US, OAS, Colombia try to steal Ecuador’s election from popular socialist candidate, while spreading fake news
Ben Norton, The Grayzone, Feb 15 2021
GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR – A popular socialist candidate, Andrés Arauz, has won the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election by a landslide on Feb 7. The triumph by Arauz prompted the US State Dept, the right-wing government of neighboring Colombia, and the Organization of American States (OAS) are now working to prevent him from entering office. Arauz won the election with 33% of the vote, a full 13% greater than the second-place candidate, banker Guillermo Lasso. His opponents are note seeking to force a vote recount under the supervision of the OAS, while simultaneously launching a smear campaign relying on blatant disinformation to link Arauz to a Colombian guerrilla group in hopes of disqualifying him. Arauz has accused Ecuador’s US-backed government, led by right-wing leader Lenín Moreno, of “pushing to persecute me with crude lies … blackmailing and cheating justice.” The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who was targeted in an OAS-sponsored coup in 2019, has also warned that a new plot is afoot. The Moreno administration has broken records of unpopularity, garnering just an 8% approval rating. Against popular discontent, his government is desperately working to disqualify a leftist Correista challenger.
Just two weeks before the election, Moreno traveled to Washington to meet with top officials from the US government, as well as the coup-sponsoring general secretary of the OAS, Luis Almagro. Now, the Moreno administration’s top electoral body is openly conspiring with the second- and third-place candidates, meeting privately with them, giving them a massive public platform to call to “defeat Correismo,” and even agreeing to conduct a recount of the vote in the specific precincts where they lost. This highly politicized recount, which has no legal basis, is estimated to take two weeks, an extraordinary length of time. The unusual process has the full backing of the US State Dept, and will be overseen by the OAS, which previously inspired a military coup targeting Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist government in Nov 2019. The head of the OAS electoral mission in Ecuador, the staunchly right-wing former vice-president of Panama, was intimately involved in the US-led coup attempt against Venezuela, working closely with Juan Guaidó and the pro-Washington Lima Group. The OAS disseminated lies about Bolivia’s Oct 2019 election, falsely accusing the government of fraud. Now, the Colombian government is spreading a remarkably similar series of lies about Ecuador’s election and its first-place candidate, Arauz.
Just five days after the Feb 7 election, amid the recount chaos, Colombia intervened directly in Ecuadorian politics. The rightist government of President Iván Duque, who has been credibly linked to drug cartels and death squads, sent its chief prosecutor to Ecuador on an official state plane in a desperate attempt to disqualify Arauz. The head of Colombia’s justice department, Francisco Barbosa, a close ally and personal friend of Duque, has amplified fake news stories published by conservative media outlets in his country, maliciously claiming that a leader of the socialist guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN) funded Arauz’s campaign to the tune of $80k. The ELN commander they accused of giving this money to Arauz, code-named Uriel, was in fact killed in Oct 2020, nearly two months before Arauz was officially registered a candidate in December. But this inconvenient fact did not stop the conspiracy theory from spreading. Barbosa met with the chief prosecutor of Ecuador, Diana Salazar Méndez, on Feb 12. Ecuador’s justice department said the Colombian prosecutor provided evidence gathered from Uriel’s devices “in the framework of penal cooperation between the two countries.”
To supplement the dubious accusations of links between the ELN and Arauz, right-wing media outlets in Latin America have also circulated a video that purports to show Colombian guerrillas endorsing the Ecuadorian leftist. But the viral video was very clearly fabricated, as numerous experts have pointed out. Even the The Guardian UK, which collaborates with the UK’s spy agencies, acknowledged that the footage could not have been filmed in Colombia, because it featured a rare bird that is native to western Ecuador. The fraudulent ELN video also contained spelling errors and weapons that the guerrilla group does not use. Linguistic specialists noted that the accents of the men in the video were not genuine, but rather those of foreigners pretending to be Colombian.
The exposé led the former leader of Colombia to warn that his country’s sitting government was engaged in a plot with the OAS to steal Arauz’s electoral victory. Ex-President Ernesto Samper published a statement on February 13 condemning the Duque administration for falsely linking Ecuador’s leading presidential candidate to the ELN guerrillas. Samper wrote:
I can confirm that these claims are slander and form part of a dirty game that radical right-wing sectors from both countries are organizing, from inside Colombia, to interfere in the second round of the Ecuadorian presidential elections.
