>> Bolivia just held its presidential election and socialist presidential candidate Luis
Arce has won that election which is fantastic news.
Especially when you consider that there was a military backed coup that took place last
year it was very much influenced by the Organization of American States, which is mostly funded
by the United States.
In an effort to oust Evo Morales, he fled the country and is now in Argentina.
However his Economic Minister, Luis Arce decided to run in this race and it's clear that he
won, his opponents have conceded that he has won.
And let me give you the details on this and fill you in on what this all means.
So the independent counts showed that Arce had a little over 50% of the vote and roughly
a 20 point advantage over centrist former President Carlos Mesa, who acknowledged defeat.
Now the formal official count had Mesa with only 41% to 39% lead over Arce with 24% of
the vote tallied on Monday.
But those votes appear to be largely from urban areas rather than the rural heartlands
that have been the base of Evo Morales' support.
Officials said final results could take days.
Now the interim president funny enough, Jeanine Anez asked Arce to govern with Bolivia and
democracy in mind.
Okay, so let's stop right there.
So this right wing interim president, was not democratically elected by the people of
Bolivia.
In fact, after the United States orchestrated a coup in Bolivia and ousted a very popular
president, and forced him to flee the country and go to Argentina, what did this right wing
intern government do?
Again, not democratically elected, they went on to do an unthinkable thing to the indigenous
community in Bolivia.
They were incredibly cruel, the videos that circulated throughout the internet during
the time or immediately after the coup happened were absolutely disgusting, beyond disturbing.
This woman and her interim government does not represent democracy, does not care about
democracy, our country that's now being led by a man who has made very clear that he has
no interest in democracy.
Donald Trump is doing anything and everything he can to rig this election in his favor by
trying to dismantle the post office, he's tried to spread disinformation about our elections.
It was his government with the help of senators like Marco Rubio, that spread this ridiculous
narrative about how Evo Morales, was rigging the election in his favor, okay?
And as soon as he was ousted, the situation on the ground in Bolivia became much worse.
And it's exactly what you would expect, from a military or US backed coup that uses the
military in Bolivia to oust a popular leftist president.
Who by the way, pulled about 20% of the country out of poverty, because he believed in using
Bolivia's natural resources to benefit the people of Bolivia as opposed to multinational
corporations.
So anyway, this is my long winded way of saying, it appears that democracy has actually won
in Bolivia.
And while I feel celebratory and many people on the left feel celebratory today.
I do wanna also note that in Bolivia, the people are very cautious knowing that there
is some possibility that the United States might not react well to this news.
But for the moment being Luis Arce, who was Evo Morales' former economic minister has
been elected as the new president of Bolivia.
>> Okay, so first of all there's this mythology that the right wing puts out, and the United
States government puts up but it's very much backed by the media in this country.
That lefties are not popular, in Latin America, South America and the rest of the world.
They only seize power through authoritarian means.
Whenever there's a leftist government, they immediately go why is that sounds authoritarian
in our side, I don't know right?
Meanwhile, as an opponent, they're the ones who took over in a coup I'm pretty sure that's
far more authoritarian.
And if Morales didn't win the election, why do we assume the right wing should hold office?
The whole point was they said we don't know who won the election okay, so why does the
right wing get to do a coup?
And when we tested the theory on whether they were popular through a thing we call an election
it turns out no, the right wing is deeply unpopular in Bolivia the left wing.
Is very popular it looks like and that's why we had immediate concessions, that the leftist
in this case won by over 20 points an epic landslide.
So is that going to stop the American media, and in the right wing in this country from
intimating that leftists are not popular?
No, they're gonna keep putting out the same propaganda because that's what they use to
justify coups.
And that's why in this case, calling it a propaganda is not hyperbolic, or an analogy
or a metaphor, it's very, very literal.
They are doing propaganda, so and what is the point?
Why is the entire United States government, Democrats and Republicans, Democrats are right
wingers a lot of times in these cases, not all Democrats, Bernie Sanders wouldn't do
it.
That's why the rest of the corporate Democratic Party despise them but Obama, Bill Clinton
,etc.
Why do they normally go along with this?
Because the business interest America would rather have the minerals and the natural resources
for themselves.
And why are the lefties popular because they say, hey you know what if it's Bolivian minerals,
or it's Venezuelan oil, well the Bolivian people and the Venezuelan people should benefit
the most.
It doesn't mean you can't use an outside company, it doesn't mean that they can't make a profit.
But it is the people's money, by the way you know who agreed to that just as much as Evo
Morales and Hugo Chavez, a politician we had in this country, her name was Sarah Palin.
She actually did something even more bold in Alaska, where she raised the prices on
the oil companies extracting oil from Alaska.
And with that money, she sent $2,000 checks to almost every citizen in Alaska.
And that's why she had an 80% popularity rating, cuz if you actually give people what is actually
theirs, they like it.
If you give it to a foreign government or foreign corporations, they don't like it,
wow so surprising.
>> Right, and Cenk we know one of the natural resources in Bolivia that multinational corporations
have their sights set on is lithium, right, especially when it comes to powering non gas
fueled cars.
And so it's not just about oil, it's not just about the natural resources that we hear about
over and over again.
When we hear about, the US backed coups of lefties leaders, it's also about lithium and
it's just hilarious to me that the New York Times just regurgitated the narrative coming
from the organization of American states.
That Evo Morales did something awful and dictatorial.
Now, in reality what Evo Morales did is he ran for another term, there are term limits
in Bolivia but much like here in the United States.
If you are, let's say someone like George W Bush, and there's some sort of issue with
the election, you can turn to the Supreme Court and hope the Supreme Court has your
back, right?
Something similar happened in Bolivia where he essentially worked through, the courts,
wanted to run for another term, he ran for another term and the vote totals made it abundantly
clear that he won that election.
He won that Election, but it didn't matter because all OAS needed to do Organization
of American States was just claim that there was some election rigging.
Some weird and inconsistencies, they didn't provide any evidence of that whatsoever, but
it didn't matter the New York Times just printed it.
And shockingly enough, it took the Washington post to investigate that story, and find that
there was absolutely no evidence of election rigging.
And that what actually happened on the ground in Bolivia was a coup and it harmed so many
indigenous people in that country.
It led to an incredibly undemocratic outcome where you have this right wing, unelected
person, in charge.
And for her to turn around and accuse someone who was democratically elected of possibly
governing the country in an undemocratic way is hilarious.
And I do wanna note, things were looking a little dire because they had postponed this
election several times as a result of the pandemic.
And so people were starting to worry that an actual democratic election wasn't gonna
be held but luckily it was held and now, again Louis Arce has won that election.
One other note on Anez, Janine Anez's government that's the interim government, tried to overturn
many of Evo Morales' policies and wrench the country away from its leftist alliances.
Newly installed electoral authorities barred Morales from running in Sunday's election,
even for a seat in congress.
And he faces prosecution on what are seen as trumped-up, meaning they're false, charges
of terrorism if he returns home.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, it's just, >> Absurd, yeah so I know another guy who
violated term limits, Michael Bloomberg.
Has anyone removed him from the country, there's term limits in New York and he ran for mayor
again.
And no one cared why, cuz he's rich and he helps Wall Street and other corporations.
You know why some of those tin-pot dictators in the past were called banana republics,
that they ran banana republics in Central America.
It's because we invaded them over literal bananas, they were charging the corporation
is wanting to pay less for bananas.
And give the people of those countries less money that was a natural resource, and we
invaded them and did coups against them because of that it's our fault.
And look, I warn international independent observers in Bolivia and America in every
one of these countries, so that none of this happens.
And if we have it that way and fair elections, the left will win easily.