided in the department of Beni. A redo session was scheduled for those affected on 3 November 2019, but the electoral commission said that those votes would not change the outcome of the presidential vote. On 25 October 2019 the TSE cancelled the redo session after neither MAS nor 'Bolivia Dice No' protested the inclusion of the annulled ballots.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Controversy
The pause in results transmission for 24 hours, which took Morales from a tight race with Mesa to an outright win, was challenged by people in Bolivia and other countries, who questioned the legitimacy of the results. Protesters and opposition politicians called for a second round to be held despite Morales' lead, as did the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, the United States, and the European Union. Support for the results of the election came from the governments of Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, the Non-Aligned Movement and the new President-elect of Argentina.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Controversy
The day after the election the vice-president of the TSE Antonio Costas resigned, citing his disagreement with the decision to stop transmitting results. The president of the Santa Cruz Electoral Tribunal Sandra Kettels also resigned on 30 October.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Controversy
After an updated vote tally was announced on Friday 25 October, including previously annulled ballots in Beni, the United Nations announced that it supported an audit of the process and results, to be carried out by the OAS. Responding to concerns about vote tampering and violent protests, Morales asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to conduct an audit of the vote count. Morales said he would call for a second-round runoff vote with Mesa if the OAS audit found evidence of fraud.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Controversy
On 27 October, Morales declared that a coup d'état was in the making against his government, saying that political rivals were planning to stage a coup the following week. On 6 November, the opposition published a report stating there had been electoral fraud, including cases where MAS allegedly obtained more votes than the number of registered voters.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Results of OAS audit and resignation
On 10 November, the Organization of American States Electoral Observation Mission in Bolivia published a preliminary report of the audit conducted during the elections. The report found significant irregularities overseen by the Electoral Commission, including widespread data manipulation and altered and forged records.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Results of OAS audit and resignation
adding that it was statistically unlikely that Morales had secured the 10-percentage-point margin of victory needed to win outright, saying that election should be annulled after it had found "clear manipulations" of the voting system that called into question Morales' win and that "The manipulations to the computer systems are of such magnitude that they must be deeply investigated by the Bolivian State to get to the bottom of and assign responsibility in this serious case. The OAS recommended new elections and appointment of a new elections commission.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Results of OAS audit and resignation
Within hours, Morales announced that fresh elections would take place. By late afternoon of that day, Morales and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, resigned from office after losing support from the police, the military, and former political allies. Adriana Salvatierra Arriaza, the president of the Bolivian Senate, was next in the line of succession, but she too resigned from office on 10 November.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, Prior to Morales's resignation
On 5 November, Professor Walter R. Mebane at the University of Michigan used his own "eforensics" model to detect and predict the level of fraud that occurred during the election. He estimated that there were between 20,450 and 24,664 fraudulent votes which were subdivided into votes that were abstentions (no votes) that were then transferred to MAS and votes that were initially for other parties but later changed to MAS.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, Prior to Morales's resignation
With this level of fraud, he initially determined that it would not have been enough to change the results of the elections (Morales would have had a margin of 10.16-10.27%, depending on assumptions) although on 13 November Mebane said that feedback from colleagues led him to believe that "best formula" for the model led to a new reallocation which indicated that Morales would have had a lead of 9.9% over Mesa, requiring a runoff election.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, Prior to Morales's resignation
On 8 November 2019, Ethical Hacking, the tech security company hired by the TSE (under Morales) to audit the elections, stated that there were multiple irregularities and violations of procedure and that "our function as an auditor security company is to declare everything that was found, and much of what was found supports the conclusion that the electoral process be declared null and void".


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, Prior to Morales's resignation
In their official report, one source for the OAS, they stated "We cannot attest to the integrity of the electoral results because the entire process is null and void due to the number of alterations to the TREP source code, the number of accesses and manual modifications with the maximum privileges to the databases being created during the electoral process and the inconsistencies in the software that arose in the TREP and Computo."


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, Prior to Morales's resignation
On 12 November, the OAS's preliminary conclusions were contradicted by a separate analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-wing policy think-tank based in Washington. The CEPR report said the OAS "provided no evidence to support these statements suggesting that the quick count could be wrong" and postulated that the irregularities they perceived were instead merely the result of normal geographic voting patterns, noting that "later-reporting areas are often politically and demographically different from earlier ones". The CEPR report argued that due to Morales' voter base being in more rural regions, the later-arriving results from peripheral areas were more likely to be in his favor.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
On 5 December, the full 95-page OAS report was released along with 500 pages of corroborating details as appendices. The audit involved the work of 36 specialists and auditors of 18 nationalities including electoral lawyers, statisticians, computer experts, specialists in documents, calligraphy, chain of custody and electoral organization.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
The findings included that an outside user who controlled a Linux AMI appliance with "root privileges" — conferring the ability to alter results — accessed the official vote-counting server during the counting and that in a sample of 4,692 returns from polling stations around the country, 226 showed multiple signatures by the same person for different voting booths, a violation of electoral law. On those returns, 91 per cent of votes went to MAS, approximately double the rate recorded elsewhere. The identity of this user was later claimed to be Sergio Martínez, who subsequently fled the country.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
On 21 December, the Technical Mission of Electoral Experts sent by the European Union published a 67-page report made similar observations and conclusions to that of the OAS. They noted that "there were minutes with an unusually high number of null votes, blank votes and a hundred percent participation of voters in a series of polling stations" and highlighted the general failure of the TSE to declare these irregularities.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
On 27 February 2020, a further CEPR statistical analysis was published via the Washington Post. The work was carried out by Jack Williams and John Curiel, independent contractors for CEPR. The researchers stated that "there is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find — the trends in the preliminary count, the lack of any big jump in support for Morales after the halt, and the size of Morales’s margin all appear legitimate. All in all, the OAS's statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed" and that "it is highly likely that Morales surpassed the 10-percentage-point margin in the first round" as originally presented.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
Williams and Curiel's work was originally implied to be a study undertaken by MIT. After the Washington Post article, Bolivian government officials wrote to MIT about the report. The MIT Associate Provost for International Activities responded stating "this study was conducted independently of MIT... it should be referred to as a CEPR study... we do not endorse or otherwise offer an opinion on the findings".


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
Bolivian newspaper, Página Siete, notes that one of the authors of the report, Jack Williams, had previously signed a letter to the US Congress to oppose the "military coup" in Bolivia and which supported the previous CEPR study. The OAS reiterated their criticisms of the original CEPR report and issued a statement to say that "the mentioned article contains multiple falsehoods, inaccuracies and omissions." Bolivian Minister for Foreign Affairs Karen Longaric called the study "lacking in scientific and academic value".


