Maduro ignores the calls of the international community and deepens the crisis
The Venezuelan scenario, considering the presidential elections of July 28, only worsens. Given the surprising “disappearance” of the multiple voting records, which have not been shown by the National Electoral Council, both manual and electronic, the maneuvers that seek to give legitimacy to the figures presented by the National Electoral Council, claiming Maduro as winner, without any support and in open contradiction with the manual supports in the hands of the opposition political parties, they are becoming increasingly desperate.
In our previous installment we pointed out the invalid and illegal nature of the claim that the Supreme Court, obedient to the executive, should determine the validity of the figures that would supposedly support the victory of Maduro, the president candidate. As will be recalled, the complex process of negotiations that sought to provide minimum guarantees to the electoral process included the commitment to allow the carrying out of a thorough electoral observation, which would record the development of the process based on internationally accepted criteria for the holding of free and fair elections. The commitment, however, went further, and determined that, among others, the United Nations Electoral Observer Panel, the Carter Center and the European Union would be invited to exercise such a role.
Maduro, through the National Electoral Council, generated impasses with the European Union and, unilaterally, withdrew the invitation that had already been issued to participate in the election. However, both the Carter Center and the UN Panel of electoral experts, which remained as observers, have pointed out gross irregularities, such as “The results announcements consisted of oral communications without infographic support. The CNE did not publish, and still has not published, no results (or results broken down by voting station), to support their oral announcements as provided for in the legal framework for the elections.” (UN)
Now, the Supreme Court announces that it has admitted Maduro’s request to “verify” the electoral results and has called a group of “experts” whose identity, professional merits and certifications are unknown, to carry out the aforementioned verification process. With the supposed work already advanced, there is information that indicates that these formally anonymous experts are part of an entity that participated in electoral observation and that is openly militant of the official cause. It is difficult to find an explanation for the fact that organizations whose track record and reliability in electoral matters are unquestionable, as in the case of the Carter Center and the United Nations Panel of Electoral Experts, were not invited to such delicate work. Unlike this authoritarian subterfuge, the National Congress of Colombia has invited the Carter Center to present its report publicly, which represents a way of advocacy that the world’s democracies should join.
Thus, everything indicates that the verifiable results of the election remain hidden, despite the fact that there is electronic and manual evidence of them. It is then intended that the Supreme Court “replace” the electoral referee, and “close” the discussion on the real results, under threat of repression to anyone who does not obey the imposition of the Maduro government.
The situation worsens even more when Maduro decides, rather than promoting mechanisms to alleviate the political tensions generated by the unprecedented electoral situation, to undertake a series of actions that openly restrict civic space. On the one hand, the National Assembly – at the time elected in violation of the constitution, and unequivocally controlled by the ruling party – approved a law that imposes a host of conditions and obstacles to the existence of Non-Governmental Organizations, many of them insurmountable, which implies the death of independent civil society in Venezuela. This, within the framework of a public administration that is failing in terms of health, the provision of drinking water, the lack of official figures and that, in the midst of scandalous inflation, leaves the citizen in a state of defenselessness, and these are the NGOs which, without intending to replace the state, play a fundamental role as factors that supervise, propose, and act as spokespersons for human needs.
Secondly, the president candidate Maduro has decided to limit the use of certain social media platforms, especially those that allow the spread of the new wave of massive and systematic violations of human rights, and to this end he has issued decree 4,975, which creates a Council National Cybersecurity, for “the prevention of criminal uses of communication and information technologies…”. Thus, it has announced that it will limit the use of applications such as WhatsApp and X. The Venezuelan public administration has already received express orders to uninstall WhatsApp and warnings not to store or disseminate content that may be associated with the opposition. At the same time, the number of complaints published anonymously by third parties from abroad is growing, reporting on the raid in State offices, or on citizens who are victims of “operation tun tún,” with the implicit message that at any time the police forces or paramilitaries can knock on the door and arrest a citizen without any formality. In this framework, on the other hand, the levels of self-censorship increase.
In this way, to the serious situation caused by the manifest arbitrariness of the National Electoral Council, the regime’s response is an attack against the citizen space, through widespread forced arrests, disappearance of political leaders and ordinary citizens and, additionally, through the sanctioning of restrictive and unconstitutional laws. Therefore, in the face of this serious situation, the international community has an enormous challenge before it: to support all efforts so that the government of Venezuela respects the human rights of citizens and that the central element of all democracy prevails: the vote.