The letter of good intentions that the Barbados agreement seemed to have is beginning to falter. The Venezuelan Parliament, controlled by Chavismo, denounced this Tuesday a “huge fraud” in the primaries held on Sunday by the opposition. The day exhibited an important muscle of citizen mobilization and the voters chose, with more than 90% of the votes, María Corina Machado as a unitary candidate to face Nicolás Maduro in 2024. But the vote did not please the Bolivarian apparatus. Less than a week after signing with the opposition forces a document that, among other things, leaves black on white the respect for the candidate selection mechanisms of each of the actors, Chavismo has charged without nuances against the process.
The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, assured this Tuesday that the opposition has inflated the participation number. In the chamber of the legislative branch, he has displayed on a banner the number of votes that he claims were able to register on Sunday: just 598,350 votes, less than half of the total participation announced by the National Primary Commission in its second bulletin that reports almost 1 .6 million votes out of 64.88% of the minutes counted. He also called Jesús María Casal, president of the organizing commission of the primaries, a “thief” and “phony”: “he has committed a crime. “What they did on Sunday is a real shame.”
The head of the delegation that negotiates with the opposition under the auspices of Norway, also follows the line started on Monday by Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife, who said on television that “those responsible for the fraud in this primary must answer to the authorities for the crime they have committed.” President Maduro also disqualified the process and described it as the “chronicle of an announced fraud.” There are other arguments of Chavismo that say they are based on mathematics. For Rodríguez, who for several years presided over the National Electoral Council, the installed capacity of 3,000 centers that were available this Sunday only allows for a maximum of 860,000 votes. Furthermore, according to official measurements, there was “low influx” and almost “desert” in “close to 70%” of the points. Previously, deputy Diosdado Cabello, vice president of the PSUV, had already released audios of a conversation between unidentified people in which the manipulation of some minutes during the vote was supposedly proven.
“The parties recognize and respect the right of each political actor to select their candidate for the presidential elections freely and in accordance with their internal mechanisms, taking into account the provisions of the Constitution and the law.”, says verbatim the first point of the agreement on electoral guarantees signed in Barbados last week. From Rodríguez’s point of view, however, it is the opposition that is violating these pacts. “There was a flagrant violation because here—in the agreement—it says that a series of requirements must be met,” said the head of Parliament. “If they wanted to comply with this agreement they had to hold elections with the National Electoral Council, which, in addition, in this Constitution says that the CNE has the exclusive power to hold elections, precisely to prevent four crooks from coming to steal the popular will.”
These “exclusive” powers – a condition that can be questioned from a legal point of view – had already been used as an argument by the current president of the organization, Elvis Amoroso, in his response to the National Primary Commission when it decided to reject support for the organization of these Sunday elections, offered late, a few days before taking place, because it implied a rescheduling of the day.
Machado responded to the complaints of irregularities made by the Government, but also Carlos Prosperi, who came second in the election, and did not raise his hand as the winner as his Democratic Action party and the rest of the candidates did. To Chavismo, specifically, he said: “They are not even deceiving their own people who also went out to vote on October 22.”
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The National Primary Commission reported on Sunday night a blockage of the platform’s computing server, which complicated the transmission of data. Other organizations that monitor digital and connectivity rights in Venezuela also reported a massive drop in the state-owned Cantv, the country’s main Internet provider. Until now, the final number of participation and the distribution of votes among the candidates are not known, but the organizers have announced that this Wednesday they will respond to the Government’s statements at a press conference. The primaries, which had to be carried out uphill, were finally held and managed to attract thousands of people who stood in lines for hours, especially in popular neighborhoods, under sun and rain, to express a desire for change in Venezuela. The uncertainty and threats about what comes after Sunday still continue.
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