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
It has also been noted, by political scientist and electoral analyst Rodrigo Salazar Elena, that, except for a few details, the two linked CEPR studies are replicas of the same analysis and that lack of statistical knowledge led commentators to be guided by the prestige of MIT and Washington Post and take the conclusions of the CEPR for granted.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
On 10 March 2020, Irfan Nooruddin, Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and author of Elections in Hard Times: Building Stronger Democracies in the 21st Century, wrote a Washington Post article to defend the analysis he performed as the head of the OAS statistical study included in their audit. In it, he criticises the 27 February CEPR report by questioning the plausibility of their extrapolation, as well as their assumption that there was no discontinuity in the data beyond the point where the preliminary count was halted.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
Nooruddin states that at the point where 95% of votes were counted, Morales's vote share began to rise more quickly than it had previously, which is consistent across all six departments reporting at that point. These findings, he says, are consistent with the rest of the findings in the OAS report. He also notes that they are consistent with a separate analysis conducted by Diego Escobari, Associate Professor at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and Gary A. Hoover, Head of Economics at University of Oklahoma. CEPR also said that the results of this study were in error.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
On 12 March 2020, Professor Rodrigo Salazar Elena, researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico, wrote an article in Voz y Voto magazine in which he compares and discusses the claims and evidence shown in the OAS and two CEPR studies. He defends the OAS audit by stating that the "duly justified" statistical analysis rests on the "continuity assumption": even with different voting groups, change in vote trend should not exhibit large discontinuities around a single point in time.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
He states that in order to rebut the OAS analysis and account for the increase in Morales's vote share, it would be necessary to identify a feature distinguishing voters on either side of the threshold. He does not dispute CEPR's method, but notes that it rests on the assumption that voting patterns are geographically contiguous "despite the fact that they are different in terms of reporting the votes to TREP". He offers two potential objections to this assumption. First, he says that geographic contiguity is less plausible than the "continuity assumption" made by the OAS. Secondly, he says that the patterns of stations voting before and after the TREP cutoff are not due to chance.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
In June 2020, the New York Times reported on a study by independent researchers Francisco Rodríguez (Tulane University), Dorothy Kronick and Nicolás Idrobo (University of Pennsylvania) which said that the OAS's statistical analysis was flawed, and that the OAS likely used a dataset that incorrectly excluded 1,500 late-reporting voting stations. With these stations included, there was no sudden change in the voting trend, contrary to the OAS's finding. The authors also stated that the OAS used a statistical method that improperly created the appearance of a break in the voting trend where none existed.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
Reached for comment by the New York Times, Irfan Nooruddin, who conducted the OAS's statistical analysis, said that Rodríguez and colleagues' study was wrong and did not accurately represent his work. Nooruddin later responded in a comment that the OAS audit included the 1,511 polling stations in all the analyses conducted and that changing the statistical method to the one advocated by the researchers doesn't change the finding. Nooruddin published software to replicate the results found in the OAS audit.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
The authors note that they "do not assess the integrity of the election overall.. the OAS presented many qualitative indicators of electoral malpractice". The head of electoral observations for the OAS, Gerardo De Icaza, called the conclusions of the study "a moot point", saying that proving or disproving electoral fraud with statistics alone is impossible, a sentiment echoed by Nooruddin in his own article. Calla Hummel, a Bolivia expert at the University of Miami also commenting in the NYT article stated: "There was fraud — we just don't know where and how much".


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
In August 2020, after Nooruddin published the dataset he used for his audit to a Harvard University digital repository, CEPR reported that they had found a "fatal flaw" in the data which "negat(ed) the OAS’s claims that fraud affected the results".


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
They noted that timestamps for the tally sheets recorded in the dataset were formatted as alphanumeric strings, rather than in a purely numeric format: therefore, when they were sorted using this variable, they would have been sorted alphabetically, rather than chronologically, so that tally sheets which had been timestamped with a time of 1:00 pm would be earlier in the order than those timestamped at 1:01 am on the same date, despite the latter having been timestamped nearly twelve hours earlier. The CEPR's David Rosnick argued that "the OAS had no real-world chronology of Bolivia’s vote count, even though it made accusations that there was a change in the trend of the votes over time that suggested fraud".


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
On 25 August 2020, Nooruddin acknowledged the timestamp sorting error identified by the CEPR resulted in "figures where the x-axis is generated using using this variable were incorrect," but stated that the mistake "does not affect any of the results or conclusions reported in the original OAS report." Nooruddin updated a comment explaining the statistical analysis correcting the timestamp sorting mistake and updating the statistical estimator to a local linear regression as argued for by Idrobo, Kronick and Rodríguez.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
In October 2020, the Bolivian government presented the results of a police investigation into electoral fraud during the election, alleging that former minister of the presidency Juan Ramón Quintana set up a "war room" to plan electoral fraud together with a number of members of the electoral bodies. The investigation also alleged that a number of foreign individuals, some linked to Mexico's Labor Party, an ally of the governing National Regeneration Movement, were involved in the meeting .


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
The same month, the Bolivian prosecutors office also released a report corroborating 16 pieces of evidence indicating willful manipulation of the election results. This included redirection of server traffic to a network outside the control of the TSE, falsified tally sheets, burned voter index lists, poor chain of custody not guaranteeing that the material had not been tampered with and modification of data from a number of polling stations. These incidences and more led to the OAS concluding that they could not endorse the results of the elections.


2019 Bolivian general election, Results, Analyses of the election, OAS and EU full reports and responses
In December 2020, CEPR released another response to the concerns raised by the OAS, writing that "when within-locality variation is taken into account, the election results stand up to scrutiny".


2019 Bolivian general election, Aftermath
The right-wing caretaker government led by Áñez subsequently moved to persecute Morales' supporters, stifle dissent and consolidate power, detaining several hundred opponents and silencing journalists. Charges of sedition and terrorism were brought against people questioning the new government and a campaign of "national pacification" led to 31 deaths.


2019 Bolivian general election, Aftermath
The elections were set to be rerun in May 2020, but were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, Áñez stated that she would approve a law passed by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to set a date for the election for 6 September 2020. However, she subsequently refused to sign it, insisting she needed to see an epidemiological study that justified having elections in September.


2019 Bolivian general election, Aftermath
On 23 July 2020, the TSE announced that the election would be postponed to 18 October 2020, due to medical reports that the pandemic would have its highest peaks in late August and early September. The 2020 Bolivian general election was indeed held on that date, resulting in a first-round win by MAS-IPSP candidate Luis Arce, former Minister of Economy and Public Finance and ally of Evo Morales. In the election, which took place under the surveillance of OAS and other international organizations, MAS received 55% of the votes with a margin of 26% over the second party.


2019 Bolivian political crisis
The 2019 Bolivian political crisis occurred on 10 November 2019, after 21 days of civil protests following the disputed 2019 Bolivian general election. The elections took place after a referendum to amend the Bolivian constitution, which limits the number of terms to two, was rejected in 2016, but the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution and allowing Morales to run for a fourth term.


2019 Bolivian political crisis
An audit by the Organization of American States (OAS), which released a full report afterwards, concluding that significant irregularities happened during the electoral process. Observers from the European Union released a report with similar findings and conclusions as the OAS. The military and the police of Bolivia compelled President Evo Morales to resign. He complied, accompanied by other resignations by high-level politicians throughout the day, some citing fears for the safety of their families. The government of Mexico offered political asylum to Morales the following day, which Morales accepted a day afterwards.


2019 Bolivian political crisis
The second vice president of the Senate, opposition senator Jeanine Áñez, assumed the role of president on 12 November. This was not without controversy, as her initial appointment was made during a brief legislative session that lacked quorum, due to a boycott by Morales's party, Movement for Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo; MAS). Bolivia's Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal then endorsed Áñez's assumption of the presidency, and the MAS ruling party returned most members to both chambers, with some assuming key positions such as Leader of the Senate. They also committed to working with the interim government towards new elections.


