– Electoral process in Venezuela and report from the Secretariat for the Strengthening of Democracy/Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation
USA / VENEZUELA – On July 30, 2024, the office of the Organization of American States (OAS) secretary general received a report from the Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation regarding the presidential electoral process in Venezuela in 2024.
The worst form of repression, the most vile, is to prevent the people from finding solutions through elections. The obligation of each institution in Venezuela should be to ensure freedom, justice, and transparency in the electoral process. The people should have the maximum guarantees of political freedom to be able to express themselves at the polls, and to protect the rights of citizens to be elected.
Throughout this entire electoral process, we saw the application by the Venezuelan regime of its repressive scheme complemented by actions aimed at completely distorting the electoral result, making that result available to the most aberrant manipulation. This continues.
The Maduro regime has mocked important actors of the international community during these years and once again went into an electoral process without guarantees, nor mechanisms and procedures to enforce those guarantees. The complete manual for fraudulent handling of the electoral result was applied in Venezuela on Sunday night, in many cases in a very rudimentary manner.
There has been talk of an audit or a recount of the minutes of electoral material that has not had the slightest conditions of security and control. Likewise, we must keep in mind that with respect to audits, the regime is at least 11 years behind, when it committed to UNASUR (in a meeting on April 18, 2013, in Lima) to audit 100 percent of the minutes of the electoral process of April 14, 2013. Obviously, this was never done. It is obvious that a new mockery would be inadmissible.
Considering that the opposition campaign headquarters has already presented the minutes by which it would have won the election and Maduro, including the CNE, has not yet been able to present the minutes by which it would have won, which at this point would be laughable and pathetic if it were not tragic; in this context it is imperative to know about Maduro’s acceptance of the minutes in the hands of the opposition and consequently accept his electoral defeat and open the way to the return to democracy in Venezuela. If this is not done, it would be necessary to hold new elections but in this case with Electoral Observation Missions from the European Union and the OAS present and a new National Electoral Authority so that the margin of institutional irregularity that plagued this process could be reduced.
The burden of injustice on the people of Venezuela continues, Venezuelans are once again victims of repression, without a doubt the most relevant governmental characteristic, the result of inefficient management that has sown the most serious humanitarian and migratory crises that the region has known. Not long ago, secretary-general Luis Almagro stated that:
“No revolution” – “can leave people with fewer rights than they had, poorer in values and principles, more unequal in the instances of justice and representation, more discriminated against depending on where their thinking or political direction lies.”
The secretary-general also expresses that he regrets the lack of cumulative memory of actors in the international community, which systematically leads to repeating errors, as well as forcing the General Secretariat to reiterate statements and concepts expressed a long time ago.
