OAS rejects court ruling that Maduro was re-elected in Venezuela — MercoPress

OAS rejects court ruling that Maduro was re-elected in Venezuela

The OAS noted that it is also unthinkable to expect Venezuela’s National Electoral Council to hold free, fair and transparent elections.

The Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a statement on Friday rejecting the ruling made on Thursday by the Venezuelan Supreme Court (TSJ) that incumbent President Nicolás Maduro won the July 28 election and will therefore rule the South American country from 2025 to 2031.

According to the OAS, the TSJ “hastily declared Maduro’s victory, based on a partial communique released orally that contained mathematically impossible figures and did not provide detailed results, which by law must be summarized table by table.”

The Washington-based continental organization also stressed that “to this day, the CNE has not published classified election results, while the opposition published classified election results based on the official vote counts released by the voting machines themselves on election day.”

The OAS also stressed that the opposition was “transparent” in publishing the vote tallies collected on election day, compared to the “total lack of transparency of the electoral authorities of the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the TSJ”, which instead focused on denouncing alleged conspiracy theories and making unconfirmed statements.

According to the report of the United Nations Panel of Electoral Experts, “the announcement of election results without publishing electoral details or disclosing aggregated results to candidates is unprecedented in contemporary democratic elections” and “has a negative impact on the credibility of the results announced by the National Electoral Commission”. The lack of adequate procedures highlighted by the Panel to guarantee the integrity and security of electoral materials demonstrates a clear lack of transparency and accessibility in electoral activities, hampering effective public oversight, the OAS continued.

“This Secretariat reiterates that there is no procedure in the Venezuelan legal system that allows the electoral authorities to ‘investigate and verify’ the election results, or to subject them to an expert assessment. Both the Organic Law on Electoral Procedure and the Organic Law on Electoral Rights place the functions of compiling, adjudicating and publishing the results of the presidential elections exclusively with the National Electoral Council,” the OAS insisted.

The continental organization also noted that “the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela noted that both the Venezuelan Supreme Court and the Venezuelan National Council lack impartiality and independence and play a role in the state’s repressive apparatus.” It also noted that “other international organizations, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the International Commission of Jurists, have raised alarms about the lack of independence of the Venezuelan Supreme Court.”

“It is clear that Nicolás Maduro has judicialized the electoral process in order to obtain a stamp of ‘legitimacy’ from a biased court,” the statement stressed, while highlighting the plight of the Venezuelan people who have suffered amid a “brutal wave of repression.”