2019 Bolivian political crisis
Morales called for the Bolivian people to reject the leadership of Áñez. He and his supporters argued that the event was a coup d'état. International politicians, scholars and journalists were divided between describing the event as a coup or popular uprising. The Bolivian Congress, with the majority being members of Morales' MAS party, unanimously approved a bill on 23 November 2019 that annulled the results of 20 October election, allowed for new elections and prevented Evo Morales from participating in the new elections. The bill was signed into law the next day by president Áñez. The unrest would ultimately lead to the Senkata and Sacaba Massacres.


2019 Bolivian political crisis
On 4 December 2019, the OAS released its final report related to 20 October election, detailing what they called "deliberate" and "malicious" tactics to rig that election in favor of President Evo Morales. Analysis by the US thinktank Center for Economic and Policy Research rejected the OAS statistical analysis of election data, arguing that a basic coding error resulted in inexplicable changes in trend. In August 2021, a report commissioned by the OAS and carried out by independent human rights experts concluded that the Añez government's path to power came with "irregularities" and serious human rights abuses by security forces.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, 2016 constitutional referendum
The Bolivian constitution allows the President and Vice-President to put themselves forward for re-election only once, limiting the number of terms to two, and the elections took place after in 2016 a referendum to amend the constitution was rejected, but that the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution and allowing Morales to run for a fourth term.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, 2019 general election and subsequent investigations
On 20 October 2019, the first round of voting for all government positions was held. After the polls closed, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal began to release the preliminary results of the presidential election; at 7:40 pm, when 83.8% of the votes had been counted, the preliminary count stopped because the official results had begun to be released. At the time that the preliminary count was stopped, Morales led with 45.3%, and his primary opponent, Carlos Mesa, had 38.2%. Less than a 10-point lead would have resulted in another round of runoff voting. At 9:25 pm, President Morales stated he was the likely winner, given that rural areas would guarantee his victory.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, 2019 general election and subsequent investigations
Although uncounted votes in rural areas were expected to favor Morales, one body observing the election—the Organization of American States (OAS)—stated that even if Morales did win outright, his lead beyond the 10-point threshold would be so negligible as to warrant a runoff anyway. The OAS expressed concern about a purported day-long gap in results reporting: after 24 hours, the updates resumed, but with a surge for Morales at the first update.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, 2019 general election and subsequent investigations
On 21 October, the Plurinational Electoral Organ reported a count, suggesting that with 95.3% of verified votes, Morales had too large of a margin above 10 points to overcome, avoiding a second run-off round, and so Morales would remain in power for a fourth term. Based on this result, along with claimed irregularities, the Bolivian opposition and protestors as well as some Western governments and observers called for an audit of the process and results, to which Morales agreed. The OAS audit of the election began on 31 October and was observed by Spain, Mexico, and Paraguay.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, Protests
By 24 October, Morales began describing the actions taken against him as a coup. On 25 October, when the results were officially announced with Morales as the winner, various countries in Latin America, as well as the United States and European Union, called for the second round to go ahead regardless of the official results.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, Protests
On 31 October, two deaths were announced by the government.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Background, Protests
The third death during the protests occurred on 7 November when a 20-year-old student called Limbert Guzman was killed during clashes.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
On 6 November, the Bolivian opposition published a 190-page long report containing fraud accusations, including irregularities such as mistaken electoral acts additions, data swiping and electoral acts where the ruling party obtained more votes than registered voters, expecting to send it to international organizations such as the OAS and the United Nations.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
Although a complete report was not yet due, mounting tension in the country prompted the OAS to release a preliminary report on 10 November claiming that they had discovered sufficient evidence of election fraud to warrant new elections. This led to a string of events that culminated in Morales being forced to resign. The OAS alleged multiple irregularities, including failures in the chain of custody for ballots, alteration and forgery of electoral material, redirection of data to unauthorized servers and data manipulation.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
They added that it was statistically unlikely that Morales had secured the 10-percentage-point margin of victory needed to win outright, saying that election should be annulled after it had found "clear manipulations" of the voting system, and that "The manipulations to the computer systems are of such magnitude that they must be deeply investigated by the Bolivian State to get to the bottom of and assign responsibility in this serious case."


