Everything you need to know about the Venezuelan elections that you won't find in the media

7 min read PASCUAL SERRANO

PASCUAL SERRANO

After the election day last July 28 in Venezuela, you will have seen, heard and read in the media many comments of this type: “The Venezuelan government has committed fraud because it has not shown the voting records”, “The opposition has shown some records that show that he won the elections”, “The government and the army are repressing opponents who demonstrate against electoral fraud”, “Maduro did not allow EU representatives to enter as electoral observers”, “The governments leftists in Latin America are demanding that Maduro present the electoral records.” Let's go by parts.

The first issue to clarify is that the electoral authority in Venezuela is the National Electoral Council (CNE), a power, unlike our countries, independent of the others. And, therefore, autonomous in its operation, it does not depend on the government, neither to organize the elections, nor to carry out the count, nor to disseminate it.

The election day of July 28 took place normally, as confirmed by the observers from the UN, the Carter Center and the thousand observers and observers invited by the CNE. Indeed, there were no observers from the European Union invited. Nor are there Latin American observers in the European elections. Even more so in Venezuela, a country whose leaders have been sanctioned by the EU, they do not even allow members of the Venezuelan government to enter Europe. If they badly respect the Venezuelan government, they would not respect its elections either.

Within a few hours, the CNE, the electoral authority, issued a first bulletin with 80% of the tables counted and with a "convincing and irreversible" trend. In it, it announced that Maduro was re-elected for a third term with 5.150.092 votes, 51,20%, and the next in line was Edmundo González, who had obtained 4.445.978 votes, 44,2%. They also reported that they were victims of a hack that would delay the final results.

In Venezuela, as in most elections in our environment, after the end of voting and the recount, a record is prepared for each polling station detailing the number of total votes and those obtained for each candidacy. This document is signed by the members of the electoral board, witnesses and representatives of the parties, who take a copy for their organization.

This document is not usually disseminated in our countries. Surely you have never seen a polling station report from the elections in your country with the signature and identification document number of the polling station members and representatives. This document is the one that the different parties present to the electoral or judicial authorities if they consider that there is any discrepancy with the vote count that is made public. A detailed scrutiny by polling stations, that is, perfectly comparable with the minutes.

Given the CNE's delay in presenting this detailed scrutiny, Edmundo González's candidacy launches a website where he claims to present the electoral records, first he said 30%, then 80%, depending on who made the statements. They make their own recount of their own minutes and arrive at their own result, which they have won.

This candidacy, unlike the rest, already made it clear that it was not going to recognize the electoral authority and its results, therefore, the only thing it did was declare itself in rebellion against the electoral institutions and present its own results to claim winners.

Meanwhile, Maduro's candidacy, which also had its minutes, like all candidates, chose to accept the electoral regulations and wait for the official data from the CNE.

The panorama that was sold to the international community was of a government that did not show the minutes or the evidence of its victory and that of an opposition that was showing the evidence of fraud and its victory. Something absolutely wrong. It was a government waiting for official data and an opposition taking to the mountains and boycotting the elections.

Faced with this situation, President Nicolás Maduro once again turns to the institutions and the law and presents an appeal for protection to the Supreme Court so that the judges can decide, in accordance with current law, the open conflict. The court summons all the candidates and requires them to present the information they have about the results, including minutes. And, of course, it also requires the CNE to present the detailed data that has yet to be disseminated.

At this meeting of the judges, all the candidates appear with the electoral information they possess, except, precisely, the candidate who claimed to be disseminating the records showing his victory.

El president of the Venezuelan Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, later reveals that the website of Edmundo González's party only contains 9.468 alleged minutes of the more than 36.000 tables installed on Sunday, which refutes the statements that they had "more than 70 percent."

He also pointed out that the opposition passed off as minutes, documents that were not, for example "zero minutes", which are printed at the beginning of the vote, as if they were final minutes, "minutes" in which the signatures of the operators are missing. of the table, or of the witnesses, including witnesses from the PSUV, despite this party having witnesses at all the tables or the use of identity cards of deceased people. All of this, Rodríguez recalls, constitutes a crime and can explain the candidate's absence in court to present the documentation.

The next step of the opposition candidacy is to call for violence and uprising. For them it is enough to mobilize a few hundred violent people. In this way, an alleged fraud by the Maduro government, the concealment of the results, the presentation of the true ones by them, and a citizen uprising that reveals itself against the government is presented to the international community.

The Venezuelan government detailed the balance of violence against the elections. It is counted the destruction in more than 70 educational centers, 37 health centers with health personnel inside and 38 transportation units. They damaged 12 public universities, dozens of schools and institutes, metro stations, ten government party headquarters and several mayor's offices. Security forces had to protect some 60 election observers from violence. Two members of law enforcement were killed, and dozens were injured.

This violence explains the arrest of hundreds of people. All of them linked to violent events, none for expressing their opposition or protest against the electoral result. Contrary to what some media announced.

The authorities captured and identified people, some from other countries, who acknowledged having been hired to generate violence and riots.

Of course, it is necessary to finish the electoral process that the CNE publishes segmented and detailed data by municipalities, parishes, schools and polling stations. That is what the governments of Mexico, Colombia or Brazil have asked for. And also, let us remember, the judges of the Supreme Court. Only a week has passed, there are many countries that need weeks for their final electoral count, let us remember the American case in Trump's victory.

As always when democracy is respected, the key is to accept the work of institutions such as the National Electoral Council or the Supreme Court. However, the rebellious and violent people who do not accept democracy will resort, inside and outside Venezuela, to the discourse that all these institutions are “controlled by Chavismo.” The mantra with which they justify their violence to subvert order and not recognize the electoral results.

With that same criterion, we could say that in Spain “sanchismo” controls the Central Electoral Board, since it is chaired by the president of the Congress of Deputies, it controls the prosecutor's office, because the attorney general is appointed by the government, and it controls the Constitutional Court because its composition is made at the proposal of the parliamentary majorities. And in the same way in the rest of the democratic countries, where the ruling party, the one with the most citizen support, is the one that has a significant role in the appointment of many institutions. It's called democracy.

Of course, the United States Department of State has not been missing in this crisis. There they are clear, they do not need to wait for the results of the CNE, nor for the judges' decision, nor do they need to see minutes from any other party. The US “has named” Edmundo González president with the minutes that... Edmundo González has presented.

All of this has led the Venezuelan government to describe what was developing in the country as an attempted coup d'état led by the United States.

Perhaps we should remember that if the United States accepted the elections and democracy in Venezuela, it would have to withdraw the sanctions with which it is trying to destroy the Venezuelan economy and return the CITGO company that has stolen from the Venezuelan state, valued at 13.000 billion dollars. Something similar would happen to friends of the United States like the United Kingdom, which would have to return the billions of Venezuelan gold that it has retained in the vault of its Central Bank.