Venezuela’s electoral authority, controlled by Chavismo, has granted victory in the presidential elections to Nicolás Maduro early on Monday morning. The National Electoral Council (CNE) has announced that, after supposedly counting 80% of the votes, the current president and candidate of the ruling party has received 51.2% of the votes, compared to 44.2% for his adversary, Edmundo González Urrutia. “An irreversible result,” said the president of that institution, a personal friend of Maduro and the first lady, Cilia Flores. Neither González Urrutia, nor the main leader of the opposition, María Corina Machado, who was disqualified by the courts also co-opted by Chavismo from being the main candidate, recognized the results. Hours later, Colombia, through its foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, insisted on the need to clear up “any possible doubt.” “We call for the complete counting of votes, their verification and independent audit to be carried out as soon as possible,” he added.
In the hours leading up to the polling stations, shortly after they closed, the opposition campaign team had announced that the CNE had only shown them 30% of the tally sheets, despite having deployed witnesses throughout the country. They had stopped printing and transmitting them. From that moment on, concern was at its peak among anti-Chavez supporters. Jorge Rodríguez, Maduro’s political operator, and Diosdado Cabello, the president’s right-hand man, appeared in public shortly after, implying that they had won the elections, even though the counting had barely begun.
Suspicions of fraud are once again looming over a Venezuelan election, as in 2017. The United States and Chile have been the first countries to openly question the result. Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, expressed from Tokyo, where he is on a tour, the “serious concerns” of the White House that “the announced results do not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.” Chilean President Gabriel Boric was even more forceful and said that the results published by the Venezuelan electoral authority “are difficult to believe.” The international community and above all the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand total transparency of the minutes and the process, and that international observers not beholden to the government account for the veracity of the results. From Chile, we will not recognize any result that is not verifiable,” he wrote on his social networks.
Venezuela is facing a new political blockade. The holding of these presidential elections was secretly agreed between the United States and the Chavistas in Qatar as a way of leading the country towards a democratic normality. In exchange for Washington lifting sanctions and releasing some prisoners, Maduro promised to organize free and competitive elections in which the opposition could participate on equal terms. This agreement was later endorsed in Barbados, in a dialogue in which anti-Chavez supporters also participated. The idea was that the contest would produce a clear winner in the eyes of the world and Venezuela would be reintegrated into the international circuits, both political and market-oriented. For the moment, there is no such thing.
Venezuelans turned out Sunday for an election that seemed to decide the continuity of Chavismo after 25 years of Bolivarian revolution. People flocked to polling stations to cast their votes very early, some even waiting outside the door all night, on chairs and with coffee. Much of the country did not sleep. The grey reflection of televisions flickered in the windows of apartment buildings. Radios remained on. People were glued to social networks. The tension caused by a situation of maximum tension did not translate into violence of any kind. Chavismo had even warned of alleged plans by the opposition to cause chaos on the day of the vote. Except for minor incidents, the day passed peacefully.
The day before, the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, had warned that anyone who offered data outside the CNE would be committing a crime and could be arrested and prosecuted. However, media outlets serving Chavismo began to publish polls that gave Maduro a 10-point victory over González Urrutia. Some pollsters on which these polls are based are fake, recently created. The Spanish political scientist Juan Carlos Monedero, who has been seen campaigning with Maduro, was distributing them on his social networks, despite the fact that it was obvious that at least one of them, Lewis Thompsonwhich is supposedly based in Miami, has just been created for the occasion. Its website was opened 18 days ago, as was its Twitter account, and the company does not appear in any US business register. This war of numbers was present throughout the day.
Shortly after Amoroso declared him the winner, Maduro appeared on a platform in front of the Miraflores Palace, the neo-baroque headquarters of the Venezuelan government. “I can say to the world that I am the re-elected president of Venezuela,” he said, surrounded by the core of his government, who looked serious. They were not overcome with euphoria. The president justified the delay in the delivery of results with an attempt to hack the CNE, which coincides with the version given earlier by the president of the council, who spoke of a “terrorist attack” on the system. Neither of them offered more details or greater clarity about those responsible or their objectives.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
