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Los socios que conforman el
Acuerdo de Lima son:
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PRESENTACIÓN
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Dear friends
Following is the fourth edition of the Thematic Bulletin of the
Lima Agreement. This edition focuses on the Observation of Municipal
Elections, and it contains information on the activities of our
organizations in Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, where elections took
place during the month of October.
With warm greetings,
Transparencia
Executive Secretariat |
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Observation of Special Municipal Elections in the province of El
Collao – Puno (Peru) | |
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Peru | Civil
Association Transparencia
 On
Sunday, October 17, special municipal elections took place in the
province of El Collao, in the department of Puno, Peru. The
positions to be filled were for the mayorship as well as for four
members of the new Provincial Council. Spots on the Council were
open due to the absence of several members. The position of mayor
has been vacant since April 26th of this year, when Mayor Cirilo
Robles was tortured and publicly executed by a group of citizens
from the district of Ilave who were enraged by a series of alleged
irregularities that Mayor Robles was accused of committing.
In recognition of these events, Transparencia initiated in August a
project called “Promotion of trust and dialogue for the prevention
of conflict in the province of El Collao”. The project was supported
by GTZ (The German government’s organization of Technical
Cooperation for Development) to establish a plan for electoral
observation that would provide for the normal realization of
transparent elections.
 The
principal activities carried out included the following: development
of dialogue with and among the national leaders of political parties
in contention; mutual agreement on civil pacts reached through
dialogue between political and social actors of the province;
preparation for and publicity of debates between the candidates for
the mayorship; development of educational campaigns for observers
and party representatives, providing training for more than 500
party agents representing the 11 participating lists and more than
100 volunteers from Transparencia who were placed throughout the
province on election day; distribution of materials such as “Who’s
Who?” with profiles of the candidates, as well as weekly information
updates and bimonthly bulletins; among other activities.
The observers were present on election day to record a massive turn-out
by the citizenry. All of the polling stations were set up normally
and the process in general was carried out in accordance with the
basic parameters for a clean, free, and fair election.
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Monitoring of money spent on campaigning | |
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Chile | Participa
On Sunday, October 31, citizens of 345 municipalities in Chile chose
their mayors and council members. Participa monitored the elections
expenses incurred by 76 candidates for mayor in 24 communities.
This monitoring began on Friday, October 1st, and concluded on
Thursday, October 28th (the last day allowed for elections
campaigning and publicity). Three measurement criteria were
considered: radio publicity, written press, and visibility of
billboards and campaign materials in public places. With regard to
the methodology of expense measurement, the goal was to monitor
sectors where candidates and political parties made the greatest
investment. Sectors monitored included the six informational radio
stations with the greatest audience, all eight newspapers in
publication and, through photographs and analysis by an econometrist,
all campaign material visible in the fifteen city blocks that
experience the heaviest traffic in each community.
From the results of this monitoring work, Participa concluded that
the disparity in campaign expenses between candidates was immense.
In the case of greatest disparity, the candidate with the greatest
campaign expenses spent approximately 75 times the amount of the
candidate who spent the next greatest amount. In other cases where
large disparities were observed, the difference in spending was
generally 4 to 5 times. The second important conclusion was that the
candidates who belonged to large political coalitions in the country
had campaign expenses that were disproportional to the expenses of
independent candidates and candidates from other parties.
The executive director of this effort, Andrea Sanhueza, stated that
the monitoring was considered successful because, first, it
encouraged awareness of the issue of campaign expenses and the
dissemination of a new law the regulates financing of public
activities within public administration, and second, it highlighted
the problems within the new regulations in order to introduce
pertinent changes to them.
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Participación Ciudadana observed regional elections in Ecuador | |
Ecuador | Participación
Ciudadana
On Sunday,
October 17, regional elections took place to choose regional
authorities in Ecuador. 8,643,974 registered voters turned out to
elect 22 provincial prefects, 219 municipal mayors, 91 provincial
council members, 893 municipal council members, and 3,970 members
of rural parochial boards.
Participación Ciudadana observed the development of the electoral
process at the polling stations from 22 provinces. This
observation effort included gathering information about the
infrastructure, logistics, organization, administration, and
general climate in which the electoral process took place. In
addition, there were qualitative observations of the vote-receiving
boards (JRVs) and the quick count of elections results for the
mayors of Quito and Cuenca and for the Prefect of Guayas.
This election process was important also due to the realization of
a pilot program for electronic voting in 270 JRVs and in certain
communities in Quito, Guayaquil, Otavalo, Cuenca, and Portoviejo.
Participación Ciudadana followed this process with observations of
60 JRVs as well as interviews with 720 voters in the areas of La
Floresta in Quito and Roca in Guayaquil. According to interview
results of voter opinion, 87.4% of voters in La Floresta and 88.1%
of voters in Roca considered the electronic voting process to be
easy.
The voters who were interviewed noted the principal advantage of
electronic voting to be its quickness, with the second advantage
noted being its trustworthiness. However, the principal
disadvantage of the electronic voting would be the lack of voter
training.
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