In a speech that didn’t last more than five minutes, Argentine President Alberto Fernández delivered a message to the White House Summit for Democracy that must have infuriated its organizers. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) did something similar.
Fernández began by observing that Ibero-America “is living through a unique moment, in which many nations are changing their governments and democratic processes are consolidating.” But, he added, “we’ve also lived through difficult moments. I’m speaking about our dear sister Republic of Bolivia. Bolivia has suffered a coup d’état, backed in large part by the international community, and by the Organization of American States (OAS).” Fernández didn’t mention the State Department explicitly, but OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro is well known as a frontman for the State Department and his State Department-backed claim that then-President Evo Morales had committed vote fraud in the second round of presidential elections in November 2019, laid the basis for the ouster of Morales. Fernández pointedly added that “Bolivia was able to recover [from the coup] and recover its democracy and today its institutionality is fully intact. I highlight Bolivia’s reality today, when democracy convenes us [for the summit], because Bolivia is perhaps today a good example of democracy.”