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
An analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) disputed the OAS's preliminary findings and criticized what it called a "politicization of the electoral observation process." The co-director of the think-tank, Mark Weisbrot, stated the OAS showed "no evidence – no statistics, numbers, or facts of any kind" to support its claim of electoral manipulation. CEPR concluded that due to Morales' voter base being in more rural regions, the results from peripheral areas received towards the end of the count were more likely to be in his favour.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
The New York Times noted, however, that this criticism has "not addressed the accusations of hidden data servers, forged signatures and other irregularities found by the O.A.S. observers, nor have they tried to explain the electoral council's sudden decision to stop the count". The OAS also dismissed the report as "neither honest, nor fact-based nor comprehensive".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
On 5 December, the full 95-page OAS report was released along with 500 pages of corroborating details as appendices. These included that an outside user who controlled a Linux AMI appliance with "root privileges" — conferring the ability to alter results – accessed the official vote-counting server during the counting and that in a sample of 4,692 returns from polling stations around the country, 226 showed multiple signatures by the same person for different voting booths, a violation of electoral law. On those returns, 91 percent of votes went to MAS, approximately double the rate recorded elsewhere.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
On 21 December, the Technical Mission of Electoral Experts sent by the European Union published a 67-page report that concluded that the election day "passed peacefully and with a high voter turnout" but "a large number of electoral records showed irregularities, which could be due to deficiencies in the training of jurors or deliberate manipulations".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
On 3 January 2020, at a meeting of the Committee for Latin America of Socialist International, it was declared that they accepted the findings of the OAS and that Morales was not a victim of a coup. A document containing discussions of the Bolivian political crisis states that "After a broad mobilization of citizens in that country in protest of electoral fraud that was informed and verified by an audit conducted by the Organization of American States (OAS) of the elections that took place on 20 October, the president Evo Morales did not suffer a coup d'etat".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
Independent contract researchers for CEPR, John Curiel and Jack R. Williams disputed the claims of irregularities in the late vote count that were made by OAS with a statistical analysis released on 27 February 2020. They contended that the OAS allegations about irregularities in the vote count were made on two unproven premises: "...the unofficial count accurately reflects the vote continuously measured, and that reported voter preferences do not vary by the time of day".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Allegations of electoral fraud and OAS audit
Later, in August 2020, after Nooruddin published the dataset he used for the OAS audit to a Harvard University digital repository, CEPR released a statement suggesting that the way the data was sorted was flawed due to a coding error which would indicate that the OAS claims about the irregularities in the vote count were also flawed.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Authorities remove Morales
After weeks of repelling violent protests at the Casa Grande del Pueblo presidential palace, units of the Police Operations Tactical Unit (UTOP) tasked with defending Morales assembled a meeting on 8 November. UTOP officers ultimately decided at the gathering to abandon their posts and to call for the resignation of Morales. According to Reuters, UTOP turned away from Morales for multiple reasons: complaints of alleged orders to suppress opposition protestors while avoiding Morales loyalists; resentments over perceived preferential treatment given to the military; and the exhaustion of combating protestors.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Authorities remove Morales
On 9 November, Morales organized a meeting and ordered the military to maintain security, with officers present rejecting Morales' orders according to former general Fernando Sánchez. According to The Wall Street Journal, following this meeting, officers feared of "violent military suppression" similar to 2003 protests during the Bolivian gas conflict, which happened before Morales become president. At this time, all UTOP officers had left their positions, leaving Morales vulnerable to protesters. At a police station near the presidential palace, officers climbed onto the roofs and chanted "The Police with the People".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Authorities remove Morales
Police nationwide refused to take action against protesters, returning to their stations, while other departments began to mutiny against the Morales government, arguing that they did not want to be an "instrument of any government". Head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, General Williams Kaliman, refused to suppress violent demonstrations, saying that the military would "never confront the people among whom we live" and that the events unfolding were "a political problem and it should be resolved within that realm".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Authorities remove Morales
After police left their posts at the presidential palace, Morales never returned and was forced into hiding in an improvised office protected by a small group of his guard. He ultimately held a press conference at the Bolivian Air Force's presidential hangar in El Alto International Airport later in the day, leading some to suspect that Morales had already lost control of the government. Franklin Pareja, a professor of the Higher University of San Andrés, said that because of the abandonment by police, the Morales government "lost its shield" and that "it was totally vulnerable and couldn't go on".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Authorities remove Morales
According to members of the Bolivian military quoted by the Wall Street Journal, authorities had opposed Morales' actions for some time. Morales had performed multiple actions that had offended officers within the armed forces, including glorifying Che Guevara after his guerrillas killed 59 Bolivian troops during their insurgency in the 1960s and forcing officers to attend the Anti- Imperialist Military Academy that was led by a convicted former rebel.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Authorities remove Morales
General Tomás Peña y Lillo, who was chief of the Bolivian armed forces until 2010, stated that officers within the military were traditionally conservative and had refused plans proposed by Morales to be guided by Cuban military and intelligence agents, damaging Morales' hold of the military. Roberto Ponce, former chief of staff of the Bolivian military, also explained that Morales spent little on the country's armed forces as he feared that he would be overthrown, which frustrated military officers.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Rioters overrun La Paz
By the night of 9 November, violent riots escalated throughout Bolivia. Members of MAS called on supporters to gather in the capital city of La Paz to "defend Morales" and the results of the vote, with reports of clashes between pro-Morales groups and opposition protesters. However, violent anti-Morales rioters had already overrun the streets of La Paz, with some groups of police joining in protests against Morales. Rioters began to storm government offices, flooding the stations of Bolivia TV and Radio Patria Nueva, accusing them of serving Morales.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Rioters overrun La Paz
Relatives of Morales had their homes attacked by rioters, with his older sister's home in Oruro being burned while other regional governors had their homes torched as well. The next day, two miners from Potosí were shot and injured, reportedly by snipers, when cooperative miners where marching to join protests in La Paz.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Calls for Morales to resign
After the release of 10 November OAS audit, multiple Bolivian entities called on Morales to resign. Morales had initially relied on support from civil organizations to protect him from violent protests instead of the military since he enjoyed popular support. However, the two main civil groups of Bolivia had begun aligning themselves with the opposition to Morales; the Bolivian Workers' Center (COB), Bolivia's largest trade union and a traditionally pro-Morales entity, and the Single Trade Union Confederation of Workers (CSUTCB), an indigenous workers union.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Calls for Morales to resign
CSUTCB had already met with opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho, announcing an alliance and in the morning of 10 November, the leader of COB suggested Morales resign if it would help solve the violence, and called for new elections. Indigenous and Aymara leader Nelson Condori, the director of CSUTCB, intensified his condemnation of Morales later in the day while at an event beside Camacho, stating, "Evo, we have cried, you have made our lives bitter, you have lied to us. ... When have you forgotten the slogan of our ancestors, do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy?" Condori also called for a "purge" of the Bolivian government, demanding that Morales and his governmental allies be jailed for electoral fraud.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Calls for Morales to resign
After the COB and other civil groups formerly supportive of Morales called on him to resign, Morales held a second press conference at the presidential hangar, changing his position on the October election results and announced that new elections would be held. Morales released a statement, saying "As President, my main mission is to preserve peace, social justice and economic stability. Listening to the Bolivian Workers' Center (COB), the Pact of Unity and other social sectors, I have decided first to renew all the members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Calls for Morales to resign
Since civil groups had abandoned Morales, the military was the only group protecting him from violent protesters. The military then made the decision to force Morales to resign. First, officers who feared punishment if they deployed troops against civilians pressured General Williams Kaliman, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Bolivia and Morales loyalist, to turn away from Morales. Later, Kaliman announced that the military had suggested Morales resign to "help restore peace and stability" after weeks of protests over the vote, adding that the military was calling on the Bolivian people to refrain from violence and disorder. The military also said it would conduct operations to "neutralise" any armed groups that attacked the protesters. The military press release invoked Article 20, paragraph b, of Law No. 1405 which states:


