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BOGOTA (apro) – After Venezuela’s much-questioned elections last Sunday, the ruling National Electoral Council (CNE) declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner, with numbers in the voting record that could not support the Chavista leader at his worst political moment: rejected by the majority of his own citizens and discredited in front of the world.
Democratic left governments in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Chile, to the European Union, the United States and the United Nations, have demanded transparency and disclosure of the results of the elections by rulers and national electoral councils, which have postponed the vote by four days because it is not in their favor.
Faced with the silence of the CNE, whose main rector, Chavista Elvis Amoroso, declared Maduro the president-elect for 2025-2031 last Monday when the vote count was not yet complete, the opposition is working to compile voting records. The Chavistas, who control the centers, refused to provide these forms to witnesses on election day.
According to these meeting minutes, which account for 84% of the total, they are available on the portal https://resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com/Rival Edmundo González Urrutia won with at least 70 percent of the vote, leading Maduro by more than 30 points.
Exit polls from several independent firms confirmed the figures.
But Maduro, who says he won, has threatened to jail González Urrutia and last Monday harshly suppressed spontaneous protests across the country against alleged electoral fraud. The president’s security forces killed at least 11 protesters, shot dozens and detained nearly 200.
In response to the demands of the majority of the international community for the Chavez regime to make the election results transparent, on Tuesday evening the Carter Center, an American private foundation with extensive experience in observing elections around the world and, in the past, supporting several elections in Venezuela, added a devastating report. Speaking of Sunday’s election, he noted that “it cannot be considered democratic” and insisted that it did not meet the international parameters and standards of electoral integrity.
The non-governmental observer group, founded by former US President Jimmy Carter, said in its report that they could not “verify or confirm the authenticity of the results published by the CNE” and that the fact that electoral authorities had not yet tabulated the results constituted a serious violation of electoral principles.
The Carter Center, which, along with the UN mission, was the only international technical organization to observe last Sunday’s elections, noted that “Venezuela’s 2024 electoral process did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any relevant stage and violated many provisions of the national legislation itself. “It developed in an environment of restricted freedoms, to the detriment of political actors, civil society organizations and the media.”
He also insisted that “throughout the electoral process, the CNE authorities showed a tendency to favor the ruling party and oppose opposition candidates.”
The few countries that accepted Maduro’s reelection included China, Russia, and Iran, who did so out of geopolitical interests, because of their conflicts with the United States, and because they are not supporters of Western liberal democracy. Cuba and Nicaragua also supported the Chavistas because of their close working relationship with the Caracas regime.
The question many are asking is what will happen in Venezuela and what will happen to Maduro in the face of mounting evidence that the opposition is right and that there was a huge electoral fraud in the country last Sunday.
All scholars and analysts who know the regime say Maduro will do whatever it takes to hold on to power, because giving up power would mean jail time or loss of assets for the vast majority of Chavista officials.
Maduro still tries to portray the opposition as a group of “extreme rightists, fascists, imperial agents” who seek to destabilize the Bolivarian Revolution, an unsustainable discourse of corruption, poverty (over 80%), and bourgeois authoritarianism that Venezuela has.
The rhetoric will continue, and well-known tricks will be tried, such as blaming the opposition for acts of vandalism by the “Chavez collective,” paramilitary groups of the regime that typically wear turbans, are armed, and ride on motorcycles and in convoys protected by security forces.
In addition, according to observers, he will try to accuse the opposition of compiling election records that are not true.
Francisco Santos, the former vice president of Colombia, a right-wing friend of the US security agencies and well-informed, assured on his X account that Maduro is developing a plan to prepare a forged voting record to present the real one to the international community.
“With great responsibility, and after 100% verification of this information, I confirm that in the warehouse of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Firas de Maris, Miranda state (Caracas metropolitan area), there is a team of 150 employees of the Venezuelan electoral body, all supervised by a team of 4 Chinese engineers (machine manufacturers),” Santos wrote.
He added that the goal was to “print all new minutes and present them to international observers by Friday, August 2.”
The former vice president said the Chinese engineers were wearing gray underwear without pockets and had no mobile phones. He assured that they “arrived early this morning on a (Venezuelan airline) Conviasa flight from the Cuban Situation Room. They were supervised by the CNE’s chief rector, Carlos Quintero (in fact he is a military man, the second in command of the CNE and reports directly to Maduro) and the technical director of the same organization.”
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