Since Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has intensified the elaboration of a parallel narrative in the face of evidence that the minutes showing that he won the presidential elections last Sunday are missing. The CNE, the electoral body, had not provided the detailed numbers by voting center until mid-Thursday, which has generated enormous skepticism within Venezuela and in the majority of the international community. More and more actors are assuming that Chavismo committed a massive fraud that hid the opposition victory. With the Bible in his hand, the presidential sash across his chest as he walks resolutely with those almost two meters of height, beneath a painting of the liberator Simón Bolívar or before a military command on guard in front of the Palace prepared to face a foreign invasion, Maduro insists again and again that the people endorsed him at the polls.
He has not limited himself to just giving his word. The president of Venezuela has spent days and hours speaking in front of the cameras to present an alternative truth to the world. To reinforce this story, he appeared on Wednesday at the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) with a stack of documents that he handed to the president of the institution, Caryslia Rodríguez, whom he asked to investigate the entire process and certify the result. While Maduro gave him the papers, behind him, solemnly, the top brass of the State waited, including the military establishment. The TSJ’s ruling in favor of the result will not be a mystery. The TSJ is under Chavista control and, in fact, Rodríguez was until recently a member of the PSUV, the official party – it is the same entity that disqualified the opposition leader María Corina Machado. The candidates have been summoned to the court this Thursday at two in the afternoon.
The same night of the results, something seemed to indicate that it was not going well. The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, said that the delay in providing the data was due to a hackingto the institution, which was intended to prevent and slow down the total count. Hours later, the nation’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, accused several opponents of being behind this conspiracy, which had been perpetrated from North Macedonia – the government of that country has denied any operation in this regard.
The opposition was prepared for something like this. It had distributed activists throughout Venezuela with instructions to obtain a copy or photograph the minutes. A good part of them are in their possession: they have created a website that collects more than 80% of the minutes that they claim are real. If you look at those numbers, Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, was the clear winner, with 7.1 million votes (67%) to Maduro’s 3.2 million (30%).
The explanations about what happened during those hours when the polling stations were closed are confusing. The CNE, controlled by Amoroso, a personal friend of Maduro, blames these alleged attacks from abroad for the difficulty in delivering the records. However, the explanation is bizarre. The Venezuelan electoral system is 100% automated, but the records, before being sent to the central office, are printed in case exactly what is being denounced happens. It is a very guarantee-based system, designed by Chavismo shortly after coming to power, when it had massive citizen support. Now, it is working against it.
Once all these minutes arrived at the institution’s headquarters in Caracas on Sunday, the counting and the final result are automatic, and no one can touch it. There is even a room where all these numbers are processed and a result is produced that is printed out to be read immediately to the public. The problem is that, according to consulted experts, the statement that Amoroso read declaring Maduro the winner did not come from that place, but from his own office.
The CNE now has 30 days to publish the results in a gazette, broken down table by table, as it has historically done. Experts also point out that, due to the particularities of the process, the certifications that accompany it, the witnesses and the observers, there is no possibility of falsification of the records, the deception would be very obvious. “We were prepared for fraud, but not so crude and obvious,” says an opposition source who participated in the recount on election night.
The suspicion that the vote count has been tampered with grows and grows as the hours pass. The leaders of the left-wing powers that still have some influence over Maduro, including Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Brazil’s Lula Da Silva and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have not yet verbalized that Chavismo has committed fraud, but they demand that the president present the minutes as soon as possible, first to clear up any doubts, and second, to avoid more protests in the streets that cause more deaths. If with this evidence he confirms that he won, he should remain in power, although guaranteeing the rights of his opponents, who are currently being persecuted and imprisoned.
The big elephant in the room is the scenario that would occur if there is no doubt that Maduro lost. In that case, according to sources involved in these negotiations at the highest level, a way out for Chavismo would have to be negotiated. Maduro, for the moment, does not seem to be taking notice and raises a volume of scriptures in his right hand. To those who think he will give up, he said: “I am a warrior of love.”
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América onFacebook andXor in ourweekly newsletter.