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Calls for Morales to resign
Article 20. The attribution and responsibilities of the military high command are: [...] b. To analyze inner and foreign troubled situations to suggest to whom it may concern the appropriate solutions.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Morales resigns
After Kaliman's statement, Morales took the presidential plane from El Alto International Airport to an undisclosed location, announcing his immediate resignation on television, stating that he was resigning to "protect the families" of Movement for Socialism members. He concluded by stating that he believed Carlos Mesa had "achieved his objective", and asked rioters to "stop burning down the houses of [his] brothers and sisters". Vice President Álvaro García Linera also resigned after consulting with Morales.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Morales resigns
Shortly thereafter, it was reported that Morales was on a plane to Argentina; however, the Argentine foreign minister, Jorge Faurie, said that Argentina would not grant him asylum. Commander Yuri Calderón assured that there was no warrant for Morales' arrest, though armed individuals had entered his home.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Morales resigns
Later in the day, Adriana Salvatierra, the President of the Senate, Victor Borda, the leader of the Chamber, and Rubén Medinaceli, First Vice President of the Senate, also resigned. Mexico's foreign minister declared that twenty members of Bolivia's executive and legislative branches were at the official Mexican residence in the capital seeking asylum following the resignation.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Morales resigns
Following the resignation of Morales and his allied successors, protesters called for a board to be convened to oversee the government and new elections, though Mesa disagreed with the proposal, stating protesters should not "violate the Constitution so as not to give Evo Morales an excuse that he was the victim of a coup d'etat" and that the Legislative Assembly should determine the constitutional successor.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, Morales resigns
Later on 10 November, BBC Mundo published an article suggesting that five main reasons combined to force Morales to resign: the disputed OAS audit results, the opposition from the military and police, the ongoing protests, the growing radicalization of the political opposition, and public opposition towards Morales' move to end term-limits.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Events, OEP detentions and TSE arrests
At 8:20 pm, the Associated Press reported that Bolivian police had detained 38 members of the Plurinational Electoral Organ (or Órgano Electoral Plurinacional (OEP)) on suspicion of falsification and other electoral crimes, including the former president and vice president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Maria Eugenia Choque and Antonio Costas. According to police commander Yuri Calderón, Choque was apprehended whilst disguised as a man. The attorney general's office earlier announced that it was opening an investigation into allegations raised by the OAS report. An election official in Santa Cruz, Sandra Kettels, was arrested Monday morning, with arrest warrants issued for the remaining TSE officials.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Assumption of presidency by Jeanine Áñez
On the evening of 10 November, Jeanine Áñez, the second vice president of the Senate and highest-ranking official remaining, proclaimed herself President of the Senate following the resignation of the previous Senate president Adriana Salvatierra and the first vice president of the Senate Rubén Medinaceli. Moments later, Áñez declared herself President of Bolivia, claiming constitutional succession. She announced she would be assuming the presidency on an interim basis from 11 November onward, with the responsibility of calling new elections. She stated that she would assume the office once the Senate had formally recognized the previous day's resignations. Upon inauguration, Áñez would officially become the President of Bolivia.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Assumption of presidency by Jeanine Áñez
The Bolivian Constitution had no provisions that would have allowed Áñez, as second vice president of the Senate, to legitimately succeed to the Presidency. Article 169 says that "In case of impediment or definitive absence of the president of the State, he will be replaced in office by the Vice President and, in his absence, by the President of the Senate, and in the absence of this by the President of the Chamber of Deputies. In the latter case, new elections will be called within a maximum period of ninety days." It also establishes the line of succession, which did not include Áñez.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Assumption of presidency by Jeanine Áñez
The following day, Áñez arrived at La Paz-El Alto airport and was taken in a military helicopter to a nearby Air Force base; from here she traveled in convoy to the Senate.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Assumption of presidency by Jeanine Áñez
On 12 November 2019, in a brief legislative session held improperly due to the lack of a quorum, Áñez declared herself as acting president of Bolivia while holding a large bible, stating that "the bible has returned to the government palace". Áñez obtained the favourable vote of the opposition parties, only one-third of the parliament, while the Movement for Socialism ruling party did not participate in the voting, rejecting the succession.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Assumption of presidency by Jeanine Áñez
Áñez's assumption of the presidential office was supported by Bolivia's Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal, which interpreted, citing articles referring to the presidential succession of the 2001 Constitutional Declaration, that the next person in the succession line assumes the presidency ipso facto despite not having the required quorum, stating that "the functioning of the executive should not be suspended".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests
Reactions to the transfer of power and to Ms Áñez's assumption of the presidency have been mixed, being met with both celebrations and protests. Demonstrators celebrating the removal of the government chanted "yes we can" and set off fireworks. Hundreds of supporters of Morales made their way toward the center of La Paz from the mountains surrounding the city, some of them armed with sticks, chanting "here we go, civil war".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests
The police claimed that Morales supporters had vandalized police offices, inciting panic in some neighborhoods where people blocked their doors with furniture to protect stores and houses. After receiving requests for help from the national police and politicians, the armed forces announced that night they would mobilize to defend gas, water and electricity services around the capital, and also begin joint patrols with the police around the city.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests
On 13 November, a dozen MAS senators were blocked by police from entering the National Assembly building during the session.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests
The next few days were marked by protests and roadblocks on behalf of Morales' supporters. In Senkata and Sacaba, at least 19 pro-Morales protesters were killed in clashes with security forces in what was denounced as a massacre.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests
On 20 November, Evo Morales offered not to run for reelection if he was allowed to return to Bolivia and finish his presidential term.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests, Capital shut down
The drinking water supplies to parts of both La Paz and El Alto, the second and third largest cities in Bolivia, were cut off. According to Gen. Williams Kaliman, it was the plan of insurgents to leave these cities without water or fuel and counteractions to guard public services were covered under the so-called "Sebastián Pagador" plan.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests, Capital shut down
La Paz's legislature forced the capital's infrastructure, schools, and workplaces to close, claiming this was for reasons of public safety. Supporters of Morales also built barricades on roads that lead to the airport.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests, Capital shut down
Barricades were placed around the Senkata refinery in El Alto by Morales supporters, cutting power and fuel to El Alto and La Paz. Pro -Morales demonstrators entered the refinery and set fire to vehicles within the compound. The Bolivian military launched a violent invasion of the site on 19 November using armored vehicles and helicopters, killing three protesters and injuring 22 in the process.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Reactions and anti-Áñez protests, Capital shut down
As a result of blockades from various protests surrounding the city, some goods were also not able to enter. Food supply was affected, leading to rationing and controlled prices in El Alto and La Paz.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests
In the face of protests against the interim government, Áñez called for police to suppress the protests and maintain order and, on 14 November, issued a decree that would exempt the military from any type of criminal responsibility for killing or injuring protestors, when acting in a "legitimate defense or state of necessity." On 15 November, security forces fired upon coca farmers peacefully protesting against the government in Cochabamba. The massacre left nine dead and dozens injured.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
José Miguel Vivanco, head of Human Rights Watch in the Americas, said that the decree "sends a very dangerous message to the military that they have carte blanche to commit abuses". The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned Áñez's government for issuing the decree.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet issued a statement, saying that "while earlier deaths mostly resulted from clashes between rival protestors", the latest incidents appear to be due to the "disproportionate use of force by the army and police", stating that "in a situation like this, repressive actions by the authorities will simply stoke that anger even further and are likely to jeopardise any possible avenue for dialogue." Bachelet also expressed concern that "widespread arrests and detentions" were adding to the tensions; according to her office, more than 600 people had been detained since 21 October.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
Furthermore, Bachelet also declared being concerned that the situation could "spin out of control if the authorities do not handle it sensitively and in accordance with international norms and standards governing the use of force, and with full respect for human rights", stating that it couldn't be solved through "force and repression". The decree was later repealed by Áñez.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed concerns over human rights violations that occurred after the 2019 Bolivian general election. Paulo Abrão, who heads the IACHR, declared that due to the "massive" number of human rights violations amid post-election violence, the country may need outside help to investigate the situation and recommended Bolivia coordinate with an international panel of experts to ensure findings are seen as credible. On 5 December 2019, Áñez approved an act to provide compensation to the families of those killed and injured during the conflict.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
On 10 December, the government and IACHR signed an agreement to investigate the acts of violence that occurred. On 30 Dec, Eva Copa, MAS head of the Senate, stated that a report had been filed with Arturo Murillo to give an account of the deaths in Sacaba and Senkata after the Assembly recess in the new year.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
On 29 October 2020, the outgoing parliament approved a report on the "massacres of Senkata, Sacaba and Yapacani, which recommends a judgment of responsibility against Jeanine Anez for genocide and other offenses". Parliament also approved the criminal indictment of 11 of Anez' ministers.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Human rights concerns
On 17 August 2021, the human rights watchdog of the Organization of American States published their report on human rights during the Áñez administration. It observed that the interim government had come to power by sidestepping the constitutional rules for presidential succession, but stopped short of calling it a coup. The report documented the persecution of opponents with “systematic torture” and “summary executions”, such as the use of lethal ammunition to suppress peaceful street protests by unarmed supporters of Morales.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Foreign participation
In July 2021, the Bolivian government accused Mauricio Macri's government in Argentina of having supplied arms used in the Senkata and Sacaba massacres. Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta said air force chief General Jorge Gonzalo Terceros had written a letter on 13 November 2019 thanking Argentinian ambassador Normando Alvarez Garcia for the delivery of 40,000 bullets, tear gas canisters and grenades. The Ecuadorian government of Lenin Moreno offered military aid to Bolivia in the same period.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Foreign participation
Gonzalo Terceros accused the letter of being a forgery, made with a signature not his own and at a point when he had resigned, and the former chancellor Karen Longaric pointed that the date in the letter would mean that the alleged shipment was prepared and sent when Morales was still president. Longaric also pointed that, although the letter describes the shipment as war weapons, they are actually police weapons, whose trade is not illegal. Terceros' lawyer pointed as well that his client belonged to the air force, who had no business trading anti-riot materials.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Succession of presidency, Interim government response to protests, Foreign participation
An investigation carried out by the Argentine Government shows records of the exit of firearms, ammunition, bulletproof vests, pepper spray, and hand grenades of harassment gas, among other materials. The Bolivian Police confirmed they found part of the material sent, which had no associated documentation. Minister of Justice and Human Rights of Argentina Martín Soria said this would suggest the destination was not the Argentine Embassy as previously claimed.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, New elections
Áñez stated on 15 November that in order to restore faith in the electoral process, a vote would first be held to elect a new Electoral Commission, before having a new vote for president.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, New elections
On 20 November the interim government presented a bill that aimed to forge a path to new elections. The two chambers congress were expected to debate the bill which would annul 20 October election and appoint a new electoral board within 15 days of its passage, paving the way for a new vote. The bill, drafted jointly by MAS and anti-Morales legislators, was approved on 23 November; it also prohibited Morales from participating in the fresh election.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, New elections
In exchange, Áñez's government agreed to withdraw the armed forces from all protest areas (although some servicemen were still permitted to stay at some state companies to "prevent vandalism"), revoke her decree which granted the army immunity from criminal prosecution, release arrested protesters, protect lawmakers and social leaders from attacks and provide compensation for the families of those killed during the crisis. She approved the bill shortly thereafter.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, New elections
Elections were initially scheduled to be held on 3 May 2020. However, they were postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, New elections
On 22 June 2020, Áñez approved a law passed by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to set a date for the election for 6 September 2020, with elected authorities in place by mid-to-late November 2020.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, New elections
On 23 July 2020, the TSE postponed the election to 18 October 2020 due to medical reports that the pandemic will have its highest peaks in late August and early September. Many opposition leaders, including Evo Morales, have condemned the delays, seeing the continued delays as an unconstitutional attempt to remain in power, and some groups, including the Bolivian Workers' Center have planned protests.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
Immediately after his resignation, protests emerged in support of Morales and against the new government. In response, Áñez signed decree no. 4078, granting total impunity to the armed forces to quell protestors, resulting in the massacres of Senkata and Sacaba, where at least 18 people were killed by the military. This decree was subject to international criticism. José Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director of Human Rights Watch described the decree as, "giv[ing] the armed forces a blank check to commit abuses instead of working to restore the rule of law in the country".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
The Áñez administration appointed government ministers between 13 and 18 November. The first eleven members of the interim cabinet, appointed 13 November, did not contain any indigenous members. The Guardian described this partial cabinet as showing "no signs that [Áñez] intended to reach across the country's deep political and ethnic divide". Áñez did, however, designate two persons of indigenous origin as ministers of culture and mining as the remaining positions were filled. Morales's first cabinet was majority indigenous (14 out of 16 positions), though this number decreased over the course of his tenure as president. Among the senior ministers in Áñez' cabinet were prominent Bolivian businesspeople. Shortly after taking office, Áñez also appointed a new military high command. The new commander of the armed forces, General Carlos Orellana Centellas, pledged to take orders from Áñez.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
On 20 November, Áñez granted safe-conduct to Evo Morales' daughter, Evaliz, to receive political asylum in Mexico.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
The government renamed the state newspaper, known as Cambio under president Morales, as Bolivia on 17 November. On 25 November, the Áñez met with civil groups Bolivian Workers' Center, the country's largest union, and the Pact of Unity, a prominent indigenous grassroots group, to sign agreements on how to pacify Bolivia following previous violent events.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
In the week following the inauguration of Áñez, the new government came under heavy criticism from a variety of sources. The New York Times described Áñez as "reaching beyond her caretaker mandate of organizing national elections by January". Javier Corrales, a Latin American politics professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said "without a popular mandate, [the government] are pushing forward some of the most objectionable aspects of their agenda". Oliver Stuenkel, associate professor of international relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, said that "the only thing this government was supposed to do was calm things down and call elections, and that's just about the only thing it has not done".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
By late November and December, some progress was made in passing legislation for new elections, appointing a new electoral body, entering dialogue with representatives from protesting factions in El Alto and cooperating with Morales' MAS party in joint participation in the coming elections, albeit without Morales as a presidential candidate. A survey by Bolivian newspaper Página Siete showed that 43% of Bolivians approved of how Áñez has handled the presidency, while 23% disapproved.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
On 13 Dec, Áñez approved an agreement between the three main parties over a so-called "Law of Guarantees" formulated to restore faith among political actors in the process of moving forward, including reparations for those killed and injured by her government. This act was welcomed by the Secretary General of the UN. A previous incarnation of this legislation, passed in both chambers by the MAS majority, had not been given presidential approval due to articles that implied immunity from prosecution for representatives of the previous government. This version was described by opposition lawmakers as an attempted "cover up" on behalf of the MAS party and caused friction among members of MAS itself.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
On 1 January 2020, Áñez presented a change in the law that would it make it mandatory for presidential candidates to engage in public debate with their opponents to support "the strengthening of informed democracy". La Razón says such debates did not take place before.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Domestic policy
In September 2020, Human Rights Watch released a report saying that the interim caretaker government is "abusing the justice system to wage a politically motivated witch-hunt against former president Evo Morales and his allies", adding that prosecutors had charged some Morales backers with terrorism for simply speaking to him on the phone.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Foreign policy
Karen Longaric, appointed as foreign minister by Jeanine Áñez, announced the formal departure from the country of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and breaking all diplomatic relations with Venezuela's Maduro government, recognizing Juan Guaidó as acting president of Venezuela in the Venezuelan presidential crisis. Longaric also announced that the interim government was considering leaving the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Foreign policy
A month later, the country announced its entry into the Lima Group, a regional bloc established in 2017 with the purpose of finding a way out of the Venezuelan crisis. The Bolivian foreign ministry said in a statement that it hoped to "contribute to a peaceful, democratic and constitutional solution to the crisis in Venezuela, which must be guided by the Venezuelan people". On the same month, the interim government announced that they would give refuge to 200 Venezuelans "who have fled their country for reasons of political order, of political persecution promoted by the Nicolás Maduro government."