The former Colombian head of state pointed out numerous falsehoods in the Duque government’s accusations. He added:
The people of Ecuador should be warned that the enemies of progressivism in our countries are determined to stop by any means the transformations that Latin America needs.
Although the outlandish ELN accusations were quickly disproven, Ecuadorian right-wing activists have persisted in spreading the fake news. Throughout Ecuador, opponents of the leftist Correista movement disseminated viral materials on WhatsApp and social media platforms falsely claiming that Arauz had been disqualified from participating in the second round. It was just the latest example of information warfare targeting the working-class Ecuadorians who make up the base of the Citizens’ Revolution launched by the country’s socialist former President Rafael Correa.
Colombian Senator Iván Cepeda condemned the trip by his country’s chief prosecutor to Ecuador:
With his trip to Ecuador, the role that the prosecutor Francisco Barbosa is fulfilling is not one of the investigator who acts with rigor and impartiality in a penal action. Rather it is of the official who carries out a blunt maneuver of political intervention in a foreign electoral process.
Yet the corruption goes deeper. Barbosa is not just a high-level Colombian official; he is one of President Duque’s closest allies. In fact, he has boasted that Duque has been his “great friend for 25 years.” Colombian journalists and anti-corruption groups have accused Barbosa of serious conflicts of interest, warning that, under Duque and Barbosa, “democracy seems to be more at risk than ever.” Duque is in power due in no small part to support from notorious Colombian drug lord José Guillermo “Ñeñe” Hernández. When a recording was leaked proving that Duque used illegal dirty money from Ñeñe to bribe Colombians and buy votes in the 2018 election that gave him the presidency, Duque’s good friend Barbosa made sure to sweep the scandal under the rug.
Ecuador’s former foreign minister and defense minister, Ricardo Patiño, condemned “the hasty general prosecutor of Colombia who comes to interfere in Ecuador’s electoral process with fraudulent information.” Another ex-foreign minster of Ecuador, María Isabel Salvador, who also served as the nation’s ambassador to the OAS, noted that the Colombian government’s absurd attempt to link Arauz to ELN guerrillas echoes a tactic used a decade ago against Correa. Salvador stated:
What are they trying to do? Prevent the victory of hope and truth. I remember like it was yesterday the same slander used by the government of Colombia (when [Álvaro] Uribe was president) and its media outlets.
Salvador recalled that the government of Colombia’s former President Uribe circulated a photo purporting to show Ecuador’s then-Security Minister Gustavo Larrea with Raúl Reyes, a former commander of Colombia’s socialist guerrilla group the FARC. Although the Uribe government and Colombian media outlets spread the photo far and wide, it turned out to be another fabrication. The man in the photo was not an official from Correa’s government; he was not even Ecuadorian. Rather, he was an Argentine communist. Colombia’s major newspaper El Tiempo was forced to issue a retraction, admitting the story was a lie. The ex-Foreign Minister Salvador wrote:
The old strategies are being repeated. The old practices as well, although today the government, dedicated to other interests and not those of the Ecuadorian people, is a partner in this defamation. And… nothing is a coincidence.
