Venezuelan Government Digs-In Amid Electoral Crisis
HAVANA TIMES – The presidential election on July 28th in Venezuela, far from resolving or diminishing the political crisis, has intensified it with a government entrenched to keep President Nicolas Maduro in power and an opposition mobilized with strong international support for its fraud accusations.
“It is premature to say that the government will achieve its goal of staying in power, but the intention to advance its hegemony is clear,” Guillermo Tell Aveledo, dean of Legal and Political Studies at the Metropolitan University in Caracas, told IPS.
The National Electoral Council (CNE, under the executive’s control) declared Maduro the winner with 51.2% of the votes against 44.2% for his main opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez, but without presenting the detailed data corresponding to the 30,026 polling stations, as has happened in about twenty previous elections.
The opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Platform, holding more than 80% of copies of the voting tally sheets, maintains that Gonzalez’s victory is overwhelming, with 68% of the votes compared to only 30% for Maduro.
These percentages, equivalent to 7.1 million votes for González against 3.2 million for Maduro, would corroborate that a majority that previously voted for the late President Hugo Chávez between 1998 and 2012, or for his heir Maduro after 2013, this time gave overwhelming support to the opposition.
A wave of protests, initially emerging in poor neighborhoods of Caracas and other cities, with allegations of fraud, shook the country on Monday, July 29. In their development and repression, 17 people died, dozens were injured, more than 1000 were detained, property was damaged, and even five statues of Chavez were toppled.
Maduro and the military commanders denounced that a “fascist coup attempt” had occurred in Venezuela, blaming Gonzalez and the highly popular opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, accusing them of acting as cogs in a destabilizing plan driven by the United States.
“Destabilization was organized by the United States with the complicity of Colombian drug trafficking,” Maduro said in a press conference on Wednesday, July 31, in which he said that Machado and Gonzalez “should be behind bars.”
Numerous opposition leaders and activists, as well as witnesses from polling stations in working class neighborhoods, have been arrested, and the president personally encourages National Guard squads to patrol streets and neighborhoods, urging them to find and arrest those he has accused of “terrorists trained in Colombia, Chile, and Peru.”
The opposition leadership has not been intimidated and, with strong support from governments, human rights institutions, and United Nations spokespeople, demands the publication of all voting records so that the process can have an independent and transparent audit.
Thus, the game is at a standstill, and the solution to the Venezuelan political crisis, dragged on throughout this century, moves away from the electoral exit door, as recommended by all involved in its recent history.
A return to the 2019 scenario can be seen – when the opposition erected a parallel presidency recognized by 50 governments – precisely the one that, with this election, the officialdom, the opposition, and international actors of all stripes wanted to turn the page.
Maria Corina Machado tried to avoid this déjà vu by stating, “We reiterate our willingness to participate in a serious and urgent negotiation to facilitate an understanding between the parties that facilitates an orderly transition in accordance with the will expressed on July 28 by Venezuelan citizens.”
International Spotlights
Meanwhile, the spotlights of politics, diplomacy, and international media have returned to Venezuela, whose populist, leftist, and increasingly authoritarian course has been a reference in following the relentless pendulum between the right and left in Latin America.
But, most notably, because the crisis it has experienced, with the collapse of its economy and living standards, has driven nearly eight million people, one-fifth of the country and also of its electorate, to emigrate.
Neighboring countries have been most affected by this exodus, with nearly three million Venezuelans in Colombia, 1.5 million in Peru, about half a million each in Chile and Ecuador, and hundreds of thousands in Brazil, the United States, and Spain.
Many governments in the hemisphere and Europe have advocated for “free elections” to overcome Venezuela’s crisis and have found that the proposed election to resolve power issues is yielding a result far from being recognized.
Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay have warned of irregularities in the process and requested the CNE to publish the complete voting records.
The Venezuelan government expelled the staff at the embassies of these countries, demonstrating that it does not fear facing a potentially another adverse reaction from neighbors.
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico made a joint request on Thursday calling for the complete and detailed publication of the results. For years Maduro has seen political allies in leaders Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro and Andres Lopez Obrador.
The European Union and the Group of Seven wealthiest countries made the same demand. The greatest power of demand comes from the United States, which maintains strong economic sanctions on civilian and military authorities and state-owned companies in Venezuela.
Officials from the United Nations system, the Organization of American States (OAS), and international human rights entities have joined in, with special concern over the violence and repression of the population.
In contrast, playing into the global trend, governments like those of Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Honduras, Iran, Nicaragua, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, and Zimbabwe promptly recognized Maduro’s victory.
In the OAS, a resolution demanding the complete publication of results and criticizing the repression of demonstrations could not be approved on July 31, as it reached only 17 of the 18 votes needed, with notable abstentions from Brazil and Colombia and the absence of Mexico.
Immediately after that OAS meeting, the Colombian government reported that it was conducting intense efforts with its counterparts in Brazil and Mexico to “create the necessary conditions and seek an agreement for coexistence and political peace in Venezuela.”
Battle of Vote Tally Sheets
On Wednesday, July 31, Maduro submitted a request to the Supreme Court to “resolve this attack on the electoral process, this coup attempt, and clarify everything,” a measure that could delay the delivery of results while at the same time supporting his hasty proclamation as the winner.
All national powers in Venezuela are in the hands of the government, and the Executive has the constantly declared support of the Armed Forces.
The president also assured that his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Psuv) has copies of 100% of the voting records, that the CNE will publish them, and that an investigation into cyberattacks on the electoral power’s computer system will be conducted soon with the help of experts from China and Russia.
Eugenio Martinez, director of the electoral observatory Votoscopio, told IPS that a “battle of records” will probably ensue, between the figures and copies exhibited by the government and those held by the opposition platform.
“The original tally sheets are in the hands of the Armed Forces, and the parties have copies. The machines (voting and counting are automated processes) and produce identical copies of the records, so their authenticity can be verified with their codes,” explained Martínez, one of the leading specialists in the country’s automated voting system.
Internal opposition and foreign governments have proposed, as a requirement to recognize the results, that they be verifiable impartially, which is difficult because some audits planned for the system were already overlooked, Martinez recalled, and due to the absence of credible observation for both sides.
A mission from the US Carter Center, which claims to have observed 124 elections in 43 countries and was invited by the CNE, left the country 48 hours after the election, saying it could not verify the results and accused the CNE of a “lack of transparency” in disseminating the figures.
The election “did not meet the parameters and international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic,” declared the Carter Center, previously presented by the CNE as a very reliable and independent observer and which has overseen most of the country’s electoral processes this century.
“The fact that the electoral authority has not announced results broken down by polling station constitutes a severe violation of electoral principles,” according to the Carter Center, and throughout the process, “numerous provisions of national legislation were violated.”
The document also stated that the election was held “in an environment of restricted freedoms to the detriment of political actors, civil society organizations, and media outlets” and that CNE authorities “showed bias in favor of the government and against opposition candidates.”
Aveledo said that “the system’s intention is for the proclamation to be normalized. To achieve this, they employ the announcement of repression, both general and selective.” On the other hand, “a great unity is perceived among opposition sectors, which increases the incentive of the government to close spaces.”
“The desirable thing would be for the system to reconsider in the face of concessions and pressures. But it does not seem possible today,” added the academic.
Meanwhile, after requesting the Supreme Court’s intervention Maduro said, “we want to continue on the path that Chavez charted, but if United States imperialism and fascism force us, I will not hesitate to call the people to a new revolution, with different characteristics.”
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This report was originally published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.