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Foreign policy
In January 2020, the interim government suspended relations with Cuba in response to remarks made by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who called Áñez a "liar," "coupist" and "self-proclaimed" in reference to her latest statements about the role of Cuban medical doctors in the country.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Foreign policy, Diplomatic row over Mexican embassy
Since the resignation of Morales, several members of the past administration have taken diplomatic refuge in the Mexican Embassy in La Paz. Several of them faced accusations and prosecution under the interim government, the most senior being the former Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana. Anti -Morales protesters routinely gathered at the doorstep of the Embassy to voice their discontent and demand that they be turned over to the Bolivian authorities. An increased security presence by police and army in the vicinity of the Embassy led to accusations of harassment and a "siege".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Foreign policy, Diplomatic row over Mexican embassy
On 27 December, tensions were further increased when visiting Spanish diplomats were stopped by police during a visit to the Embassy. The Mexican ambassador accused the Bolivian government of María Teresa Mercado violating the Vienna Convention. Longaric responded by saying the presence of masked and armed guards aroused suspicion that there would be an attempt to smuggle Quintana from the Embassy to another location. Longaric said: "No country in the world could tolerate what happened last Friday.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Foreign policy, Diplomatic row over Mexican embassy
In that case, the Vienna Convention empowers the host State to declare those diplomats who violate the rules of the conventions themselves personas non-gratas." On 30 December, Áñez made an announcement giving a number of Mexican and Spanish diplomats 72 hours to leave the country; Spain responding by declaring that three Bolivian diplomats likewise must leave the country. Eva Copa, MAS head of the Senate, criticised Áñez for the expulsion of diplomats of countries who helped bring stability to Bolivia and urged her to reconsider the action.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Counteractions
On 15 November, Longaric expelled 725 Cuban citizens, mostly medical doctors, after accusing them of being involved in protests. The government announced it arrested nine Venezuelans in the border city of Guayaramerín (near Brazil) with boots and insignias of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), identification cards of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and microchips containing photos of themselves with other people armed with guns. After the arrest and the discovery of the microchips, the interim government accused the men of participating in "violent acts" in the country, and transferred them to the Bolivian Special Crime Fighting Forces to conduct a preliminary investigation.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Counteractions
Arturo Murillo, Áñez's new interior minister, vowed to "hunt down" his predecessor Juan Ramón Quintana, a prominent Morales ally, stoking fears of a vendetta against members of the previous administration. He later announced he would start arresting certain members of the previous government who he accused of "subversion". Roxana Lizárraga, Áñez's communication minister, stated that she had a list of journalists who were "involved in sedition" and threatened them with prosecution.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Counteractions
On 22 November, after an audio recording, allegedly of Morales, leaked in which Morales supporters were directed to block main roads to La Paz, the interim government opened an investigation into Morales for "terrorism and sedition". Hours later, the vice-president of MAS-IPSP was arrested for allegedly using a car of the ministry of the President; in the car, according to Télam, police discovered computers and biometric devices that belonged to the electoral commission.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Social media campaign
In December 2019, the interim government of Áñez contracted CLS Strategies, a Washington-based public relations firm, "to carry out lobbying in support of Bolivian democracy" and "in support of holding new presidential elections". In September 2020, Facebook closed 55 accounts, 42 pages and 36 Instagram accounts linked to CLS Strategies. Facebook said these were fake accounts used to secretly manipulate politics in Bolivia, Venezuela and Mexico in violation of Facebook's prohibition on foreign interference.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Social media campaign
Following Morales' resignation, a large anti-Morales Twitter bot network was uncovered by the microblogging site in mid November. The network had published automated tweets which declared opposition to Morales, further adding that the events were "not a coup". Compared to the extremely low proportion of the population that speaks English, the abundance of English tweets from this network suggests that it was intended to sway opinions beyond Bolivia. The company behind the site had removed many of the tweets by 19 November, but media reports suggested that around 4200 were still up by that point.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Social media campaign
The Caracas-based TeleSur network alleged that nearly 70,000 fake accounts had been used by the network, many of which were created just days before. A Social Networks head working for the Spanish party Podemos further alleged that fake accounts were used to artificially boost the online following of anti-Morales political figures, including Añez.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Social media campaign
An investigation by The Guardian in 2021 found that Facebook was slow to remove fake accounts and pages in Bolivia when notified of their existence. A network of fake accounts supporting a candidate during the October 2019 election were still operating in September 2020. In general, Facebook "allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritise addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries".