https://twitter.com/SalvadorMIsabel/status/1360638846212468742
While the Colombian government has meddled in Ecuador’s election, the US government and Organization of American States have been working more quietly behind the scenes to undermine the electoral victory of Arauz. On Feb 12, the same day Colombia’s chief prosecutor arrived in Quito, Ecuador’s National Electoral Council (CNE) held an unprecedented closed-door meeting between the second- and third-place presidential candidates. In a blatant violation of Ecuadorian law, the CNE hosted a meeting where opposition candidates were encouraged to unite and brainstorm on ways to effectively defeat the leftist Citizens’ Revolution movement represented by the first-place candidate. According to the CNE’s official count, Arauz won 32.71% of the vote in the first round of the election. This put him a solid 13% points above the right-wing candidate Lasso, who won 19.74%. Under Ecuadorian law, these two candidates must compete in a run-off election on Apr 11. But the third-place candidate, Yaku Pérez, a foreign-backed environmentalist from a US-trained political party, has prevented the second round contest by introducing baseless accusations of fraud. In his insistence to go to the second round, Pérez revealed the US embassy called him immediately after the election and reassured him he would participate in the presidential run-off. The only problem for Pérez is he failed to win enough votes.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) results for the first round of the presidential elections,
with 100% of precincts counted as of Feb 13 2021
But the slow and gradual nature of Ecuador’s National Electoral Council publication of the results lent the false impression that Pérez had been in second place. The CNE waited until several days after the February 7 election to publish the full results. Up until 99.80% of the precincts were tabulated, the results consistently showed Pérez with a narrow lead over Lasso, in second place. These misleading, incomplete results gave Pérez the ammunition he needed to claim his victory was stolen by fraud. Many Ecuadorians have accused the electoral body of bias. And the US-backed Lenín Moreno government has not even pretended to be neutral. Under his repressive rule, Moreno purged any members of the CNE who were suspected of sympathies with Correismo and filled the top electoral body exclusively with opposition politicians from Yaku Pérez’s party Pachakutik and Lasso’s party, CREO.
On the day of the private CNE meeting, the name Diana Atamaint was trending on Twitter in Ecuador. Why? Because Atamaint, the president of the CNE, is an ally of Yaku, and a prominent member of his political party, Pachakutik, which was trained by the US government’s National Democratic Institute (NDI), a partner of Washington’s regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cut-out. Under Atamaint’s leadership, the CNE has become a blatantly politicized body. The electoral organ consistently acted to prevent the leftist Correistas from freely participating in the election. First, the CNE blocked former President Correa, the most popular politician in the country, from running as vice president. It also banned the original political party of Andrés Arauz, forcing the leading candidate to find another, little-known party to run with. As if those obstacles weren’t enough, the CNE subsequently forbade Arauz’s campaign from using images of Correa in its promotional materials. Despite the many anti-democratic impediments, Arauz won first place in a landslide. Meanwhile, Pérez clearly came in third place, meaning he will not go to the run-off in April. But this has not stopped Pérez from demanding a recount. And the CNE is happily participating in his scheme in flagrant violation of its own bylaws.
On Feb 11, Yaku Pérez publicly invited Guillermo Lasso to a meeting at the CNE headquarters. There is absolutely no legal precedent for such a meeting. But the electoral body permitted it anyway. In the meeting at the CNE’s headquarters, the candidates did not even pretend to be neutral and fair. Pérez openly boasted that his goal is “not only to pass to the second round, but to defeat Correismo.” Lasso used the opportunity to make an impassioned public call for an anti-Correista alliance between the two candidates. The historically unprecedented meeting was just another example of how, under Ecuador’s US-backed President Moreno, the CNE has become a corrupt instrument of political control, committed not to overseeing free and fair elections, but rather to making sure that the Citizens’ Revolution never returns to power. Ecuadorian legal experts stressed that the private CNE meeting was illegal. Ismael Quintana, a professor of constitutional law and opposition supporter who is staunchly anti-Correista, acknowledged that Yaku Pérez forcing a recount in Ecuador “passed from being a possibly legitimate claim or doubt to a temper tantrum without legal basis.”
But the CNE’s clearly illegal meeting was just one part of the body’s post-election actions to reverse Andrés Arauz’s overwhelming victory. Next, the electoral body approved a recount in areas in the country in which the opposition candidates lost. The CNE declared its intention to recount 100% of votes in Guayas province, where Pérez had the worst results, as well as 50% of votes in other areas in which Pérez lost. On Feb 13, Pérez met again with the CNE. His formal recount request was granted. It stipulated that the process was expected to take a remarkable 15 days. This meant that the official results of the first round of Ecuador’s February 7 election would not be known until the end of the month, or perhaps early March. With the CNE behind him, the third-place candidate also began to shift the narrative, claiming that with the new count, Arauz was likely to fall from his resounding first-place victory to third and preventing him from running in the second round of the presidential race. Pérez declared:
It would not be strange if Arauz fell to third place.
