It has been 39 days, and the National Electoral Council (CNE) has not released the tally sheets of the presidential election, in open violation of the 30-day legal deadline as set forth in article 155 of the Organic Law of Electoral Processes. During this time, the body also did not allow an independent audit of the results. The CNE, which is the epicenter of the serious political crisis underway, cannot be asked for anything more, since, as the international community has widely recognized in recent days, it is an institution co-opted by the government, lacking any integrity and credibility.
But the CNE is not the only co-opted body. The August 22 ruling by the Supreme Court (TSJ) of Justice that ratified Maduro as the supposed winner of the elections was followed by a strong rejection by all the democratic states of the hemisphere monitoring the Venezuelan situation, including Brazil and Colombia. The reason shared by the CNE and the TSJ is the same: they are institutions subordinate to the President. Criticism from the international community extends to the Attorney General’s Office. The arrest warrant issued against Edmundo González is only the most recent aggression in a massive repression plan that makes the Attorney General’s Office, along with the government and its security agencies, the ringleaders of this new wave of systematic violations of the civilian population human rights, which, as an unprecedented fact, includes numerous minors.
Unlike previous stages of the political conflict, it is important to highlight that an opinion is being consolidated within the international community about the total absence of legitimacy of the Venezuelan institutionality, which suffers from the most basic separation of powers. It is no longer just the government, but its prosecutor, its electoral referee and its court. It is the Venezuelan State, as a whole, that has lost solvency for any credible act. Since there is no recognition of Venezuelan institutions, given their manifest unwillingness to resolve the crisis – that is, to comply with their legal and constitutional obligations – the need for a third party (impartial arbitrator) to allow the audit of the election results to be carried out is becoming stronger.
It is time to set up an independent international panel to proceed with the verification of the July 28 electoral records. The State must agree to deliver the results, and if it does not do so within a short period of time, then only the results held by the opposition, which have been made available publicly for these purposes, will be audited. This is the necessary step to finally transmit reliability and certainty about what happened on July 28. Any other solution that involves returning the power of decision to the State, through any of its organs, would endorse a non-transparent result, and therefore, de facto, in addition to prolonging the suffering of the population that cries out for respect for its sovereign will. The international community has a responsibility to protect the political rights of the Venezuelan population and to help reverse a multidimensional crisis that seriously threatens the political stability of the Americas as well.
Multilateral organizations, especially the United Nations through its Secretary General, must assume a more active role in promoting solutions to the Venezuelan conflict, considering its emerging political, humanitarian and human rights dimensions. The Secretary General took a first step with the publication of the report of the Panel of Electoral Experts, but his action should not end there. He still has a duty to carry out follow-up actions on the set of recommendations issued by the UN, including in electoral matters, and to activate other multilateral response mechanisms that lead to expanding the possibilities of a feasible solution to the crisis, starting with promoting the international mechanism for verifying the results.
AlertaVenezuela calls on the international community to demand the immediate activation of the international verification mechanism for the electoral results in Venezuela and to continue adopting measures at the diplomatic level and in accordance with International Law so that the government commits to accepting a peaceful transition to democracy. In the meantime, the call is to remain vigilant regarding the human rights situation and to enhance the protection mechanisms for people at risk in the country.