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Handling of COVID-19 pandemic
In May 2020, Health Minister Marcelo Navajas was arrested on suspicion of corruption related to a scheme to buy ventilators for the treatment of COVID-19. The ventilators were purchased from a Spanish company for around twice their value. Intensive care doctors said that the ventilators were not suitable for Bolivian intensive care units. In August 2020, a report in the New York Times said the death rate in Bolivia was "nearly five times the official tally" and that testing was very limited.


2019 Bolivian political crisis, Interim government activities, Handling of COVID-19 pandemic
It said that Bolivia was one of the worst affected countries and calculated that Bolivia had five times as many deaths in July as in previous years. Writing in the New York Times in September 2020, Diego von Vacano, who is an expert in Latin America, said Añez' interim government had mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis.


2019 Bolivian protests
The 2019 Bolivian protests were protests and marches from 21 October 2019 until late November of that year in Bolivia, in response to claims of electoral fraud in the 2019 general election of 20 October. After 11 November 2019, there were protests by supporters of the outgoing government in response to Jeanine Áñez becoming the acting president of Bolivia.


2019 Bolivian protests
The claims of fraud were made after the suspension of the preliminary vote count, in which incumbent Evo Morales was not leading by a large enough margin (10%) to avoid a runoff, and the subsequent publication of the official count, in which Morales won by just over 10%. Some international observers expressed concern over the integrity of the elections.


2019 Bolivian protests
While the majority of the demonstrations were peaceful, there were also numerous acts of violence. Initial violence allegedly targeted opposition protesters, Pro-MAS supporters were bused into opposition areas, given weapons, and were told to clear blockades, resulting in death and injury of opposition protesters. In the later weeks of the protests, senior members of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and their families were victims of attacks, including vandalism and arson of their houses.


2019 Bolivian protests
Morales denied the allegations and invited international observers to audit the electoral processes, promising to hold a runoff if any fraud was found, although initially refusing to be bound by the results of an audit. Opposition leaders rejected the OAS audit, saying they hadn't been party to the agreement. Subsequently, an audit team from the Organization of American States (OAS), with access provided by Bolivian authorities, worked to verify the integrity and reliability of the results. Their preliminary report, released on 10 November 2019 questioned the integrity of the election results and recommended another "electoral process".


2019 Bolivian protests
Following the release of the OAS initial report, Morales announced the government would hold another full election (rather than a runoff). However, later that day, the influential National Union of Workers requested Morales' resignation, followed 5 hours later by the commanders of the Armed Forces who suggested Morales resign during a live televised press conference, and almost immediately after, the national Police Commander also requested his resignation. Morales, together with his vice-president García Linera, resigned the same day, on live television, both also delivered written resignations. Following their resignations and the resignations of the next two politicians in the line of succession, Jeanine Áñez, second Vice-President of the Senate, was next in line for the presidency. On 12 November 2019, she formed an interim government.