In reality, the only way Arauz could fall so far from his 13 percent lead would be through vote theft. The credible fears of the opposition stealing votes is compounded by the announcement that the process will be overseen by the Organization of American States and its coup-sponsoring general secretary, Luis Almagro. President Moreno met with Almagro in Washington on Jan 27, less than two weeks before the presidential election. Moreno also held friendly meetings with US Senator Bob Menendez, a figure named as a key ally by Bolivia coup-plotters, as well as Joe Biden’s top Latin America policy advisor, Juan Sebastian Gonzalez.
Under Almagro, the OAS played a leading role in the military coup that overthrew Bolivia’s democratically elected government in Nov 2019. The OAS spread demonstrably false claims accusing President Evo Morales of fraud – accusations that are reminiscent of those made by Yaku Pérez today. The Biden administration has praised the CNE for agreeing to the illegal and deeply politicized recount. As acting ASS for Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Chung tweeted:
US government applauds the Feb 12 announcement by [CNE] to verify votes in 17 provinces in Ecuador’s Feb 7 presidential election. This allows the electoral process to advance with enhanced guarantees to the candidates and citizens alike.
Chung did not mention that these 17 provinces were chosen specifically because Pérez performed poorly in them.
The US State Dept spox continued to claim that the clearly illegal process demonstrated “transparency” and “ensures public confidence in results.” Chung added:
We thank [OAS] election observation teams for their continuing work supporting democracy in [Ecuador].
While the Biden administration cleared the way for electoral theft, the OAS deployed Isabel de Saint Malo, the former vice president of Panama, as the head of the OAS observer team in the country. De Saint Malo was a key figure in the joint US-OAS coup attempt targeting Venezuela’s leftist government. In many meetings at the Lima Group, de Saint Malo reiterated strong support for Washington-imposed “Interim President” Juan Guaidó, lionizing him as “brave” for “returning Venezuela to the path of democracy, rights, and freedoms.”
De Saint Malo also strongly supported the US-backed 2018 coup attempt against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Not only has the coup-sponsoring OAS official has praised the February 12 CNE meeting between Yaku Pérez and Guillermo Lasso, she personally oversaw the event. During the meeting, Lasso thanked Pérez for endorsing him in the last presidential election. Lasso declared:
You said ‘I prefer to vote for a banker and not a dictator.’ thank you for your vote, candidate Pérez.
Why the CNE would need more than two weeks to recount the votes is unclear. But it appears the request is part of a strategy to buy time, while the Colombian and Ecuadorian prosecutors prepare the baseless ELN case against Arauz. In the meantime, Ecuador’s opposition politicians are working to form a massive anti-Correista coalition. Ecuador’s fourth-place presidential candidate Xavier Hervas, who earned 15.69 percent of the vote, publicly proposed forming an alliance with both Pérez and Lasso. Lasso has said he would support such a coalition.
Even if the recount fails to knock Arauz out of the race, Yaku Pérez has a Plan B. During his Feb 12 meeting at the CNE, Pérez proposed a total do-ever, holding a new election with no campaigning that would force millions of Ecuadorians to the polls all over again. There is no legal basis for any of these propositions, but with the support of the US and OAS, Pérez and Lasso enjoy free license to pitch any plan capable of sabotaging a Correista victory. For his part, Arauz has slammed the anti-democratic assault. Alluding to the attempt by Ecuador’s US-backed government and Colombia to falsely link him to guerrillas, Arauz wrote:
Those who co-governed with Moreno know they lost and are pushing to persecute me with crude lies. They can’t keep blackmailing and cheating justice. The Ecuadorian people will not allow a new blow to democracy.
Bolivia’s former elected President Evo Morales, who was deposed by the US-sponsored military coup in Nov 2019, echoed Arauz’s condemnation. Morales advised:
After being complicit in the coup in Bolivia, now the OAS and Almagro are interfering in Ecuador. Their interest is not in democracy; it’s to support neoliberal candidates and governments. Our Ecuadorian brothers should be alert. We are warning of a plan by the right-wing and US in Ecuador, to try to prevent [Arauz] from winning the second round using the prosecutor of Colombia, right-wing parties, and the OAS. We have an obligation to defend democracy and our regional integration. Keep attentive people!
Niqnaq 