Page 88 - Anatomy-of-a-Fraud

Board, whose meetings were public and where the ADO was represented and move
them behind the closed doors of the Electoral Tribunal’s chambers, where the
government enjoyed an absolute majority.
On the other hand, the letter sent by the ADO parties to the Electoral Tribunal
pointed out, among other things, that the National Returns Board was legally enjoined
from bringing its work to a close in the fashion it had. Therefore, it was incumbent
upon the Electoral Tribunal to reject the proffered documents and order the Board to
complete the tally sheet review as required under the law. And yet the Tribunal
accepted what was legally unacceptable, thus becoming –again– a tool for fraud.

Thus, the fraud.

Paragraph number three of the operative part of the National Returns Board’s
issued on May 11 reads: “in accordance with the 39 circuit tally sheets reviewed so far,
some precinct results have not been reviewed; the Tribunal must identify these
precincts, review their results and include them in those for their respective
circuits, provided that said tally sheets meet the requirements and formalities
established by law” (Our bolding). The precinct tally sheets that had not been reviewed
were, for the most part, the ones challenged by the UNADE to subtract votes from the
ADO total. These tally sheets represented 44,127 votes, 6.45 % of all voters, and 239
precincts.

The Electoral Tribunal found itself facing a double task. Firstly, it was to rule
on the merits of the challenges and, secondly, it was to “identify, review and include
in the results of their respective circuits” those precincts that circuit returns boards had
excluded on account of the challenges. As regards these challenges, it has already been
stated that the Tribunal, in a ruling bereft of logic and legitimacy, dismissed them all.
It then proceeded to “solve” the second problem by simply ignoring it. In other words:
the Tribunal did not count the votes that had been challenged even though they were
perfectly valid under the law because all challenges had been dismissed on “procedural
grounds”. These votes were, therefore, consigned to “judicial limbo” and the will of
44,127 citizens was ignored. As Sánchez Borbón would say: “… it doesn’t take much
to get to be president like this”. And Barletta would later say during his “triumphal”
tour of Bogotá, San José, the Far East, and Washington: “I won fair and square”! By
now the reader is no doubt aware that such a claim has absolutely no factual basis.
But the Tribunal’s direct participation in the 1984 electoral fraud was not
limited only to these cases. During the review of the tally sheets for the San Miguelito
circuit, which took place within the premises of the Electoral Tribunal itself and in the
presence of the three justices and the secretary general, another fraud was committed.

On Wednesday, May 15, the review in question was held. It should be recalled
that ADO had challenged the entire San Miguelito circuit as the result of the UNADE’s
strategy of massively challenging any precinct tally sheets whose results were
unfavorable to it. The time had come to count the votes the circuit returns board had
not counted. And counted they were, but in a fraudulent fashion. For instance, “the tally