2019 Bolivian protests
Protests continued until the end of November, primarily by those that sought Morales' return. Under direction from Morales and his allies, and at times under coercion, protesters created blockades on inter-departmental highways, resulting in shortages of food and fuel. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concerns over the use of force by the new government in response to armed protests at Senkata and Sacaba. By 25 November 2019, the interim government had made agreements with most protest leaders to end blockades, and began to withdraw troops and to release arrested protesters.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, Term limits
Article 168 of the 2009 constitution allowed the President and Vice-President to be re-elected only once, limiting the number of terms to two. The governing party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS) sponsored an effort to amend this article. The referendum was authorized by a joint session of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly on 26 September 2015, by a vote of 112 to 41. Law 757, which convened the February referendum, passed by 113 votes to 43 and was promulgated on 5 November 2015.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, Term limits
The referendum marked the rise of anti-Morales sentiment in Bolivia. The vote was held on 21 February 2016 and the proposed amendment was rejected by 51.3% to 48.7%. A successful "yes" vote would have allowed President Evo Morales and Vice President Álvaro García Linera to run for another term in office in 2019. Morales had already been elected three times. The first time, in 2006, is not counted, as it was before the two-term limit was introduced by the 2009 constitution.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, Term limits
Despite the referendum result, the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal overruled the constitution by deferring to Article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights, which promotes the human right to participate in government. The court ruled a little over one year after the referendum in December 2017 that all public offices would have no term limits, thus allowing Morales to run for a fourth term.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, Term limits
The removal of term limits proved controversial among Bolivians, including Morales' supporters, with some losing trust in Morales for overturning a referendum. John Walsh, Andes Director of the Washington Office on Latin America, stated that "The court’s decision, which was very much in favor of MAS, added to the tensions and distrust leading into this election" and that for Morales, it was "also just hard to be in power for that long and not lose popularity".


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, Term limits
Mark L. Schneider of the Center for Strategic and International Studies summarized that there was "no question that there was a successful impact on raising the standard of living of the poor" under Morales, but that "problems in Bolivia arose, unfortunately, from the same problems that you see in Nicaragua and Venezuela, in Honduras and elsewhere where individuals decide that it's more important to stay in power than to follow democratic norms and the rule of law".


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, 2019 general election
Heading into the elections, some voters distrusted Bolivia's voting system, suspecting fraud after Morales and his supporters disregarded the results of the 2016 referendum. Bolivia's Plurinational Electoral Body and the private company in charge of the preliminary vote count ad announced eleven days before the election, on 9 October, that only approximately 80% of the preliminary results would be released. On 20 October 2019, the first round of voting for all government positions was held. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal released two sets of counts shortly after the vote was closed.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, 2019 general election
First was an exit poll that verified 95.6% of votes that showed incumbent President of Bolivia Evo Morales as having 9.33 percentage points over his main opposition and former president, Carlos Mesa. Leading by less than 10 percentage points indicates the vote must continue to a second run-off round. The complete count then appeared as provisional results on a website with routine live updates. At the point of 83.8% of votes in the complete count having been verified, the website showed Morales at 45.3% and Mesa at 38.2%; this also reflected a less than ten-point lead. However, no further updates to the preliminary results were made after 7:40 pm local time (UTC–4). The electoral authorities explained that updates to the preliminary count had been halted because the official results were beginning to be released; nevertheless, no official results were published overnight.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, 2019 general election
At 9:25 pm, as the vote counting was still underway, President Morales declared himself the winner of the elections, stating that while he would wait for final scrutiny of the results, the outstanding vote from rural areas would guarantee his victory; he did not mention the possibility of a runoff. Most of the remaining votes, from remote rural areas, were expected to go in Morales's favour, although the Organization of American States (OAS) recommended a runoff be held even if Morales's lead exceeded 10 points.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, 2019 general election
Manuel González, head of the OAS election observation team in Bolivia, said that "In the case that [...] the margin of difference exceeds 10%, it is statistically reasonable to conclude that it will be by negligible margin" and that "given the context and the problematic issues in this electoral process the best option continues to be the convening of a second round." International observers expressed concern over the unexplained daylong gap in the reporting of results, which was followed by a surge in Morales votes when the count resumed.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, 2019 general election
On 21 October 2019, a press conference of the Plurinational Electoral Organ was held, which published data of the rapid count of the system of Transmisión de Resultados Electorales Preliminares (TREP, "Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results"), published at 7:30 pm, almost a whole day after being initially suspended, stating that with 95.30 percent of the votes verified, Morales's MAS obtained 46.86% of the votes over the 36.72% of Mesa's Civic Community, surpassing the 10 percentage points needed to avoid a second run-off round and as such Morales would remain in power for a fourth term.


2019 Bolivian protests, Background, 2019 general election
On 6 November, the Bolivian opposition published a 190-page-long report containing fraud accusations, including irregularities such as mistaken electoral acts additions, data wiping and electoral acts where the ruling party obtained more votes than registered voters, expecting to send it to international organizations such as the OAS and the United Nations.


2019 Bolivian protests, Timeline of events, Anti-Morales protests, 21 October
Citizens held vigils at the gates of the computing centers of several departments. The Commander of the Bolivian Police, Vladimir Calderón, said they were on alert for any event that could alter public order in the country after some social sectors called for civil resistance.


2019 Bolivian protests, Timeline of events, Anti-Morales protests, 21 October
According to Los Tiempos, on the morning of 21 October, in the Sopocachi and Miraflores residential neighborhoods of La Paz, ballots marked in favor of MAS and electoral material were found in the hands of people that were not Electoral Tribunal officials; videos of citizen reports circulating on social media show the police deploying tear gas against the residents of those residential neighborhoods and protecting the electoral material and the suspects. As a result, the District Board of Parents requested the suspension of classes at schools in downtown Sucre.


2019 Bolivian protests, Timeline of events, Anti-Morales protests, 21 October
Protests in Sucre became violent, and the violence was severe to the point that a fire broke out in the campaign house of MAS and the offices of the Single Federation of Workers of Peoples Originating in Chuquisaca (Futpoch) were attacked. Subsequently, female police officers members of the National Association of NCOs, Sergeants, Cabos and Police (Anssclapol) marched, calling for a peaceful night, on the 25 de Mayo Square. At the head was their leader, Sergeant Cecilia Calani, who was wearing a white handkerchief, demanding that the president respect the vote.


2019 Bolivian protests, Timeline of events, Anti-Morales protests, 21 October
Protesters set fire to electoral buildings and ballot boxes in the cities of Sucre and Tarija. In Potosí, the COMCIPO march ended with the electoral court of the region being set on fire, damaging nearby homes. Campfires and vigils by university students, supporters of Carlos Mesa and activists were set in other counting centers such as in Hotel Presidente, Hotel Real, Campo Ferial de Cochabamba. Police from Sucre were sent to Potosí to reinforce security and avoid possible disturbances before the vigil of citizens at the gates of the Departmental Electoral Court (TED), which denounced irregularities in the counting and computing of voting polls.


2019 Bolivian protests, Timeline of events, Anti-Morales protests, 21 October
At Hotel Real a clash between opponents and supporters of Morales and police took place; opposition groups were attacked with tear gas by the police. Dozens were wounded, including the rector of the Higher University of San Andrés (UMSA), Waldo Albarracín, who was taken to the UMSA hospital. Subsequently, the computing center at the Hotel Presidente suspended the vote count due to the protests that were in place.


2019 Bolivian protests, Timeline of events, Anti-Morales protests, 21 October
Four departmental electoral tribunals suspended the vote counting made by the TREP due to protests by citizens registered outside the computing centers. The Mayor of Cobija, Luis Gatty Ribeiro, and the Governor of Pando, Luis Adolfo Flores, were attacked by a group of protesters, with Flores being hospitalized. In Oruro, a MAS tent and a Public Ministry vehicle were destroyed.